Assemblyman Pays $14,000 Fine for Campaign Finance Violations

A Los Angeles County assemblyman has agreed to pay a $14,000 fine for failing to report tens of thousands of dollars of campaign loans and expenditures.

Robert Pacheco, a Republican who represents suburbs east of Los Angeles, agreed to the settlement -- the maximum fine -- after acknowledging seven violations of state campaign disclosure laws during his 1998 campaign for the Assembly. Pacheco, an attorney, called the violations “a matter of oversight and ignorance on my part.”

“It was my first legislative race, and we just didn’t do some things that we needed to do timely or properly,” he said.

According to the settlement reached last month with the Fair Political Practices Commission, Pacheco (R-Walnut) failed to disclose a $21,000 loan to himself. He also missed a deadline to report $43,795 in campaign expenditures and failed to disclose that he spent $74,663 on the campaign from the bank accounts of a business he owns, Western Hardware Co.

California law requires political candidates to regularly report the money they collect from donors as well as to detail how they spend it.

Pacheco said he paid the $14,000 fine with campaign funds, not out of his own pocket.

According to the political watchdog commission, Pacheco’s wife, Gayle, also an attorney, handled her husband’s campaign finances in 1998.

“Ms. Pacheco stated that the violations disclosed in the audit were unintentional, but the bottom line was that they were her fault,” states a summary of the FPPC’s case against Pacheco.

When Pacheco learned in 1999 that his campaign finances were being audited by the state Franchise Tax Board, he sought help from a certified public accountant at Trimble Morin & Co.

According to an account written by FPPC investigators, that accountant, Dana Oldenburg, called the Pacheco campaign filings “just a nightmare.”

“She added that whenever [the Committee to Elect Bob Pacheco to State Assembly] ran out of money, they just used a credit card, and they just didn’t understand the rules,” according to an affidavit filed in the FPPC case.

The political watchdog agency called Pacheco’s violations “substantial and numerous” and noted that at the time they were committed, he was serving on the Walnut City Council and should have been familiar with state disclosure requirements.

“I believe in accepting responsibility for what you do,” said Pacheco. “I didn’t give them a big fight over that.”

The five-member bipartisan commission is scheduled to vote on approval of the settlement with Pacheco next Thursday.