{"id":17725,"date":"2025-10-22T12:46:06","date_gmt":"2025-10-22T12:46:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/17725\/"},"modified":"2025-10-22T12:46:06","modified_gmt":"2025-10-22T12:46:06","slug":"letters-to-the-editor-ethics-fine-for-city-council-candidate-highlights-an-absurd-situation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/17725\/","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>To the editor: 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":2,"featured_media":17726,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[15156,15153,15155,2072,15154,7172,13533,6195,48,52,51,1838,13954,47,50,49,63,15159,15157,15158,4610],"class_list":["post-17725","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-absurd-situation","tag-city-council-candidate","tag-consulting","tag-editor","tag-ethic","tag-firm","tag-jose-ugarte","tag-kind","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-letter","tag-lobbying","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-los-angeles-times","tag-nerve","tag-right","tag-sister","tag-thing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17725","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17725"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17725\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17726"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17725"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17725"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17725"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}