Hand Jobs and Handouts

LAST WEEK, THREE YEARS AFTER he launched his “pay to play” investigation of former Mayor James Hahn, District Attorney Steve Cooley finally answered the question that had been nagging the public for so long: How big a tip should you give for a hand job at the Bonaventure Hotel?

Former Deputy Mayor Troy Edwards, the man picked by Hahn to supervise the city’s harbor, airports and Department of Water and Power, provided no more than $20. But Leland Wong, the one-time city commissioner accused of bankrolling the deputy mayor’s hand jobs, tipped $30, $50, even $60 — even as his lawyers denied that he arranged for the massages to include happy endings. So clearly, the important message for the public is to add all those figures together, divide by four, and pay the average.

But wait. That wasn’t the question voters had in mind, was it? No, there were many important issues swirling around the pay-to-play probe, which originally centered on campaign contributions and contracting and played a major role in toppling Hahn, the man who appointed Wong to two city commissions. But those issues were drowned out by the more, shall we say, graspable revelations of Handjobgate.

Wong’s attorneys got things rolling by excerpting and underlining every passage of the 1,250-word grand jury transcript featuring Edwards and the word “masturbation.” While insisting that they wanted the excerpts sealed, Wong’s lawyers masterfully turned the spotlight toward Edwards, making him look like a low-grade perv, and one who got immunity, to boot. Political reporters across Los Angeles then had to ask the really tough questions, such as: Is masturbate a transitive verb? (The Los Angeles Times decided yes, saying Edwards testified that the masseuses “sometimes masturbated him.”)

Yet nowhere in the grand jury transcript did prosecutors answer the more stomach-churning question: How did this guy, San Marino resident Leland Wong, wield so much power? Wong, after all, is the only member of the Hahn administration to be charged under the pay-to-play scandal. He faces 20 felony counts, including one for bribery, one for conflict of interest, three for tax fraud and 13 for embezzlement — funneling money from his employer, Kaiser Permanente, into Lakers tickets and, yes, those massages at the Bonaventure.

Edwards was instantly compromised by the free spa visits, linking himself in secret with the man who would bring him down. But when it comes to violating the public trust, Wong jerked off Edwards, port officials and the public in much more damning ways, according to the nine volumes of grand jury testimony and exhibits. The most alarming tale told by the transcript is the one that portrays Wong as a relentless hustler — not a pimp at the Bonaventure Hotel, but a citizen volunteer who deftly wove himself into the fabric of the Hahn administration, dictating decisions at an agency where he had no authority, and enriching himself in the process.

Wong tried to bully an inexperienced and unsupervised deputy mayor into awarding a lucrative port lease to Taiwan-based Evergreen Marine Corp., the company paying Wong $5,000 each month. He browbeat officials at Los Angeles International Airport to let him keep his official airport badge, even after he had been reassigned from the airport commission. (“Leland is on me like white on rice,” one befuddled LAX staffer pleaded in an e-mail to Edwards.) And most disturbingly, Wong repeatedly applied pressure to top port officials, who feared that he would return to the harbor commission and punish them if they disobeyed.

With Hahn asleep at the wheel, Wong worked to undermine the expertise provided by the port’s financial analysts, its top negotiator, its executive director and even the mayor’s appointees at the harbor commission. He did all this even as he reported to the Ethics Commission that he was getting paid by Evergreen — reports that no one in the Hahn administration bothered to check. Wong wasn’t even a paid Hahn employee.

You see, in Los Angeles, the most important members of a mayoral administration are frequently its volunteers — the 300 or so citizens who serve on the boards and commissions that oversee 42 city departments. Wong’s day job was at Kaiser Permanente, where he worked in government relations, doling out money for community groups and civic projects and enhancing his status as a power broker. But his time on city commissions increased his influence much more, as he served first under Mayor Tom Bradley, then Mayor Richard Riordan and finally Hahn. Wong, like other City Hall power brokers, bumped along from commission to commission, moving from the harbor to the airport, from the airport to the DWP, increasing his stature and his sense of permanence in the City Hall firmament. Wong was Riordan’s president of the harbor commission when Evergreen’s first major lease was approved. And he was Hahn’s appointee to the airport commission when he received his first $5,000 payment from Evergreen, a bill submitted before Hahn had even finished his first year in office.

Wong was overseeing Los Angeles World Airports in 2002, when the agency was trying to entice the cargo airline known as EVA Air to move to Ontario International Airport. But Wong was also working to provide EVA’s sister company and maritime counterpart, Evergreen Marine Corp., more acreage and a much more lucrative lease at the Port of Los Angeles. With Wong at the helm, the two deals became linked: If EVA agreed to fly out of Ontario, something it didn’t really want to do, the port would reward its sister company with a sweet deal at the harbor. Wong’s work at the airport would therefore benefit his bosses in Taiwan.