Ruling Makes Probe Moot, Alatorre’s Lawyer Says

According to court papers filed Friday by the Los Angeles Ethics Commission, an attorney for City Councilman Richard Alatorre argues that her client need not comply with a commission subpoena because parts of a local ordinance regulating charities have been declared unconstitutional.

The commission’s lawyers dismissed the argument by attorney Colleen C. McAndrews, who contends that when a federal judge struck down portions of the local law regulating charities this year, any investigation of Alatorre’s actions related to the statute was made moot. The commission’s lawyers say they are not investigating possible violations of the charity regulations, but of a statute that forbids officeholders from intervening with public agencies to obtain treatment not available to the public.

The ethics panel is probing allegations that Alatorre intervened last year with city charity regulators on behalf of a fund-raising and event planning firm founded by his wife, Angie. The panel has sued Alatorre, seeking a court order forcing him to comply with its subpoena and answer investigators’ questions under oath.

On Friday, Superior Court Judge Robert H. O’Brien set a hearing for late next month to consider arguments.

Alatorre, who was at City Hall and did not attend the court session, declined to answer reporters’ questions. In previous interviews, he and his wife have said they have done nothing illegal or improper.

Alatorre’s alleged intervention came after a charity fund-raising license was canceled for Eventfully Yours, a firm established by Angie Alatorre in 1987, because it failed to submit required financial information. A call by Alatorre to the city’s top charity regulator prompted a temporary extension of Eventfully Yours’ license, which the company needed to stage a major fund-raiser for a children’s charity that the councilman helped create, records and interviews show. The firm later collected a $13,000 fee for that event, but never produced the required financial data.

Alatorre had said earlier that he did not recall the conversation, but he also said he may have made the call.

Any legal dispute over the charity law--or the federal court decision that came months after Alatorre’s alleged intervention--is beside the point, Ethics Commission attorneys argued in the court papers they filed Friday.

“It is the unlawful conduct of public officials attempting to use their position to influence a government decision, not the validity of [the charity ordinance] which would constitute a violation of the law,” the panel’s attorneys said. Such violations can result in penalties of up to $5,000.

On Friday, O’Brien agreed to give a new team of Alatorre attorneys time to prepare a response. The lawyers, Jack Quinn and former Assistant U.S. Atty. Eric L. Dobberteen, have each represented high-profile clients, ranging from former savings and loan owner Charles H. Keating Jr. to former Assembly Speaker Pro Tem Mike Roos and Orange County Sheriff Brad Gates.

The attorneys, saying they had only been retained hours earlier, declined to discuss the case Friday, or whether Alatorre will continue to resist the subpoena. “No decision has been made on that,” Quinn said.

Ethics Commission officials said that in the agency’s six-year history, dozens of investigative subpoenas have been issued. “No one has ever refused to comply,” the agency’s director of enforcement, Laurie Tabachnik, told reporters.

The investigation began after a Times story examining the close ties between the Alatorres and two Eastside charities they helped form. The councilman has solicited donations for the charities from businesses, lobbyists and others doing business with the city and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, of which he has been an influential board member.

The charities exclusively hired Eventfully Yours, paying the small firm more than $225,000 to stage fund-raisers and events in recent years. As legal ownership of the company has shifted between Angie Alatorre’s close relatives, she has remained a key executive, drawing a $36,000 annual salary, the Alatorres say.

The MTA inspector general’s office is investigating the financial links between the charities and Eventfully Yours. The firm also is being investigated by the state attorney general’s office for allegedly failing to properly account for five years of charitable fund-raising.