L.A.’s Villaraigosa paid more after leaving office
The consulting business has been very lucrative for Democratic gubernatorial hopeful Antonio Villaraigosa, who saw his gross income soar from $202,000 in 2012, his last full year as mayor of Los Angeles, to more than $1.4 million in 2016.
Villaraigosa made his tax returns available to reporters for about two hours Tuesday at the San Francisco office of his campaign consultant, Eric Jaye. All four of the main Democratic candidates to replace termedout Gov. Jerry Brown have now made their taxes public.
In Villaraigosa’s case, however, there are still questions remaining about where his money has come from. While the former mayor’s 2013 federal tax return named his consulting clients and listed exactly how much money he received from each of them, a change in accounting practices meant those names and amounts did not show up in more recent years.
While campaign officials handed out what they said was a complete list of clients for those other years, they
declined to say how much those clients had paid Villaraigosa. That information will be included in the Statement of Economic Interests Form 700 all California candidates must file.
“From 2013 to 2014, the mayor’s (limited liability company) went from a single-member LLC to a multimember LLC because he added his children to the LLC,” Michelle Jeung, a spokesman for the campaign, said in an email. “Because of the change the mayor made to include his children as shareholders in the LLC, he was no longer required to report his clients on his individual tax return, which is why we provided a list of his clients and the dates he worked for them. Details of his client income will also be reported on his Form 700 when he files for office next year.”
That form, however, reports income only in broad ranges, such as $2,000 to $10,000 or $10,001 to $100,000. And since Villaraigosa is not currently a public official, he doesn’t have to file this economic interest form until March 9, the last day anyone can file to run for governor.
In 2013, for example, Villaraigosa reported $519,000 in business income, including $162,500 from Herbalife International, a health supplement company; $150,000 from Banc of California; and $100,000 from Pro Tour Memorabilia. He also received $68,750 for doing “strategic consulting” for Daniel Edelman, a national public relations firm, and $90,800 from speeches.
But though Villaraigosa’s client list — and his income — grew over the next three years, there’s no record of how much any of those clients paid. Instead, his returns only list overall “pass through” income of about $1.2 million in 2014, $1 million in 2015 and $1.1 million in 2016.
Though campaign officials said Villaraigosa has not shut down his consulting business, AltaMed, a community health-care company, now is his only listed client.
Some of Villaraigosa’s clients could become issues in the governor’s race. Herbalife, a multilevel marketing company that did much of its business with the Latino community, was forced to pay a record $200 million to nearly 350,000 people the Federal Trade Commission said were “victimized by Herbalife’s deceptive earning claims” when they signed up to sell the company’s supplements.
In 2014, Villaraigosa also worked as a consultant for Cadiz, a company that wants to pump groundwater from the Mojave Desert to Los Angeles to supply an estimated 400,000 residents there. It’s a plan that’s opposed by Sen. Dianne Feinstein and California environmentalists.
Since 2013, Villaraigosa has been receiving a pension for his eight years as mayor and his two years on the Los Angeles City Council. That pension brought him $98,631 in 2016. Other income included $94,665 in 2015 and $49,496 in 2016 for teaching a class in politics at the University of Southern California.
Villaraigosa’s charita- ble giving hasn’t matched his fast-growing income. While making about $189,000 as mayor of Los Angeles, Villaraigosa reported no charitable contributions in 2011 or 2012 and did not itemize deductions in 2013.
Last year, he gave $8,000 to charity on adjusted gross income of $1.3 million, down from $11,680 in contributions in 2015 and $10,255 in 2014, years when he also earned about $1.3 million in adjusted gross income.
By contrast, Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom gave about $63,000 to charity in 2015 on adjusted gross income of $1.7 million. In 2016, Delaine Eastin, former state schools chief, gave $16,408 on taxable income of $170,520. State Treasurer John Chiang, another Democratic candidate for governor, has given an average of about $3,600 to charity each year over the past six years, and had an annual income of about $185,000 over that same period.
A spokeswoman for Villaraigosa’s campaign said the former mayor has given more than money to charities over the years.
Villaraigosa “has worked consistently over the years in a volunteer capacity for numerous charitable causes and organizations,” Jeung said in a statement.
Although Brown refused to release his tax returns in either the 2010 or 2014 elections, that’s not an option for Democrats now, since party leaders continue to attack President Trump, a billionaire developer, for declining to make any of his tax records public.
Neither of the two leading GOP candidates for governor, businessman John Cox and Orange County Assemblyman Travis Allen, have yet made their tax returns public.