Kevin Park never seems to be on the FPPC’s good side.

The engineer and first-term City of Santa Clara councilmember neglected to file required disclosure forms with California’s political watchdog agency during his unsuccessful 2014 and 2016 campaigns. And he remained paperwork-challenged even after he won the Mission City’s District 4 seat.

The FPPC officially opened an investigation into Park in July, after City Clerk Hosam Haggag filed a complaint.

Park knows he didn’t correctly close out the $8,000 he loaned himself on Nov. 3 and is missing signatures on some documents, ostensibly due to Covid-19 concerns, which Park chalks up to not being a “professional politician” in need of a more knowledgeable campaign treasurer.

“These are the things I need to file. I'm not trying to hide them,” Park says, adding that he expects to be fined. “I'm the candidate, so I can't really blame other people.”

AWOL are his 2021 Form 700s—the annual lists of income, earnings and assets.

According to Park’s forms from December 2020, he listed no reportable income—at all. However, the engineer’s name and loan are connected to an “unnamed startup” located at 5201 Great America Parkway—the five-story Techmart office building.

Park says he wasn’t aware he needed to report monies coming in from both his work and his spouse, without owning investments like stocks or outside businesses.

“When you look into it, you'll find that there really isn't anything there,” he says.

Verbal attestations, however, are no substitute for properly filed documents. Former Santa Clara County Supervisor George Shirakawa’s disclosures scribbled on yellow lined paper in a 2012 Metro interview, for example, turned out to be an indicator of bigger problems than just failure to file and led to his conviction and removal from office.