No elected county official received more gifts in 2006 than county Assessor/Recorder/Clerk Greg Smith, who received $2,711 in baseball tickets, gift certificates and cash. That’s more than twice as much as what the next highest elected official received — Supervisor Ron Roberts’ $1,295.97.
Smith received two Padres tickets, valued at $114, from an El Cajon property title company for which he has written an opinion piece about the real-estate market’s upside. That’s according to his statement of economic interests, which was released this week.
As my colleague Kelly Bennett documented last summer, the company, First American Title Co. frequently disseminates a Smith-penned column entitled “Why the real estate bubble isn’t real.”
In total, Smith received $1,303.50 from groups with ties to the real-estate industry. The Monarch Group, a La Jolla-based real-estate construction firm gave Smith a $290 dugout seat at a Padres game. Prudential California Realty, based in Rancho Santa Fe, gave Smith a $200 gift card to Mister A’s. The San Diego Association of Realtors gave Smith two dinner tickets valued at $170.