Two law enforcement agencies have closed their investigations into former Los Angeles Airport Commissioner Ted Stein, a figure in the "pay-to-play" investigation that helped end the political career of former Mayor James K. Hahn, according to correspondence obtained by The Times.
Because no charges were filed, Stein now wants the city to pay his legal costs.
Stein, a private attorney who resigned from the Airport Commission in 2004, received letters over the last two years from the U.S. attorney's office, the Los Angeles County district attorney's office and the city's Ethics Commission saying their scrutiny of him had ended.
The letters were reviewed this week by the city's Airport Commission, which is trying to decide how to respond to Stein's request for reimbursement of $145,000 in legal bills incurred while serving as a volunteer commissioner in the Hahn administration.
The commission, which oversees Los Angeles World Airports, has reviewed another $48,000 in legal bills from three other Hahn-era airport officials, including former Commissioner Cheryl Peterson. Even more legal claims could be submitted after today, when a judge is scheduled to sentence Leland Wong, a former Hahn appointee who was convicted on corruption charges in July.
Wong's sentencing could spell the end to the five-year probe of the Hahn administration, spurring other former officials from the airport, Port of Los Angeles and the mayor's office to seek repayment for their legal costs.
Gina Marie Lindsey, Los Angeles World Airports' executive director, had no comment on the legal bills.
But Stein's attorney, David J. Schindler, said his client should not have to pay attorneys' fees incurred while responding to "baseless attacks" that resulted from his time on the commission.
"From the outset, Ted was the victim of false rumor and innuendo, much of it repeated without any scrutiny by several publications, including the L.A. Times," Schindler wrote in an e-mail. "We always had great confidence that any fair-minded investigator would conclude that there was no merit to any of the scurrilous accusations that were leveled, often anonymously, against Ted."
Four years ago, The Times reported that state and federal prosecutors were investigating allegations that Stein had tried to fire an airport contractor because it had refused to donate to Hahn's 2002 campaign against San Fernando Valley secession.
