Victoria Rossi of El Paso Matters already reported on the multiple violations in the last campaign finance disclosure of incumbent city rep Claudia Lizette Rodriguez. In fact, Wesley Lawrence filed an ethics complaint with the Texas Ethics Commission on October 22.
Apparently there are serious issues with her current campaign financial disclosure as well:
1. At the top of page 2 she cites $47,175 in unitemized contributions. That is a gigantic figure. Unitemized contributions are normally small amounts of money, under $130, that do not need to be individually reported. How could she possibly arrive at $47,175?
2. If Rodriguez collected $47,175 in contributions, how did she spend the funds? She reports $28,887 in expenditures and that she has only $1,760 of cash on hand. There are five figures worth of funds that are missing from her disclosure.
3. On page 21 she reports an expenditure of $19,000 for “MAIL.” My understanding is that she only sent out a single mailer and I do not recall that it was gold-plated and inset with emeralds. That is a huge figure for a single mailer within one city district.
4. But here’s the clincher. On page 22 she reports $4,487 in expenditures for canvassers without reporting the individual payments. Incredibly, she lists her home address as the address of the payee. Did she pay herself $4,487 to block walk? You cannot make this up.
It is one thing for her to lie to her constituents about her votes to increase our property tax and extend Tommy’s contract without a salary cap (she voted later to cap it, sort of).
It is quite another for her to botch her financial disclosures (twice!) so that her opponents and the public at large do not have an accurate picture of her contributions and expenditures.
District 6 residents deserve better.
Max
PHOTO CREDIT: Elida S. Perez, El Paso Matters.