Tim Vandenack, Standard-Examiner

OGDEN — Maybe the mayor doesn’t directly manage the city’s money.

But whoever holds the post is in a position of responsibility — he or she oversees city administration and plays a key role in preparing each year’s operating budget. And as primary voting in the mayoral race edges to an end, the question of money management has seeped into the contest, accompanied by charges of dirty politicking.

At a mayoral forum on Wednesday, Angel Castillo, one of seven hopefuls, faced a question from the event moderator about unpaid federal taxes dating to the early 2000s. The questions have been swirling in the background as campaigning has proceeded, with circulation of a copy among some political watchers of a 2013 Internal Revenue Service notice of a federal tax lien against Castillo for unpaid income taxes for 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2010 and 2011. A copy of another IRS document — mailed anonymously to the Standard-Examiner, like the tax lien — shows the debt, $212,394.97 in all, had been paid as of 2022, and the lien against Castillo released.

At the forum and in a message to the Standard-Examiner, Castillo, while not questioning the authenticity of the lien documents, placed blame in the matter with her ex-husband, who at the time ran a construction firm. He managed the couple’s joint tax filings and “got himself into some hot water,” she said, resulting in the apparent nonpayment of federal income taxes between 2003 and 2011. She got caught up in things, Castillo said, only because her name was on the tax filings in question as the spouse of the filer, her ex-husband Karl Lindenlaub.

Beyond that, Castillo blasted the emergence of the issue as “mudslinging” from foes bent on hampering her campaign in the seven-candidate race. The Standard-Examiner supplied Castillo with copies of the IRS documents the newspaper received.

Tim Vandenack, Standard-Examiner

“I have been made aware from multiple sources that one of my opponents hired a private investigator to ‘dig up dirt’ on me to benefit their campaign. This anonymous submission of a partial tax lien filing (with the very conspicuous omission of its release and satisfaction) to the Standard-Examiner is nothing more than a disingenuous attempt to publish a hit piece on me, benefiting my opponent,” Castillo said.

Castillo supplied the newspaper with a letter from the California accountant who helped her resolve the IRS matter. She also supplied a copy of the IRS Form 8857 she filed in 2014 — a Request for Innocent Spouse Relief form — to shield herself from responsibility for the delinquent taxes.

The accountant, Robert Wheeler, wrote that it would likely take “a few weeks” to pull some of the IRS records relating to the “complicated matter.” However, he said any balances Castillo had been deemed responsible for “have been paid or forgiven.”

According to additional IRS documents from 2015 and 2016 that Castillo supplied, the IRS deemed she was entitled to $45,774 in tax relief for 2003, 2004, 2005 and 2010 under provisions of Form 8857. She was denied relief on $39,841 more in taxes owed in the four years, according to the papers, and deemed “jointly responsible for the amount.”

Notwithstanding Castillo’s IRS issues, she isn’t the only mayoral candidate with seeming bumps in his or her financial past. Chris Barragan filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy with wife Brooke in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Arizona in 2011 due to debt brought on by the short sale of his home during the Great Recession of the late 2000s and early 2010s. The filing, available in online federal court records, resulted in the discharge of $79,758 in debt he had faced.

“That Chapter 7 was years and years ago and it has been resolved,” Barragan told the Standard-Examiner, emphasizing that the turn of events involved no financial improprieties. “I don’t think that there’s anything inherently bad with it if it allows someone to get financial freedom.”

Candidates Oscar Mata and Taylor Knuth faced liens from the Utah Tax Commission due to unpaid state taxes, according to online court records, though both said they paid them off as soon as they learned of the issues. Mata faced a lien of $453.68 earlier this year and a $614.30 lien in 2021 while Knuth and his partner faced a $355.26 lien in 2019.

Mata said the two liens he face stemmed from “simple filing errors” and Knuth said he paid off the lien he faced within two days of receiving notice of it in the mail.

The other Ogden mayoral hopefuls are Ben Nadolski, Jon Greiner and Bart Blair. No liens or financial anomalies emerged in a Standard-Examiner search of court records in their names.

Mail-in ballots are out and primary voting, which will narrow the list of candidates to two, ends on Sept. 5.

