Report: Villaraigosa got 50K in tickets By: Andy Barr June 25, 2010 07:37 AM EDT Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has reportedly accepted tickets to 80 events over the last 5 years for which he did not pay or report as gifts.
The story was first reported by L.A. Weekly on Thursday and shows that the mayor’s public schedule says he attended the events, but that he did not list having paid for them or having accepted them as gifts in financial disclosures.
Amid questions over his having attended the events – only one of which Villaraigosa disclosed – the mayor’s office sent a letter listing the prices, if known, of the tickets he received.
A conservative estimate of the value of the tickets Villaraigosa has received totals $50,000, though the mayor’s office says that many of the ticket prices were unknown.
The mayor’s office noted in its letter that since Villaraigosa did not keep records of which events he attended, it is impossible to know how many of the free tickets he actually used.
The L.A. Weekly estimates that the value of the tickets could be as high as $100,000.
If accurate, the sum Villaraigosa collected roughly equals that reported by all of California’s 40 state senators over the same period combined.
The tickets in the letter date back to November 2, 2005 when the mayor accepted tickets valued at up to $2,100 to see the Los Angeles Lakers play the Phoenix Suns.
Nine other tickets to Lakers games costing more than $2,000 each are listed in the letter, some of which are identified as “courtside.”
Among the other pricey tickets the mayor accepted are $4,200 tickets to the 2006, 2007, 2009 and 2010 Academy Awards.
Villaraigosa also received tickets estimated to cost $5,000 to the American Idol finale show in May, though his office noted that the tickets were not available to the public and were obtained through a “scalper.”
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