Voice of OC75%
Judge Calls Out OC Education Trustee For Failing to Report Millions in Income 54%
By Noah Biesiada76%
7/21/2026, 3:00:00 PM
BS Summary: This article contains 24 faulty reasoning types, including Negativity Bias, Confirmation Bias, and Appeal to Authority, with Self-Serving Bias as the most egregious example at 24% saturation with 211 hits. Analysis detected 1,211 faulty-reasoning hits from 881 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 52.2% and a BS Rank of 54% (10,165 of 21,887 articles). This article is worse (more manipulative) than 53.60% of the article peer group.
Mari Barke, member of the OC Board of Education, at the meeting on June 18, 2024.
Credit: ERIKA TAYLOR, Voice of OC
Mari Barke, one of Orange County’s top elected voices advocating for charter schools, just got cited by a judge for failing to report millions in dollars of income over her tenure in office by not reporting the money on her annual disclosures.
Barke is on the hook for over $81,000 in penalties and possibly hundreds of thousands of dollars more in legal fees.
In her proposed ruling against Barke, OC Superior Court Judge Shaina Colover noted that Barke’s mistake was not a small one, noting Barke “never even read,” the instructions to file her Form 700s, the primary conflict of interest disclosure paperwork for elected officials in California.
“The omissions were not minor or technical in nature,” Colover wrote.
“The evidence established that the original Form 700 filings by Defendant Barke reported nominal income figures while substantial reportable financial interests and community property related assets of over a million dollars per year existed.”
Barke, who directs a statewide program dedicated to “local elected and appointed officials who stand for financial sustainability, government transparency and results-driven governance,” said she was “naturally very disappointed,” in the judge’s decision and planned to appeal.
Barke’s attorney Mark Rosen said the entire case was a “political vendetta” against Barke over her support of charter schools, pointing out how the Fair Political Practices Commission, California’s primary campaign watchdog, fined Barke for $3,200 and then closed the book.
“As a first-time candidate, she made technical mistakes on her disclosure forms, and she freely admitted and corrected those mistakes and paid a reasonable fine,” Rosen wrote in a Tuesday statement.
“Rather than acknowledging the FPPC’s decision, Mrs.
Barke’s political opponents engaged in lawfare to continue pursuing Mrs.
Barke in court as part of their political campaign against her.”
The issue came to light after Lynne Riddle, a retired federal bankruptcy judge, filed a complaint in 2023 highlighting that Barke reported nearly no income for years and requested that OC District Attorney Todd Spitzer launch a civil prosecution of Barke for the undisclosed income.
Read : Lawsuit Claims OC Board of Education Member Failed to Disclose $14 Million in Income
When Spitzer opted not to prosecute, with his spokesperson saying they declined because the FPPC did not present them with any evidence of criminal activity, Riddle did it herself, hiring a lawyer and taking Barke to court over the issue.
The undisclosed money included both her income from her job at the California Policy Center, a thinktank in Sacramento, and “community property income,” according to the ruling.
“Financial interest disclosures are critical to the public.
When elected officials flout their disclosure obligations like this, it undermines public’s right to honest and ethical government,” Riddle wrote in a statement last week.
“The Court’s decision vindicates the public’s right to know what their elected officials are doing.”
Tim Shaw, president of the OC Board of Education and a candidate for county supervisor, said that while Barke “goofed” much of the blame rests on her ex-husband Dr.
Jeff Barke, who Shaw claims told Mari she did not need to report his income.
A call to Dr.
Barke’s medical office went unreturned Tuesday.
“So Jeff blew it and gave her bad advice, Mari blew it by listening to his bad advice and turning in the form without listing it,” Shaw said in a Tuesday interview.
“In retrospect, that was obviously a profound mistake.”
It’s a statement that Barke repeated in her own legal briefs, saying she didn’t think she needed to report it based on her then-husband’s advice.
Colover disagreed with that argument in her ruling, noting that it was “unreasonable” for Mari to rely on her ex-husband’s advice.
“It is not only wrong, it is incomprehensible that anyone with defendants’ sophistication would rely on such a statement,” Colover wrote.
“The Court finds that Defendant understood, or reasonably should have understood, the importance of complete and accurate disclosure.”
Shaw also lambasted the fines Barke is facing from the court as “overkill,” saying the “political cost” of the mistake and the $3,200 fine were more than enough in penalty.
“There was no malice there.
She just was being sloppy and lazy, that’s not good, but there wasn’t some grand scheme to hide from the public,” Shaw said.
“I still love her.
She’s goofed and is making up for it now.”
Shaw also said he wants to change policies moving forward to ensure that staff from the OC Department of Education review the board’s Form 700s to be sure they are properly disclosing their income, a practice that was not in place when Barke joined the board in 2018.
Read : Orange County’s Wild West of Campaign Finance: The Board of Education
The board has also faced repeated questions over its lack of campaign finance regulations, which allow special interest groups to give unlimited amounts of money directly to candidates’ campaign funds.
Noah Biesiada is a Voice of OC reporter.
Contact him at nbiesiada@voiceofoc.org.
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82%flagged-word coverageMark Rosen
100 attributed words29% of attributed speech60% writer coverage
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