{"id":323840,"date":"2025-10-22T12:45:12","date_gmt":"2025-10-22T12:45:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/323840\/"},"modified":"2025-10-22T12:45:12","modified_gmt":"2025-10-22T12:45:12","slug":"letters-to-the-editor-ethics-fine-for-city-council-candidate-highlights-an-absurd-situation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/323840\/","title":{"rendered":"Letters to the Editor: Ethics fine for City Council candidate highlights an absurd situation"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>  Oct. 22, 2025 5:30 AM PT <\/p>\n<p><b>To the editor<\/b>: Let me see if I have this right. Jose Ugarte co-owns a \u201clobbying and consulting\u201d firm with his sister and will have to pay a $17,500 fine for failing to disclose income he made from his lobbying and consulting firm while working as a council staffer (<a class=\"link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.latimes.com\/california\/story\/2025-10-21\/l-a-city-council-candidate-fined-ethics-violation\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">\u201cL.A. City Council candidate to be fined $17,500 for ethics violation,\u201d<\/a> Oct. 21).<\/p>\n<p>Just exactly who is his firm lobbying and consulting on behalf of? And, with a straight face, he has the nerve to run for City Council? Aren\u2019t there rules against that kind of thing? How does he even get close to the City Council?<\/p>\n<p>Do they think Angelenos are really that stupid? We all know L.A. City Council has issues, but this is nuts.<\/p>\n<p>Michael Badalian, Stevenson Ranch<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Oct. 22, 2025 5:30 AM PT To the editor: Let me see if I have this right. Jose&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":323841,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5123],"tags":[161689,1582,276,161687,604,7129,161688,19834,160764,18044,2961,19945,8302,224,2444,5337,22108,31590,6613,17823],"class_list":["post-323840","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-absurd-situation","tag-ca","tag-california","tag-city-council-candidate","tag-consulting","tag-editor","tag-ethic","tag-firm","tag-jose-ugarte","tag-kind","tag-la","tag-letter","tag-lobbying","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-times","tag-losangeles","tag-nerve","tag-right","tag-sister","tag-thing"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115417889118223503","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323840","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=323840"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323840\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/323841"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=323840"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=323840"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=323840"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}