Mayor, Councilman Spar Over Probes

Hahn, Weiss exchange heated letters over ongoing investigations of city contracts.

By Jessica Garrison and Patrick McGreevy, Times Staff Writers

As county and federal prosecutors push ahead with probes into Los Angeles city government, Mayor James K. Hahn and Councilman Jack Weiss had a testy exchange Friday over whether the mayor had responded appropriately to the investigations.

"In my view, your administration has not yet spoken out as forcefully as warranted on the need for city employees and officials to cooperate fully, voluntarily and immediately with the criminal investigations," Weiss said in a letter to Hahn on Friday morning.

In response, Hahn defended his actions and suggested that if Weiss really wanted to be helpful, he should push the mayor's proposed ethics reforms in the City Council.

The exchange of letters, which both sides also distributed to the press, came a day after officials learned that the U.S. attorney's office had asked the city to save all e-mails sent to or from the mayor's office since shortly before Hahn was sworn in.

The request marked the first time that federal officials had shown such a broad interest in Hahn's office. But for at least three months, federal prosecutors have been collecting contracting documents from the city's Airports, Harbor and Water and Power departments, which collectively administer more than $1 billion in contracts.

Federal officials have declined to comment. But Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley, conducting a parallel investigation, said he was interested in whether the awarding of city contracts was linked to campaign contributions.

On Friday, the mayor said he did not know why federal officials might be interested in his office's electronic correspondence.

He added that he was "happy to cooperate" but hoped that people would not jump to conclusions about his administration. He also said he did not think the investigation would hurt his reelection bid.

"I hope that people can tell the difference between an allegation and a fact," he said. "I'm just convinced that what I've got to do every day is do my job, make the city safer, work on providing more direct services to neighborhoods."

In statements to the media and in a letter to Weiss, Hahn also said that he had directed his staff to cooperate fully with investigators "so they have all the information they need to conduct a thorough review."

That wasn't good enough for Weiss, a former federal prosecutor who has emerged as one of the mayor's most vocal critics in recent weeks.

"It completely misses the point," Weiss said. "He is being reactive. I want him to be proactive and open the doors of City Hall to the investigators."

Weiss called on the mayor to issue an executive directive to all city employees and officials encouraging them to contact investigators themselves if they believed they had any useful information.

Meanwhile, city officials scrambled to begin saving thousands of e-mails on the city's servers.

Officials said the city's network is set up to permanently eliminate any e-mail deleted within 24 hours of arrival. But all e-mails since June 1, 2001, that were in the system for at least 24 hours are available on backup servers.

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