City Controller Laura Chick is responsible for objectively auditing the performance and fiscal integrity of city government, including aspects of the mayor's office. So some eyebrows were raised when the LA Weekly broke the news that she and her senior staff wrote a 12-page memo critical of Hahn and shared it privately at her home with the four candidates trying to unset the mayor. In today's Daily Journal, Ryan Oliver reports that Chick has been asked to make the memo public and refuses, saying it was prepared by her staff on their personal time so isn't an official city document. Kam Kuwata, one of Hahn's campaign consultants, complains that "Laura's intent is to make her office an overtly political one...a political arm of someone else's campaign." Robert Stern of the Center for Government Studies says in the story that Chick did nothing wrong, but should release the memo anyway.

By the way, when Chick's office heard that Jeffrey Anderson was going to break the story, they called in City Hall reporters and fed them a story that the meetings at Chick's house were endorsement interviews. It got her small stories in the Times and Daily News, but those reporters probably aren't happy at getting snookered.

Also in the Daily Journal: More reaction to that hearing on the money-laundering charges against Hahn contributor Pierce O'Donnell. Garry Abrams writes that buzz about the proceeding attracted a crowd of lawyers and spectators from around the Criminal Courts building. He agrees with other observers that the defense scored points, "possibly at the cost of giving the district attorney's office a wake-up call."

* Chick Q-and-A: With Bobbi Murray in CityBeat.