After 12 years on the Los Angeles Metropolis Council, Curren Worth will likely be term-limited out of the legislative physique this coming 12 months.
The candidate he hopes will substitute him comes from his workers, his deputy chief of workers, Jose Ugarte, who has been referred to prior to now as Worth’s “right-hand man.”
However with many months to go earlier than ballots are solid, Ugarte is already in sizzling water with town’s Ethics Fee.
In keeping with paperwork launched by the fee, Ugarte has agreed to pay a $17,500 high quality for repeatedly failing to reveal outdoors earnings he made out of 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 response to the paperwork.
The Ugarte proposed settlement is about 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 duty and corrected them,” Ugarte mentioned in a press release emailed to The Occasions. “I take disclosure severely. Transferring ahead, I’ve carried out steps to make sure nothing is missed.”
Ugarte mentioned his work with Ugarte & Associates by no means overlapped together with his time in Worth’s workplace. He began working for Worth in 2013, however left the workplace in 2019. He returned in 2021. Ugarte & Associates was fashioned in 2018 and nonetheless conducts enterprise. He co-owns the corporate together with his sister.
The settlement comes as Ugarte’s boss faces his personal ethics quandary.
Worth 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 Worth voted to approve initiatives.
Prosecutors additionally mentioned Worth did not record his spouse’s earnings on his ethics disclosure kinds.
Prosecutors have since filed further costs in opposition to Worth saying his spouse, Del Richardson, was paid lots of of 1000’s by town housing authority whereas Worth voted in favor of thousands and thousands in grants to the company. He additionally wrote a movement to provide $30 million to the L.A. County Metropolitan Transportation Authority from 2020 to 2021, a timeframe by which Richardson was paid greater than $200,000 by the company.
Worth mentioned he helps Ugarte regardless of the ethics violation.
“This matter dates again to 2021, when he was not employed by town, and is clerical in nature,” Worth 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 file of outcomes.”
Ugarte is without doubt one of the main candidates working 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 among Ugarte’s opponents, Estuardo Mazariegos, referred to as the Ethics Fee findings “very disturbing.”
The Ethics Fee additionally alleged that Ugarte’s paperwork about outdoors earnings, referred to as Kind 700s, did not report purchasers who gave $10,000 or extra to Ugarte & Associates.
These purchasers have been principally 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 purchasers.
“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 huge 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.
