Laura Chick briefs Hahn's rivals—at home

The LA Weekly's Jeffrey Anderson posted a great scoop [the Weekly has fixed the link] on the paper's website this afternoon: City Controller Laura Chick had each of the four top challengers to Mayor Hahn over to her house last week to receive a 12-page memo itemizing the corruption allegations swirling around the mayor's administration. The candidates were sworn to secrecy, and supposedly it was all unofficial, but Anderson reports that Chick was accompanied by her senior city staff. That includes the chief of staff in the controller's office, Marcus Allen; her communications deputy, Rob Wilcox; and senior aides Ruben Gonzalez and Miriam Jaffe, herself a former chief of staff to Bob Hertzberg. Chick told the Weekly that they used vacation time to prepare the memo and attend the separate meetings with Hertzberg, Antonio Villaraigosa, Bernard Parks and Richard Alarcon.

Chick is close to Hertzberg and Villaraigosa, and for that reason is not offering an endorsement in the primary race. But she has not hidden her disdain for Hahn, who she endorsed for reelection before changing her mind and withdrawing the support last year. In the Weekly story, Chick says her memo does not divulge any confidential information from her official city audits. "We wanted to find a way on our own time to provide the potential new leader of our city with what we know. Obviously we couldn’t do it on city time," she says. But Raphael Sonenshein, one of the drafters of the reform City Charter that gave the controller's office new powers, is troubled:

"This situation...raises questions for me. If there is information that the controller feels the public ought to have, then that information should be brought before the public. The issue is transparency. Even with the best intentions, open public discussions rather than private meetings has to be the way to go."

Chick, of course, takes credit for sending information to the DA and U.S. Attorney that fueled the grand jury investigations now looming over Hahn's reelection campaign. The story is on the Weekly website but presumably will be in Thursday's issue of the printed paper.

Edited post