ethics commission

After 12 years on the Los Angeles City Council, Curren Price will be term-limited out of the legislative body this coming year.

The candidate he hopes will replace him comes from his staff, his deputy chief of staff, Jose Ugarte, who has been referred to in the past as Price’s “right-hand man.”

But with many months to go before ballots are cast, Ugarte is already in hot water with the city’s Ethics Commission.

According to documents released by the commission, Ugarte has agreed to pay a $17,500 fine for repeatedly failing to disclose outside income he made from his lobbying and consulting firm while also working as a council staffer.

A commission investigation found that Ugarte failed to report outside income from his consulting firm, Ugarte & Associates, for the years 2021, 2022 and 2023, according to the documents.

The Ugarte proposed settlement is set to go before the Ethics Commission on Wednesday.

“This was an unintentional clerical reporting error on my part. As soon as I was made aware, I took full responsibility and corrected them,” Ugarte said in a statement emailed to The Times. “I take disclosure seriously. Moving forward, I have implemented steps to ensure nothing is missed.”

Ugarte said his work with Ugarte & Associates never overlapped with his time in Price’s office. 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.

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

Price was indicted two years ago on 10 counts of grand theft by embezzlement after his wife’s consulting firm received payments of more than $150,000 between 2019 and 2021 from developers before Price voted to approve projects.

Prosecutors also said Price failed to list his wife’s income on his ethics disclosure forms.

Prosecutors have since filed additional charges against Price saying his wife, Del Richardson, was paid hundreds of thousands by the city housing authority while Price voted in favor of millions in grants to the agency. He also wrote a motion to give $30 million to the L.A. County Metropolitan Transportation Authority from 2020 to 2021, a time frame in which Richardson was paid more than $200,000 by the agency.

Price said he supports Ugarte despite the ethics violation.

“This matter dates back to 2021, when he was not employed by the city, and is clerical in nature,” Price said in a statement texted to The Times. “I wholeheartedly support Jose Ugarte, alongside an unprecedented coalition of elected officials, labor groups, and community leaders who stand behind his character, leadership and proven record of results.”

Ugarte is one of the leading candidates running to represent Council District 9, which covers South Los Angeles. He raised $211,206 in the first reporting cycle of the election, far outpacing his rivals.

One of Ugarte’s opponents, Estuardo Mazariegos, called the Ethics Commission findings “very disturbing.”

The Ethics Commission also alleged that Ugarte’s documents about outside income, known as Form 700s, failed to report clients who gave $10,000 or more to Ugarte & Associates.

Those clients were mostly independent expenditures for local candidates.

His firm was paid $128,050 to help with the reelection campaign of Congressman Jimmy Gomez (D-California). It was also paid $222,000 by Elect California to help with the reelection campaign of Mitch O’Farrell among other clients.

“This proposed settlement raises more questions than it answers: Are these the only payments Ugarte hid? Why was he concealing them from the public? And above all, how did these massive payments in outside interests affect Jose Ugarte’s work as a city employee?” Mazariegos said in a statement to The Times.

For years, Los Angeles City Councilmember John Lee declined to publicly discuss a fateful Las Vegas trip he took in 2017 with his then-boss Mitch Englander and a trio of businessmen.

That trip led to an FBI investigation of Englander, then a City Council member, who accepted an envelope of cash in a casino bathroom from one of the businessmen and later pleaded guilty to lying to federal investigators.

Last week, in court to address allegations from the L.A. Ethics Commission, Lee finally broke his silence, divulging details of the high-rolling trip and insisting that he paid for his share.

There was his comped Aria hotel room — a standard room, not a suite, he said. There was the Hakkasan Nightclub, where he sipped whiskey and danced as hostesses paraded out $8,000 bottles of booze. And there was the casino, where he played blackjack — after losing $1,000 at the baccarat table — because he preferred the lower-stakes game.

Over and over, Lee, who was then Englander’s chief of staff, denied accepting gifts in violation of city ethics laws. Under grilling by a city enforcement officer, Lee described stuffing $300 into the pocket of one of the businessmen, Andy Wang, to cover his share at the nightclub. At dinner earlier that night, he said, he paid for his own drinks.

“I believe I made a good-faith effort to repay what I consumed that night,” Lee testified.

In 2023, the Ethics Commission accused Lee, who occupies Englander’s former seat representing the northwest San Fernando Valley, of accepting “multiple gifts” in violation of ethics laws, including free hotel rooms, poker chips and food, from a businessman and a developer during the Vegas trip.

The businessman and the developer were not named in the complaint, but details indicate that one was Wang and the other was Christopher Pak, both of whom testified as witnesses.

The commission has also accused Lee of helping Englander backdate checks to repay the businessman who comped the hotel rooms.

