Posted February 22, 2000 Tainted Money By Shane Harris Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan has a plan to save the city from itself. In the wake of the Rampart police corruption probe, which so far has resulted in the overturning of 40 criminal convictions obtained with falsified evidence and perjurious police testimony, city officials believe that the total cost of settling the lawsuits that are sure to result from these cases could ultimately reach $300 million. The mayor proposes to allocate most of the city’s share of the national tobacco settlement toward compensation for the victims in the Rampart affair. That cut stands at about $300 million, to be paid out over 25 years. Riordan has said that the city would have liked to use its share of the settlement for health-related concerns. But looking now at the music that the city will inevitably have to face because of the illegal doings of the LAPD, the mayor says that using the money to compensate victims in the corruption cases is “the best use of these dollars.” Well, why is it at the city’s discretion to decide how those funds should be spent? Regardless of what one might think of the brokering of the tobacco settlement, or whether any good can ever come of it, there was a spirit to that agreement, which was that the money should exist to create circumstances in which good might occur. Little good will come out of any tobacco-funded settlement of the Rampart cases. If the intent of Riordan’s proposal is to assuage an injustice — either to the Rampart victims or to the citizens of Los Angeles who would be fiscally wounded by the huge cost of a settlement — it won’t happen so long as the source of that remedy is something that has already been tainted. The money from the tobacco deal is bloodied, born out of a mix of sickness and deceit. What purifies it as much as possible, however, is the idea that it be put toward a better cause. The last place it should go is toward a reckoning of the city’s inability to root out assailants of the Constitution from its own police force. There is little accountability in that act for the city and for the victims, and scant for the LAPD. To dedicate this money toward some other purpose than that for which it was intended is to say that the city doesn’t care what the settlement was about in the first place. It treats the money as nothing more than a jackpot, the equivalent of hitting a civic lottery. If the proposal in Los Angeles passes the city council, and the city is bailed out of a mess of its own doing, then it begs the question: When it’s all done, how much will this settlement really cost? Shane Harris is Governing’s research coordinator. Agree? Disagree? Want to expand on a point? E-mail us at mailbox@governing.com, and we'll post your comments here. Please include your name, location, government or business title or job description, and a daytime phone number (for verification purposes). Previously in View: Ventura’s Unicameral Victory: how the Minnesota governor will win either way (posted February 18, 2000) Questioning Authority: the consequences of divided rule (posted February 10, 2000) Taxation Without Misreprentation: taxing the Internet (posted February 2, 2000) Too Much Democracy: control of the schools (posted January 24, 2000) The Art of Apology: politicians and regret (posted January 18, 2000) The State vs. the Wild, Wild Web: regulating the Internet (posted January 14, 2000) Back from the Dead: party control in the South (posted January 11, 2000) Welcome to Governing.com (posted January 2, 2000) Copyright © 2000, Congressional Quarterly, Inc. Reproduction in any form without the written permission of the publisher is prohibited. Governing, City & State and Governing.com are trademarks of Congressional Quarterly, Inc.