Was Richard Alarcon rightly convicted for lying about where he lives?

Home, as it turns out, is where the Chihuahuas are.

Jurors this week said they were persuaded to convict former Los Angeles City Councilman Richard Alarcon and his wife, Flora Montes de Oca Alarcon, of lying about where they lived in the San Fernando Valley after hearing evidence about wildly disparate utility bills at the family’s two homes.

Over a two-year period, power and water use at the Panorama City home the Alarcons claimed to live in were nil. But it was much higher — at least a hundredfold — at the Sun Valley house they said was not their real domicile. So either the Alarcons were model conservationists. Or, as the jury concluded, they were liars.

I had a feeling they were going down when I read that a city investigator, who had both homes under surveillance, noted that the couple’s Chihuahuas were present at the larger, nicer Sun Valley home.

Also when neighbors told my colleague David Zahniser back in 2010 when Alarcon was first under investigation that the Panorama City house had appeared vacant for three years, that no one put out the trash cans or mowed the lawn.

Also when I read that a mentally ill man had broken in to the Panorama City house, changed the locks and threw out household possessions. (Do squatters generally break into inhabited homes?)

Also when I read that the Alarcons had blueprints for razing the Panorama City home and turning it into condos.

Also when former Los Angeles City Councilwoman Wendy Greuel testified that Alarcon had once asked her to scoot the western boundary of her council district a little bit east so that Alarcon’s bigger, nicer Sun Valley home could be in his district.

I could go on, but you get the point: Richard Alarcon, 60, a veteran politician who has served five terms on the Los Angeles City Council and two terms in the California legislature, let his political ambitions obscure his better judgment.

His story about temporarily living in the nicer Sun Valley home while he slowly and personally renovated the smaller, less attractive home in Panorama City never did pass the smell test.

The couple now faces the possibility of serious prison time — five years for him, four years for her — because they flouted the law in order to advance his political career.

Should it matter that he lived in the 2nd Los Angeles City Council District while representing the 7th? After all, the two homes were only five miles apart, an arguably minuscule distance in a city the size of Los Angeles, where council district boundaries make no particular geographic sense and look like something Dr. Frankenstein might have stitched together on a bad day.

Yes, it should matter.

A lawmaker who breaks the law in order to feed his political ambitions then tries to cover up his wrongdoing with stories that don’t add up has violated the public’s trust and must pay the price.

If his district was not good enough for his Chihuahuas, he had no business representing its citizens.

I will never lie on Twitter or anywhere else: @robinabcarian