Federal prosecutors never criminally charged Lee, and he has said he was unaware of any wrongdoing by Englander.

At the time, city officials, including high-ranking council aides, could accept gifts with a value between $50 and $470 from a single source but had to disclose them, according to city and state laws. They were not allowed to accept gifts over $470 from a single source.

The Ethics Commission alleges that Lee violated both provisions.

Attorneys for Lee, who denies the allegations, have repeatedly tried to block the commission’s case, arguing that the statute of limitations had expired.

Witness testimony concluded last week, and Administrative Law Judge Ji-Lan Zang is expected to make a recommendation about what, if any, ethics violations Lee committed.

Then, a panel of ethics commissioners will vote on whether violations occurred and what the financial penalties, if any, should be.

In 2023, Englander agreed to pay $79,830 to settle a similar Ethics Commission case.

At last week’s hearing, city enforcement officer and attorney Marian Thompson sought to cast doubt on Lee’s version of events. She zeroed in on his insistence that he joined the group at an expensive Chinese restaurant, Blossom, but didn’t eat because he arrived late.

She read aloud the bill for the nearly $2,500 dinner — Kobe beef, Maine lobster, Peking duck, sea bass and more. Surely Lee, who had previously described himself as a “meat and potatoes” guy, liked Kobe beef? Thompson asked.

Lee said he tried only the bird’s nest soup. He described taking a spoonful of someone else’s bowl and saying, “Absolutely not” — it was “gelatinous,” he told Thompson.

Lee acknowledged drinking at the restaurant, giving someone — he couldn’t remember whom — $100 to cover the tab.

According to Englander’s 2020 federal indictment, a “City Staffer B” received some of the same perks as Englander during the Vegas trip. That staffer was widely presumed to be Lee, prompting calls for the newly elected council member to resign. Since then, questions about the Vegas trip have dogged Lee, though he easily won reelection in 2024.

Englander was sentenced to 14 months in federal prison. In his plea agreement, he admitted lying repeatedly to federal investigators and receiving a combined $15,000 in cash — $10,000 in a casino bathroom in Las Vegas, plus $5,000 at the Morongo Casino Resort & Spa from an unnamed businessman.

That man, Wang, ran companies that sold cabinets and home technology systems, was seeking relationships with real estate developers and others to increase his business opportunities in the city.

During his testimony last week, Lee said he followed city ethics laws during the Vegas trip. At the Aria hotel-casino, Englander showed Lee poker chips that Wang had given him, Lee testified.

“I told him immediately that he needed to give those chips back to Andy,” Lee said.

Lee also said he gave Englander a blank check with the understanding that Englander would reimburse Wang, who had comped Lee’s room.

But in a declaration in the ethics case, Englander wrote that neither he nor Lee reimbursed Wang “for any of the gifts we received at the Aria,” including the room, meals and drinks.

“While in Las Vegas, NV, Lee did not give me a check to reimburse Wang,” Englander added.

Thompson asked Lee about Englander’s statements.

“He’s lied before,” Lee replied.

In addition to Wang, two others — Michael Bai, a lobbyist who formerly worked at City Hall, and Koreatown developer Pak — came on the Vegas trip. Bai also testified as a witness last week.

Lee and Englander gave Wang separate checks for $442 on Sept. 14 that year. The ethics commission has accused Lee and Englander of backdating the checks to Aug. 4 — before they were interviewed by the FBI.

Lee disputed that during the hearing, saying he gave Englander his check on Aug. 4, after he said Englander had lost the earlier one.

At the Hakkasan club, Wang spent $24,000 on bottle service, with Pak spending an additional $10,000.

According to an estimate by the commission, the share Lee drank was worth $5,666.67.

But Lee’s attorney, Brian Hildreth, challenged that assertion. Dozens of revelers streamed through the group’s VIP booth that night, Lee and Pak both testified.

Lee said he had only two to four drinks and suggested that many people drank from the bottles.

Addressing questions about the casino, Lee acknowledged accepting $1,000 in poker chips from Wang, saying he thought he was playing on Wang’s behalf. Lee said he would have given any winnings to Wang.

But Lee testified that he didn’t know how to play baccarat and warned Wang that he wasn’t doing well, ultimately losing all the chips.

During questioning by Hildreth, Lee described withdrawing a total of $1,500 from ATMs in Vegas, with a bank statement listing the three withdrawals over two days.

Lee testified that he wanted “to make sure that I had my own money and paid for everything that I was a part of.”

Thompson pursued a counternarrative, describing the spectacle of nightclub hostesses bringing out bottles.

“You got VIP treatment?” Thompson asked.

“Treatment I’d never received before,” Lee answered.