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What occurs in Vegas doesn’t keep in Vegas — not less than for politicians from the Metropolis of Angels.
Los Angeles Councilman John Lee received slapped Wednesday with an almost $140,000 high-quality by town’s Ethics Fee for improper meals and a 2017 journey to Las Vegas during which he allegedly dined on unique dishes, guzzled booze and accepted playing chips on the dime of shady businessmen in violation of metropolis guidelines, in keeping with a report by the Los Angeles Occasions.
The Ethics Fee’s unanimous 4-0 vote discovered that Lee — who on the time of the journey was a Metropolis Corridor staffer — broke metropolis reward legal guidelines and did not correctly disclose the freebies, which included a flowery meal at Aria Resort & On line casino’s Blossom restaurant and bottle service at Hakkasan nightclub.
Assemblymember Pilar Schiavo, a Democrat who represents elements of Southern California that embrace Lee’s district in northwest San Fernando Valley, referred to as on him to resign Thursday. She cited the Ethics Fee’s resolution as simply the most recent scandal to rock the Metropolis Council, from members saying racist feedback a few colleague’s son to a councilman and his spouse allegedly embezzling $800,000 meant for housing and public transit.
“Such abuse of public workplace erodes belief and harms not only one particular person, however the integrity of the establishment itself,” Schiavo stated in a press release to The Put up. “Based mostly on my expertise as each a colleague and a constituent, John Lee has did not display that he serves the folks of our neighborhood first, as an alternative exhibiting a sample of transactional and self-serving habits that undermines confidence in his judgment.”
Lee argued throughout a multi-day listening to in June that he barely ate through the meals and tried to pay his fair proportion, in keeping with the Occasions.
Ji-Lan Zang, an administrative regulation choose who oversaw the listening to, reportedly doubted a few of Lee’s claims and beneficial a high-quality of roughly $44,000 after concluding that he had violated 5 of the ten counts in opposition to him. However the Ethics Fee dominated this week that Lee violated all 10 counts, hitting him with a high-quality greater than thrice Zang’s proposed penalty.
Fee President Manjusha Kulkarni advocated for the utmost high-quality, stating that Lee’s lack of disclosures gave him an unfair benefit in his first two campaigns, in 2019 and 2020, in keeping with The Occasions. He was reelected to a different time period final 12 months.
Lee issued a scathing assertion Wednesday calling the high-quality “absurd” whereas additionally blasting the Ethics Fee’s course of as “wasteful and political.”
“The fee selecting and selecting which individuals to focus on primarily based on their political opinions is just not oversight — it’s retribution and a division working amok,” Lee stated.
He added that the fee had ignored the statute of limitations within the case, and he plans to enchantment the high-quality in court docket.
A cloud of suspicion has surrounded Lee and his former boss and District 12 predecessor, ex-Councilman Mitchell Englander, who additionally took half within the 2017 journey to Vegas and would later plead responsible in 2020 to mendacity to federal investigators about taking money and different items.
In the course of the Vegas journey in 2017, Englander accepted an envelope with $10,000 in money from a businessman in search of to make connections with actual property builders in Los Angeles, in keeping with the The Occasions.
Englander resigned from his seat on the Metropolis Council through the legal probe and agreed to pay an almost $80,000 ethics high-quality in 2023, the identical 12 months the Ethics Fee launched its investigation into Lee. He was reportedly investigated not just for the Vegas journey, but additionally for meals in downtown LA and Koreatown.
“Given the seriousness of those violations,” Schiavo stated, “his continued service on the Metropolis Council and influential committees is compromised and an moral chief would resign.”
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