Oakland vice mayor fined for ethics violation, didn’t report conflict of interest prior to vote

by Keith Burbank, Bay City News December 19, 2022December 16, 2022

Oakland Vice Mayor Rebecca Kaplan appears in an undated campaign photo. The city's Public Ethics Commission fined Kaplan $19,000 for failing to disclose a potential conflict of interest when she voted on a development project that could potentially benefit property values for a condominium she owns adjacent to the project site. (Photo from Rebecca Kaplan campaign via Bay City News)

Oakland Vice Mayor Rebecca Kaplan has been fined $19,000 by the city’s Public Ethics Commission following conflict of interest allegations and accusations she failed to report her part ownership in a condominium in the city.

Public ethics commissioners on Wednesday voted 5-0 in favor of imposing the fine against Kaplan who admitted to the wrongdoing, but said it was inadvertent.

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Keith Burbank, Bay City News

Keith Burbank is currently a fulltime reporter covering Alameda County and Oakland news for Bay City News. He has also worked on the Data Points project for Local News Matters, finding trends and stories about the region through data. In 2019, he was a California Fellow at the USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism, producing a series about homeless deaths in Santa Clara County. He worked as a swing shift editor for the newswire for several years as well. Outside of journalism, Keith enjoys computer programming, math, economics and music.

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