Los Angeles: Sam’s Hard Times

“Although it will involve a definite conflict of interest,” Mayor Sam Yorty once joshed, “the city of Los Angeles has purchased the Los Angeles Times.” The gibe against his old foe, the most powerful daily in the West (circ. 861,350), has earned Yorty many a laugh. No longer. By last week, the six-year-old Yorty administration was up to its funny bone in its first major scandal, a real-life conflict-of-interest case exposed, naturally, by the L.A. Times.

For three months, the newspaper had four reporters looking into rumors of shady dealings in the award of a $12 million construction contract for a world trade center at Los Angeles harbor. Yorty called the resulting exposé an attempt to smear him and asked for a grand-jury investigation. The grand jury obliged. Its verdict: a 15-count indictment charging perjury and bribery against four present and former commissioners, all appointed by Yorty.

Cleaning City Hall. The action revolved around the award of the world-trade-center contract without competitive bidding to Real Estate Developer Keith Smith, 41, onetime (1962) Methodist Layman of the Year for Southern California-Arizona, who was charged with five counts of bribery and five of perjury. Smith, a member of the city commission on human relations, is accused of paying off, through complex financial transactions, four harbor commissioners in return for the $12 million contract.

Despite the indictments, Yorty, 58, staunchly defended his commissioners; claimed the Times is “out to get me.” Why? According to the maverick Democratic mayor, the newspaper launched a vendetta because Yorty is an unannounced Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate this year, opposing Republican Senator Thomas Kuchel. And Kuchel, avers Yorty, is “the Times’s boy.” Ignoring his charge, the Times has contented itself by noting editorially that “city hall will be as clean as Mayor Yorty wants it.”