L.A. Metropolis Council candidate to be fined $17,500 for ethics violation

After 12 years on the Los Angeles Metropolis Council, Curren Value might be term-limited out of the legislative physique this coming 12 months.

The candidate he hopes will change him comes from his workers, his deputy chief of workers, Jose Ugarte, who has been referred to up to now as Value’s “right-hand man.”

However with many months to go earlier than ballots are forged, Ugarte is already in scorching water with the town’s Ethics Fee.

In response to paperwork launched by the fee, Ugarte has agreed to pay a $17,500 high quality for repeatedly failing to reveal outdoors earnings he created from his lobbying and consulting agency whereas additionally working as a council staffer.

A fee investigation discovered that Ugarte did not report outdoors earnings from his consulting agency, Ugarte & Associates, for the years 2021, 2022 and 2023, in keeping with the paperwork.

The Ugarte proposed settlement is ready to go earlier than the Ethics Fee on Wednesday.

“This was an unintentional clerical reporting error on my half. As quickly as I used to be made conscious, I took full accountability and corrected them,” Ugarte mentioned in a press release emailed to The Occasions. “I take disclosure severely. Shifting ahead, I’ve carried out steps to make sure nothing is missed.”

Ugarte mentioned his work with Ugarte & Associates by no means overlapped along with his time in Value’s workplace. He began working for Value in 2013, however left the workplace in 2019. He returned in 2021. Ugarte & Associates was shaped in 2018 and nonetheless conducts enterprise. He co-owns the corporate along with his sister.

The settlement comes as Ugarte’s boss faces his personal ethics quandary.

Value was indicted two years in the past on 10 counts of grand theft by embezzlement after his spouse’s consulting agency acquired funds of greater than $150,000 between 2019 and 2021 from builders earlier than Value voted to approve initiatives.

Prosecutors additionally mentioned Value did not checklist his spouse’s earnings on his ethics disclosure types.

Prosecutors have since filed extra fees in opposition to Value saying his spouse, Del Richardson, was paid a whole bunch of hundreds by the town housing authority whereas Value voted in favor of thousands and thousands in grants to the company. He additionally wrote a movement to present $30 million to the L.A. County Metropolitan Transportation Authority from 2020 to 2021, a time-frame during which Richardson was paid greater than $200,000 by the company.

Value mentioned he helps Ugarte regardless of the ethics violation.

“This matter dates again to 2021, when he was not employed by the town, and is clerical in nature,” Value mentioned in a press release texted to The Occasions. “I wholeheartedly help Jose Ugarte, alongside an unprecedented coalition of elected officers, labor teams, and neighborhood leaders who stand behind his character, management and confirmed document of outcomes.”

Ugarte is among the main candidates operating to symbolize Council District 9, which covers South Los Angeles. He raised $211,206 within the first reporting cycle of the election, far outpacing his rivals.

One in every of Ugarte’s opponents, Estuardo Mazariegos, known as the Ethics Fee findings “very disturbing.”

The Ethics Fee additionally alleged that Ugarte’s paperwork about outdoors earnings, often called Type 700s, did not report shoppers who gave $10,000 or extra to Ugarte & Associates.

These shoppers have been largely impartial expenditures for native candidates.

His agency was paid $128,050 to assist with the reelection marketing campaign of Congressman Jimmy Gomez (D-California). It was additionally paid $222,000 by Elect California to assist with the reelection marketing campaign of Mitch O’Farrell amongst different shoppers.

“This proposed settlement raises extra questions than it solutions: Are these the one funds Ugarte hid? Why was he concealing them from the general public? And above all, how did these large funds in outdoors pursuits have an effect on Jose Ugarte’s work as a metropolis worker?” Mazariegos mentioned in a press release to The Occasions.