a $17,500 settlement agreement<\/a> with the council candidate. Two commissioners said the fine was not quite large enough.<\/p>\n\u201cWe need to signal that this is a serious violation,\u201d said Manjusha Kulkarni, the president of the commission, who voted against the settlement. <\/p>\n
Ugarte is deputy chief of staff to Curren Price and is running to replace his longtime boss on the City Council. Price has endorsed him. But the council aide failed to report outside income from his consulting firm, Ugarte & Associates, for the years 2021, 2022 and 2023, according to Ethics Commission documents. <\/p>\n
He said the failure to report the outside income was a \u201cclerical reporting error.\u201d<\/p>\n
Although two of the commissioners want a steeper fine against Ugarte, the suggested bump isn\u2019t that large.<\/p>\n
Two commissioners voted in favor of the $17,500 settlement, but Kulkarni and another commissioner, Terry Kaufmann, agreed the settlement amount should be around $20,000. <\/p>\n
It\u2019s an amount that they believe could send a clearer message.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is great concern about what is happening in Los Angeles. \u2026 Individuals routinely violate the laws we put in place to ensure trust,\u201d Kulkarni said.<\/p>\n
Kaufmann added that she was concerned by the fact that Ugarte still worked for a council member and was running for office. <\/p>\n
The proposed settlement with Ugarte included seven counts against him, and each comes with a potential $5,000 penalty. But since Ugarte was cooperative, the commission\u2019s director of enforcement reduced the overall penalty by 50%, bringing it down from $35,000 to the $17,500 figure. <\/p>\n
Ugarte told The Times that his work with Ugarte & Associates never overlapped with his time in Price\u2019s office. <\/p>\n
He started working for Price in 2013 but left the office in 2019. He returned in 2021. Ugarte & Associates was formed in 2018 and still conducts business. He co-owns the company with his sister.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As a Los Angeles City Council aide, Jose Ugarte failed to disclose years worth of outside income he…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":325131,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5123],"tags":[120518,1582,276,27167,31586,604,84174,31697,160764,162097,2961,224,2444,5337,162096,1812,160766,162095,162098,1628],"class_list":{"0":"post-325130","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-associates","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-california","11":"tag-commission","12":"tag-commissioner","13":"tag-consulting","14":"tag-curren-price","15":"tag-fine","16":"tag-jose-ugarte","17":"tag-l-a-city-council-candidate","18":"tag-la","19":"tag-los-angeles","20":"tag-los-angeles-times","21":"tag-losangeles","22":"tag-manjusha-kulkarni","23":"tag-office","24":"tag-outside-income","25":"tag-settlement-agreement","26":"tag-terry-kaufmann","27":"tag-year"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115420633788737768","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/325130","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=325130"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/325130\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/325131"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=325130"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=325130"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=325130"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}