Lupe Arellano owes the city at least $700 for overdue campaign
paperwork
GILROY – Mayoral hopeful Lupe Arellano is under pressure from the city and the state’s Fair Political Practices Commission over failing to disclose her campaign finances for the past two years.
Arellano will meet with City Clerk Rhonda Pellin and City Treasurer Michael Dorn on Wednesday to review campaign contribution paperwork due since summer 2001. If she completes and returns the forms by Friday, Arellano will owe the city $700 in late fees. If she doesn’t, Arellano will owe $900, face potential sanctions by the FPPC and risk losing credibility with voters just two-and-a-half months before the election.
In an interview Monday, Arellano said she had trouble tracking certain checks that had gone into and out of her City Council and mayoral campaign funds.
“Some checks were written to return money (to donors), and I didn’t file paperwork with that,” Arellano said. “You can’t just return money, and I didn’t realize that.”
Arellano called her paperwork lapse a “lengthy process” and said it should not impact the way voters view her. The longtime Gilroyan said she allowed the fines to accumulate because she didn’t want to report incorrect information.
“People are going to believe what they want to believe, but when you want to do something correctly, sometimes it takes time to do it correctly,” Arellano said. “I most definitely am not hiding anything. I was born and raised here, so there is nothing I can really hide.”
Arellano had been working recently with the FPPC to rectify the situation but for several months did not return phone calls from the city.
“I’ve taken the form to her home and volunteered to assist in helping to complete those forms,” Pellin said. “I’m required to have the forms in these files. That’s my duty as a filing official. When I don’t have those forms, I am out of compliance.”
Pellin says Arellano could have avoided the fines if she had filed the appropriate paperwork to close out her city council and mayor campaign committees. Arellano, who in 2001 pledged to run for a seat on the city dais, never closed either of her campaign committees.
Adding to Arellano’s penalty total, by $100, was her failure to file conflict of interest paperwork. Elected officials are required to make public their financial holdings after being elected to office. Officials must update these records annually while in office and once when they leave office. Arellano’s final statement was the one never turned in.
Arellano said she did not file the conflict of interest form because she was waiting to settle the campaign contribution paperwork. She wanted to turn in everything together.
“When the one form couldn’t be done right, I held back on submitting the other,” Arellano said.
Another mayoral candidate responded to questions over her voting history Monday.
First-time political candidate Mary Hohenbrink, who has been living in Gilroy since 1997, had to register to vote to be eligible to run for Gilroy mayor.
After she announced her mayoral bid, Hohenbrink told a Dispatch reporter she had been voting absentee in recent elections in Los Angeles County since she, for a time, owned property there and wanted say on local issues.
The claims proved false, based on records from the Los Angeles County Registrar of Voters. On Monday, she admitted she has not voted since, likely, the 1998 gubernatorial election. Hohenbrink has not been registered to vote since 1999, she said.
Hohenbrink characterized the inaccuracy as an honest mistake.
“I thought I did vote absentee at one point,” Hohenbrink said. “Sometimes your memory fails you when you’re trying to remember things over the last few years.”
Hohenbrink said she is not worried voters may think she is not a serious candidate just because she didn’t vote.
“There are life circumstances that sometimes prevent you from doing things you want to do. There’s work, there’s putting kids in kindergarten,” Hohenbrink said.
“I still had my opinions and my dinner table discussions, but I didn’t get to vote on them all the time.”
