As a Los Angeles Metropolis Council aide, Jose Ugarte did not disclose years price of outdoor earnings he constituted of lobbying and consulting — and, because of this, was ready to pay a fantastic.
However the metropolis’s Ethics Fee has now rejected a $17,500 settlement settlement with the council candidate. Two commissioners stated the fantastic was not fairly giant sufficient.
“We have to sign that it is a critical violation,” stated Manjusha Kulkarni, the president of the fee, who voted in opposition to the settlement.
Ugarte is deputy chief of workers to Curren Worth and is operating to exchange his longtime boss on the Metropolis Council. Worth has endorsed him. However the council aide did not report outdoors earnings from his consulting agency, Ugarte & Associates, for the years 2021, 2022 and 2023, in response to Ethics Fee paperwork.
He stated the failure to report the skin earnings was a “clerical reporting error.”
Though two of the commissioners desire a steeper fantastic in opposition to Ugarte, the prompt bump isn’t that enormous.
Two commissioners voted in favor of the $17,500 settlement, however Kulkarni and one other commissioner, Terry Kaufmann, agreed the settlement quantity needs to be round $20,000.
It’s an quantity that they imagine might ship a clearer message.
“There may be nice concern about what is going on in Los Angeles. … People routinely violate the legal guidelines we put in place to make sure belief,” Kulkarni stated.
Kaufmann added that she was involved by the truth that Ugarte nonetheless labored for a council member and was operating for workplace.
The proposed settlement with Ugarte included seven counts in opposition to him, and every comes with a possible $5,000 penalty. However since Ugarte was cooperative, the fee’s director of enforcement decreased the general penalty by 50%, bringing it down from $35,000 to the $17,500 determine.
Ugarte informed The Occasions that his work with Ugarte & Associates by no means overlapped along 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 shaped in 2018 and nonetheless conducts enterprise. He co-owns the corporate along with his sister.
