The Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office can move forward with efforts to remove La Puente Councilmember David Argudo from office because of his overlapping position on a local water district’s board, the state Attorney General’s Office has determined.
Attorney General Rob Bonta gave local prosecutors permission on Jan. 26 to sue Argudo for allegedly holding two incompatible offices. If the lawsuit is successful, Argudo would be forced to forfeit his City Council position, as state law indicates an officeholder effectively must give up their first elected position upon taking an incompatible second.
Argudo was simultaneously elected by voters to the La Puente City Council and the La Puente Valley County Water District in November 2020, but his current council term began on Dec. 10, 2020, four days before he was sworn in at the water board.
Under state law, two elected offices are incompatible if there is even the potential of a clash of duties or loyalties, according to the attorney general’s opinion. In this case, the water district services residents in La Puente and Argudo could “face a conflict between the interests of the Water District in ensuring adequate revenues and the interests of the City and its residents in minimizing water costs,” according to the opinion written by Deputy Attorney General Karim J. Kentfield.
‘Overlapping authority’
“A conflict could also arise if the City and the Water District negotiated a contract or acted in areas of overlapping authority,” Kentfield wrote.
Though the attorney general did not make a determination whether Argudo’s offices are actually incompatible, the state agency found there was sufficient evidence to permit the District Attorney’s Office to raise the question in court.
The District Attorney’s Office did not respond to requests for comment.
Argudo reportedly was paid $42,943 in pay and benefits as a councilmember in 2021, according to Transparent California, a public pay database. La Puente Valley County Water District board members received an average total compensation of $16,647 that same year, the State Controller’s Office reported.
‘Politically motivated’
In an interview, Argudo said he believed the effort to remove him from office is a result of recent clashes with other elected officials, particularly with La Puente Mayor Charles Klinakis. He said he has attempted to call Klinakis out at council meetings for using a city logo on campaign materials, he said.
“I am confident this is all politically motivated and retaliatory,” Argudo said. “It stems from the mayor trying to hamstring me and block transparency.”
The issue of Argudo’s potentially incompatible offices was first brought up by a resident during a council meeting shortly after the 2020 election, according to both Klinakis and Argudo.
Klinakis said he was aware at the time that a formal complaint had been filed by one of Argudo’s opponents in the 2020 water board election, so he mentioned as much during the meeting. He denied having any involvement in the matter himself and said he decided to stay out of it after learning the District Attorney’s Office already was looking at it.
“Sooner or later, I figured they would do something about it,” he said.
Argudo said he is currently researching case law and has not made a final decision about his next steps.
“At this time, we have to go through a judicial process and let a jury of my peers decide whether I’m holding an incompatible office,” he said.
Conflicts rare
He does not believe the offices are incompatible.
“On the water board that I sit on, I vote on about 1,500 actions in a year,” Argudo said. “In those years, I’ve had to recuse myself maybe once.”
In that instance, Argudo said he recused himself when a nonprofit agency, chosen by La Puente to receive grant funds to provide youth employment, wanted to work with the water district to create some of those job opportunities.
“I did not participate because I had already been a part of the process of getting the grant and approving the vendors on the city side,” he said.
Argudo said his water board district includes only a small portion of La Puente, parts of unincorporated L.A. County and the City of Industry. Most of La Puente receives its water from Suburban Water Systems, he said.
Similar cases cited
Though the District Attorney’s Office has successfully used similar lawsuits to remove officeholders in the past, Argudo said those cases “were under different circumstances and at different agencies with different variables.”
Argudo pointed to a 2005 case against then-Baldwin Park Unified School District board member Blanca Rubio, filed on behalf of another school board member, where a jury ultimately determined that she could sit on both the school board and a local water board simultaneously.
Despite winning, Rubio chose not to run for re-election to the water board, in part due to the enactment of Senate Bill 274 that same year, according to a news report at the time.
SB 274 codified the common law doctrine of incompatible offices and established the standards for making such a determination.
Since then, others have faced scrutiny for holding two offices, though many have chosen to voluntarily step down from one position to avoid either public backlash or lengthy court battles.
In 2016, the D.A.’s Office sued then-Carson Mayor Albert Robles for serving on both the Carson City Council and the Water Replenishment District of Southern California’s’s board, and a judge agreed two years later to remove him from the water board.
Robles attempted to appeal the decision, but the courts upheld the earlier ruling in 2020.
In 2018, Maywood Councilmember Sergio Calderon agreed to step down from the council before an incompatible office lawsuit against him by prosecutors went to trial. Calderon also served on WRD’s board.
Calderon had previously resigned from the Maywood council in 2008 for the same reason.
In both Calderon and Robles’ cases, prosecutors believed the council and water board positions were incompatible because of overlapping territory, duties and responsibilities.
