Orange County Board of Education Trustee Mari Barke failed to report millions of dollars in income and assets over a five-year period, an Orange County Superior Court judge said in a proposed statement of decision.
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Judge H. Shaina Colover said Barke should pay $81,100 in civil penalties, plus attorneys’ fees, for not properly disclosing her income and assets as elected officials and public employees are required. However, attorneys for Barke and Lynne Riddle, a former U.S. Bankruptcy Court judge who made the complaint about the trustee’s finances, have 15 days from the July 13 proposed statement of decision to file any objections.
Barke, from 2018 to 2023, reported only $99 of income, investments, business positions and gifts, according to the lawsuit brought by Riddle.
Colover, in the proposed statement of decision, said Barke failed to report a shared income with her then-husband of more than $100,000 annually. Additionally, the proposed decision said Barke did not report interests in business valued at over $1 million; property valued at over $1 million; personal income of $10,000 to $100,000 annually from the California Policy Center, a conservative Tustin-based think tank; and a “previously undisclosed $750 gift from 2021 from Pepperdine University.”
Barke, in a statement, said she was “very disappointed” in Colover’s proposed decision and plans to submit an objection.
“If the judge’s final decision follows this logic, you can be absolutely certain that we will appeal,” she said.
Elected officials and public employees are required to disclose their income and assets on statements of economic interest filings, called a Form 700. The idea is to ensure officials are making decisions in their constituents’ best interests, rather than purely for financial gain, and to be transparent about any potential conflicts of interest.
Officials are required to file these forms with the Fair Political Practices Commission in accordance with the California Political Reform Act.
According to the proposed decision, Riddle filed a sworn request to the Orange County District Attorney in February 2023 “requesting civil enforcement” for alleged California Political Reform Act violations. Riddle also filed a sworn complaint with the FPPC at that time “alleging that (Barke) failed to disclose required interests.”
Under state law, the district attorney’s office had 120 days to either file an action or decline to do so. After the 120-day period lapsed, Riddle filed a civil complaint against Barke in August 2023.
In September, the FPPC proposed a settlement which found Barke liable on 16 counts and requested a total payment of $3,200, $200 for each violation, .
Barke agreed to that settlement, but the matter “came on regularly for bench trial” before Colover in February, during which Barke said she relied on the advice from her now ex-husband, Dr. Jeffrey Barke, who had allegedly told her she should “only disclose her economic interests if they conflict” with the OCBE, according to the proposed decision.
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Colover said, in the proposed decision, this reliance was not only wrong and “objectively unreasonable,” but that it “is incomprehensible that anyone with (Barke’s) sophistication would rely on such a statement.”
“The Court finds the violations were at minimum reckless,” Colover said. “(Barke) did not simply fail to disclose millions of dollars of economic interests; she failed to engage in even the most minimal diligence in completing her Form 700s.”
Barke provided a statement from her attorney, Mark Rosen, who said the case was “a vendetta” against the OCBE trustee. He could not be reached immediately for comment on Monday, by phone or email, to explain further.
OCBE President Tim Shaw said he believes Barke made an “honest mistake” that she would have corrected had she known. But the penalties proposed went unnecessarily overboard, Shaw said in a phone interview on Monday.
“The United States Constitution provides for the fact that there should not be excessive fines imposed,” Shaw said, citing the Eighth Amendment. “We’re getting into wildly disproportionate punishments considering what was done initially.”
“I do not dissent failure to disclose your income properly. She should have. I believe in transparency … she got fined appropriately by the FPPC for it, but just to pile on in this lawfare situation is really overkill, in my view,” said Shaw.
While the $3,200 in penalties Barke accrued through the FPPC civil complaint did not “fully satisfy the remedial and deterrent purposes of the PRA,” the proposed statement of decision said, that amount “should be credited” against the penalties she determined last week.
That means, according to the proposed decision, Barke should be penalized $5,000 for each Form 700 violation for a total of $76,800 — which is $80,000 for the 16 violations, minus the $3,200 credit — to “deter future violations” of the PRA by elected officials. That proposed decision also included an additional penalty of $5,000 since Barke failed to correct her disclosures long enough to warrant “an independent civil penalty,” bringing the total to $81,800.
Riddle, in a statement, said the proposed decision “vindicates the public’s right to know what their elected officials are doing.”
“Financial interest disclosures are critical to the public,” said Riddle. “When elected officials flout their disclosure obligations like this, it undermines (the) public’s right to honest and ethical government.”
Barke was first elected in 2018 to represent OCBE’s second district, which encompasses Cypress, Huntington Beach, La Palma, Los Alamitos, Rossmoor, Seal Beach, Stanton, Sunset Beach, Westminster and portions of Costa Mesa, Fountain Valley and Garden Grove.
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