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Clerical Error Accounts for Disclosure Discrepancy*

LA School Report | February 8, 2013



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LA School Report has learned that the Los Angeles City Ethics Commission is at fault in an election disclosure discrepancy reported here earlier today. According to the Commission, due to human error, the City Ethics site did not make public independent expenditures (IEs) made by the teachers union political arm, UTLA-PACE, for LAUSD school board candidates.

Late today, a city official from the Ethics Commission called LA School Report to say that UTLA-PACE had in fact disclosed its IE spending to the Commission on time, but due to a clerical error, the paperwork was not filed properly at the Commission.

According to election disclosure laws an independent expenditure committee must report spending made on behalf of candidates within 24 hours, and requires the information is made public on the City Ethics website.

How much money has UTLA-PACE spent to help candidates? All we know for sure is that the numbers reported today by the LA Times (read here), and reported on our site (read here) last week are rendered inaccurate. Beyond that, we’ll have to wait and see.

*Update: An earlier version of this post directly quoted the Ethics Commission when it should have been a paraphrase; the post has been corrected.

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