Mark it down as a rookie mistake, an unforced error or both.
Recently, freshman Glendale City Councilmember Lupe Conchas has crusaded against the city’s generous monthly stipends for councilmembers. The stipends — $1,350 a month on top of a yearly salary of $34,000 and another $33,000 a year for district expenses — amount to a “slush fund,” the 33-year-old Conchas said in an interview with ABC15 last week. Conchas told the station that he stopped taking the extra cash in June because “there’s no accountability on how these funds are spent” and that the stipends should be axed.
Months earlier, though, the Democrat took to social media to directly solicit money on his personal Facebook page, asking people to send him money “through ApplePay and Zelle” to help him address “major home repair issues.” One campaign finance expert said such an arrangement — people giving money directly to a politician, with no transparency as to who gave how much — creates “an appearance problem.”…