Attorney General Ford, Running Statewide, Reports Seven Rental Properties and Zero Rental Income

CARSON CITY — Financial disclosures filed by Attorney General Ford, his party's nominee for higher office this fall, list seven rental properties and claim income from none of them, though at least six were actively advertised for rent, according to an analysis of the filings.

The forms also omit three mortgages totaling roughly $1.3 million on resort condominiums in Utah, which federal disclosure law requires candidates to report. Between last year's filing and this one, an out-of-state lodge rose in stated value from a bracket topping out at $250,000 to one starting at $1 million, and a plot of land made a similar leap, lifting the candidate's reported net worth from possibly negative to comfortably positive without the purchase of anything.

Ethics experts described the omissions as either "pure sloppiness or a deliberate effort to conceal," a range Ford's campaign narrowed by calling the questions "partisan" and noting that the candidate is a lawyer and a business owner, which is to say a person who reads forms for a living.

The Press's ledger desk notes that a candidate's incomplete disclosure is 'corruption' when the other party files it and 'a paperwork issue' when yours does. The ethics committee that polices these forms, both parties agree, rarely investigates, which is the one bipartisan finding in the file.

At press time the seven properties were still for rent, still producing no income, and still, on paper, the worst investment in the state and the best deal in it.