Retired L.A. Times city editor and columnist Bill Boyarsky was named to the city ethics commission yesterday by Controller Laura Chick, subject to confirmation. Boyarsky, who lectures on politics at USC and is writing a book on the late political heavyweight Jesse Unruh, is "the antithesis of a City Hall insider," Chick said in making the appointment. At the Times, Boyarsky pioneered the use of computers to analyze campaign contributions to local politicians and has long had a keen interest in the question of how cash affects politics. (He should -- it was Unruh who coined the term that money is the "mother's milk" of politics).

L.A. Times story, Daily News, Daily Breeze