For Immediate Release: April 18, 2017
The Ethics Commission approved three stipulated orders at its meeting today, imposing fines totaling $54,500. The orders touched on the City’s campaign finance and governmental ethics laws.
Two of the cases involved campaign finance violations during the 2013 election cycle. In the first case, Dr. Feliciano Serrano (Serrano) was fined $15,000 for violating the City’s laws regarding independent expenditure communications. Serrano spent over $374,500 on five independent expenditure communications supporting Wendy Greuel’s 2013 campaign for mayor. He failed to include required disclaimer language in two communications, failed to file scripts for two communications, and failed to maintain proper records to support two communications.
In the second case, Leeor Maciborski (Maciborski), a real estate investor and managing partner of multiple limited liability companies (LLCs), caused 13 LLCs to contribute to Mitch O’Farrell’s City Council campaign. Under City law, those contributions resulted in five aggregated contributions that exceeded the per-person contribution limit. Maciborski was fined $17,000 for the five excess contributions and for causing the LLCs to violate the campaign finance laws.
In the third case, former City employee Jimmy Blackman (Blackman) was fined $22,500 for violating the City’s revolving door restrictions. Less than one year after departing City service, Blackman accepted compensation from the United Firefighters of Los Angeles City Local 112 to advocate on its behalf before a number of City officials in an attempt to influence City action.
“The campaign finance and governmental ethics laws are designed to protect the integrity of the City’s elections and decision making processes. Today, the Ethics Commission upheld those goals by holding violators accountable,” said Sergio Perez, Director of Enforcement. In a stipulated order, the respondent must admit to engaging in the conduct that violated the law. All fines imposed by the Ethics Commission are paid to the City’s general fund. Copies of enforcement actions and related decisions and orders are available at ethics.lacity.org.
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The Ethics Commission was created by Los Angeles voters in 1990 to impartially administer and enforce the City’s governmental ethics, campaign financing, and lobbying laws.