According to an LA Weekly investigation, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa “has very quietly accepted — and even angled for — free tickets to as many as 80 pricey events, then failed to report all but one of them, as well as failed to keep records of his actions or the sources of this largesse.”
From an article published today:
It is not known who gave him the tickets, or the precise number of these events Villaraigosa actually attended, although it is known that he frequently did show up. The 80 events, which appear on the mayor’s private official schedule, were recently sent by Villaraigosa to the Ethics Commission amid an outcry from the public over his freebies. The Weekly obtained a copy of the list. Click here to see the Weekly‘s exclusive ticket-price values of Mayor Villaraigosa’s 80 freebies.
According to L.A. Weekly‘s calculations, Villaraigosa has taken tickets worth $50,000, and perhaps as much as $100,000 — a staggering amount for an American politician at any level, and more than he could cover with his $223,000 salary and extensive family obligations.
The top-end value of those tickets is impossible to determine because, as the mayor’s office admitted in a Los Angeles Times article June 12 by Phil Willon, Villaraigosa failed to keep track of his free tickets for the past five years. If true, there is no way to know whether he took single tickets or frequently received multiple tickets to also accommodate dates and family members.
If he did in fact take two or three tickets to events, the value could rise substantially, perhaps reaching or topping $100,000.
Without any records, the public can’t know how many tickets he took to events or what he was given in addition to the seating — such as free valet parking, expensive liquor and meals, all of which can add up to the price of a ticket. Those also must be reported under ethics laws…
The mayor’s $50,000 to $100,000-plus in freebies scooped up over five years is roughly the same amount as all 40 members of the California Senate accepted over an 18-month period…
The state and city prohibit elected officials from taking more than $420 in gifts annually from any single source
Make sure to read the whole thing.
Villaraigosa’s defense? He’s exempt from gift limitations because in each instance, apparently, he was attending to “official business.” We’re not sure if that will hold with the City Ethics Commission, but L.A. Weekly suggests the Commission would be advised to make an example out of Villaraigosa lest it set a horrible precedent for other politicians inclined to take advantage of their positions of power.
Also in the article, L.A. Weekly intimates the L.A. Times may have suppressed the release of information regarding gifts to Villaraigosa; the Times editorial page has defended Villaraigosa appearing at major city events for years.
In a followup, L.A. Weekly also published the full list of 80 events.
We’ll continue to track this story as news breaks on it.
Big props to the admittedly left but consistently honest L.A. Weekly for lowering the boom on a corrupt Democrat.
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