LOS ANGELES – A council aide to Los Angeles City Councilman Curren Price is seeking to settle ethics violations for failure to disclose income received from his consulting business.
Jose Ugarte will be fined $17,500 by the City’s Ethics Commission failure to disclose nearly $400,000 in income from his consulting business.
According to the filing disclosed on the City’s Ethics Commission website:
On July 2, 2013, Ugarte became a Council Aide III for Curren Price, the representative on the City Council for Council District (CD) 9. Ugarte left City service on November 1, 2019, when he was a Council Aide IV, but returned to CD 9 as a Council Aide VII on May 20, 2021.
On July 11, 2018, Ugarte registered Ugarte and Associates (UA), a limited liability company, with the California Secretary of State and identified the business as “consulting.” Ugarte and his sister equally co-own UA but, in accordance with their profit sharing agreement, all UA income identified below is attributed solely to Ugarte.
UA’s website stated that “Ugarte & Associates is a lobbying, and political consulting firm based out of Southern California” and that “Our clients have been able to win a range of contracts for public services that include employee benefits, full-scale facilities management through strategic planning and intensive stakeholder engagement.”
“In addition to his consulting practice, Ugarte is involved with and sits on several community organization boards.” UA started doing business in the jurisdiction of the City in 2018 and
continues to do so.
When Ugarte returned to City service in May 2021, he was required to file an assuming office Form 700 by June 19. He did not do this. Instead, he filed his assuming office Form 700 285 days late on March 31, 2022.
Ugarte did file annual Form 700s for the 2021, 2022, and 2023 reporting periods. However, on all of these filings, Ugarte stated that he had no reportable interests of any kind, including business entities. He signed each of these Form 700s under penalty of perjury.
In addition, for the 2021 assuming office and 2022 annual filings, Ugarte failed to disclose the clients who paid UA $10,000 or more during the reporting period. During the 2021 assuming office reporting period, UA received and Ugarte was required to disclose gross income of $12,000 from the corporation CRCD Enterprises. During the 2022 annual reporting period, UA received and Ugarte was required to disclose the following gross income (although his net income from these sources was a total of $14,000):
- $128,050.27 from the campaign committee “Jimmy Gomez for Congress”.
- $222,000 from the independent expenditure committee “Communities United to Re-
Elect Mitch O’Farrell for City Council 2022, Sponsored by Equality California”. - $75,000 from the independent expenditure committee “First Responders in Support of
Time McOsker for City Council 2022, Sponsored by the LA County Federation of
Labor, AFL-CIO”. - $40,000 from the independent expenditure committee “Angelenos United for Bass for
Mayor 2022, Sponsored by Laborers International Union of North America Local 300.”
The Ethics Commission imposed a $17,500 fine due to Ugarte’s cooperation with the commission.
According to the Los Angeles Sentinel, Ugarte is considered the “frontrunner” to succeed Price as the next Councilman for District 9.
Price was indicted in June 2023 for failure to properly disclose his wife’s income on his annual Form 700 statements.
Is this a pattern in that office?
Source: https://ethics.lacity.gov/pdf/agenda/2025/October/20251022-Item8-Stipulation-Ugarte.pdf