NEW DISCREPANCIES FOR CANDIDATE

S.D. City Council hopeful Barrios failed to report $86K in income on form

SAN DIEGO

A candidate for San Diego City Council who already is under criminal investigation by local prosecutors for his prior handling of campaign funds initially failed to report more than $85,000 in revenue he received last year, public records show.

Kelvin Barrios, the District 9 council hopeful, at first disclosed no income on his Statement of Economic Interest. Called a Form 700, it’s a mandated filing designed to alert voters to where a candidate or public official collects an annual salary or other earnings.

Barrios signed his Form 700 on Dec. 5, 2019. The one-page document includes a check mark in a box labeled “None — No reportable interests on any schedule.”

On Tuesday, Barrios amended his filing, one day after The San Diego Union-tribune asked him about discrepancies between it and a separate disclosure submitted by his employer, a local labor union.

According to a federally mandated disclosure by the San Diego office of the Laborers International Union of North America, LIUNA Local No. 89, Barrios was paid $86,810 in 2019 for working as a director of community outreach. Just over $78,000 of that was reported as salary; about $8,400 was listed as “disbursements for official business.”

A Barrios campaign spokesman said the state disclosures were filled out incorrectly by mistake.

“As soon as Kelvin and his campaign attorney realized the discrepancy, they corrected it,” spokesman Tony Manolatos said.

It was the second time in three weeks that Barrios, a former staffer to Council President Georgette Gómez, has made changes to his required disclosures.

On Aug. 31, Barrios amended his previous Statement of Economic Interest to reflect that he was employed by both the city and the union for most of a week early last year. He said the city asked him to stay so he could help train his successor.

“No conflicts arose during this brief period,” Barrios wrote in a footnote.

The amendment last month acknowledges a three-day overlap between his job working for Gómez and his position as an union outreach director. It also said he received less than $1,000 in revenue from the union in 2019 — and no city income for the year.

The re-amended document Barrios submitted Tuesday shows revenue from the union of up to $100,000 for the year and payments from the city of up to $10,000.

Form 700s are signed under penalty of perjury, meaning it is a crime to knowingly misrepresent income, assets or other information. Generally, there is no fine or penalty for amending incorrect forms.

Jay Wierenga of the California Fair Political Practices Commission said the annual disclosures are an important part of the political process. Candidates and public officials are expected to file the forms accurately — or get help if they need it, he said.

“Statements of Economic Interest (Form 700s) are there for transparency, so the public can determine and see that their public officials are acting in the best interest of the public, not themselves,” Wierenga said by email.

Last month, Barrios publicly apologized for issuing false statements about previous campaign activities.

In November the commission fined Barrios more than $4,000 after he admitted spending almost $8,000 in political donations on food, clothing and other personal expenses.

Last month, the Uniontribune reported that Barrios was the subject of a criminal investigation into 29 transactions, including two dozen he made where money from a political committee he controlled between 2015 and 2017 went into his personal checking account.

Those allegations, which are separate from the Fair Political Practices Commission findings Barrios admitted to last year, also are under review by the ethics committee of the San Diego County Democratic Party.

The candidate later issued a statement saying that all of the independent reviews into his use of political donations had been cleared — a representation that was later rejected by prosecutors and local Democratic leaders.

The District Attorney’s Office took the unusual step of confirming that an investigation into Barrios had not been closed.

“While we cannot comment on, nor confirm the existence of a potential investigation, we can state that our office did not dismiss a criminal complaint or clear anyone of any wrongdoing in this matter,” spokesman Steve Walker said in an August email.

Barrios said later that his assertions that the reviews were all closed were made in error. Gómez suspended her political endorsement days after the published report.

Candidate Sean Elo, who is challenging Barrios in the runoff election to succeed Gómez, said his opponent appears to believe he is above the law.

“Under penalty of perjury, Barrios claimed he received no income at all in 2019, but the truth is that he received tens of thousands in payments from the very same special interest group that is now pouring hundreds of thousands of dollars into buying him a seat on the City Council,” Elo said.

The dearth of revenue Barrios reported in 2019 also raises questions about a separate filing he submitted last weekend.

According to his campaign, Barrios contributed $21,000 to his election effort in separate donations of $15,000 and $6,000. The candidate declined to explain how he accumulated that money.

“The money he gave to the campaign was reported correctly, and we’re not discussing fundraising strategy beyond that,” Manolatos said.

District 9 stretches from Kensington and the College Area south to the communities of City Heights, Mountain View and Southcrest.