Ethics Commission says Jackie Toledo’s financial disclosures incorrect

State Rep. Jackie Toledo, R-Tampa, has admitted to irregularities in two of her personal financial disclosures following a complaint and investigation by the state Commission on Ethics.

Toledo said the mistakes on her disclosure forms were inadvertent, caused in part by financial fallout from her divorce.

Because Toledo is a sitting state House member, the penalties, if any, will be decided by House Speaker Chris Sprowls, R-Palm Harbor, a political ally of Toledo who was listed as honorary host for her 2022 re-election campaign kickoff Thursday.

A complaint about Toledo’s financial disclosures was filed in October 2020 by Tallahassee lawyer Max Solomon, during Toledo’s re-election campaign that year against Democrat Julie Jenkins.

Solomon, a Democrat, said at the time he wasn’t working with Jenkins or the Democratic Party, but that he had been in contact with Democratic political operatives.

Ethics Commission investigator Robert Malone upheld two accusations from the complaint:

• On her 2017 disclosure form, Toledo failed to report as income her profits from the $540,000 sale of a house she and her former husband owned.
• On her 2018 form, Toledo said her assets would be listed in a sheet attached to the form, but there wasn’t one.

According to the investigator’s report, Toledo said she prepared the attachment and couldn’t explain why it was missing, and acknowledged that reporting the profits from the house sale “slipped her mind.” She has now amended both forms.

The investigation didn’t cover another allegation, that Toledo listed two different values in different places on her 2019 form for household contents and personal effects, totaling $440,000.

Why that matters, according to the complaint: Some types of debts aren’t required to be reported on the financial disclosure forms, including credit card debt and unpaid taxes. But because of the way net worth is calculated on the form, it’s possible to calculate the amount of undisclosed debt.

If both the figures for Toledo’s household goods and personal effects are accurate, the complaint notes, it would mean she had around $240,000 in undisclosed debt, possibly credit card debt.

Toledo reported only $36,646.12 income that year.

Former Ethics Commission Executive Director Christopher Anderson III ruled that allegation didn’t amount to an actual allegation of an ethics law violation and shouldn’t be investigated.

Malone denied a fourth allegation, that Toledo reported income in 2019 from a corporation that didn’t appear to exist in state records. He found the company name recorded instead as a fictitious name for Toledo’s self-employed engineering work.

Neither Solomon nor Toledo responded to phone and email requests for comment.

A Sprowls spokesman said his office hadn’t received the referral from the Ethics Commission as of deadline for this column, but that it “will be handled in accordance with Florida House Rules,” referring to Rule 18.

That rule doesn’t appear to specify penalties in such cases.

Contact William March at wemarch@gmail.com.