‘HE LIED TO ME’

As Castillo described it at Wednesday’s candidate forum, she was led to believe the tax returns at issue were properly handled “because I trusted the man I was supposed to spend the rest of my life with when he lied to me.” Lindenlaub operated a construction company, she said, and the couple lived in California at the time, divorcing in 2011.

On learning of the delinquent taxes, Lindenlaub ultimately explained what was going on, Castillo said, and she reached out to a certified public accountant to rectify the situation. The Standard-Examiner attempted to reach out to Lindenlaub for his take, calling several phone numbers linked to him, but received no response.

Ultimately, Castillo filed the Form 8857.

Taxpayers file the form, according to the IRS explanation of the document, “to request relief from tax liability, plus related penalties and interest, when they believe only their spouse or former spouse should be held responsible for all or part of the tax.” In her particular filing, Castillo said she wasn’t involved in preparing the returns in question and did not review them before they were filed.

The turn of events with her ex-husband has left a sour taste in Castillo’s mouth. “You’d better trust no one until you do your due diligence,” she told the crowd at Wednesday’s candidate forum.

Likewise, Castillo, a marketing consultant, bristled over the circumstances that have led to the injection of the issue of her taxes into the campaign.

She called for consideration of “(w)ho/which companies do not want me as mayor, as I have pledged to ‘stop the steal’ of our tax dollars via corporate welfare/backroom deals to a closed group of a few developers.” Castillo has been critical of procedures followed under the administration of Mayor Mike Caldwell in selection of developers of city-owned property.

At the heart of the questions about money are the candidates’ financial acuity. The mayor plays a key role in helping craft Ogden’s annual budget, $254 million for fiscal year 2024.

Castillo, though, took umbrage when asked if the lien issue bears on her ability to manage money or the City of Ogden, if elected. The Standard-Examiner also put the question to Barragan, Mata and Knuth.

“This question shows your implicit bias in pursuing this story. The lien was a result of my ex-husband’s financial mismanagement, not mine. The documents provided to you show I was absolved of any wrongdoing,” she said in an email. She questioned why the issue is newsworthy.

At Wednesday’s forum, nevertheless, she took on the issue of money management, saying that’s more a focus of city staffers.

“A mayor’s job and a leader’s job is vision and action. … So managing the budget — there are people for it,” she said. “The mayor’s job is to figure out — How do we grow? How do we build strategic relationships? How do we better the lives of our citizens?”

‘WHIM OF THE MARKET’

Barragan’s bankruptcy, he said, stemmed from the sale of his home for less than what he had paid for it after the housing bubble burst during the Great Recession. “In that particular situation, we were at the whim of the market,” he said. The home was in Arizona, where he previously lived.

After selling it, he learned the sale price wasn’t enough to pay off a second mortgage on the home and he was stuck with the debt, but unable to pay it. He reached out to a money manager, who advised him to take the bankruptcy route, also combining other debt with the second mortgage for discharge. It put him in a financial “time out” for seven years.

“The (Chapter 7 bankruptcy) filing was done at the suggestion of a money manager given the fact that even if the debt was paid, the collateral was no longer in our possession,” Barragan said in a message to the Standard-Examiner. “The way that the real estate and lending industry handled transactions back then was extremely volatile. Millions of Americans were left in the wake.”

Like Castillo, Barragan minimized the role of the mayor in directly handling money matters, saying that’s the role of city staffers with expertise in the area. Barragan is a territory manager for a health care company, apart from his role in running a family-owned bakery, Brookey Bakes.

“If you’re voting for me to be the (chief financial officer) for the city, that’s not what I’m in it for,” he said. Rather, the mayor is responsible for creating a vision for the city and leading it toward that vision, he added.

Both Knuth and Mata said their liens don’t bear on their money-handling ability. Mata is dean of students at an Ogden charter school and chief financial officer of a firm that handles substance abuse and domestic violence assessments. Knuth is deputy director in the Salt Lake City Department of Economic Development.

“I think this has no bearing on my ability to manage the city budget,” Mata said. His drug-treatment facility “goes through a mandatory annual audit with the state to get licensed (every treatment facility has to go through this audit). And our finances have been found to be in good standing every year,” he said in an email.

Knuth said managing a budget is easy.

“You don’t spend more than you have and you pay your bills. That is how my household budget is run, and that is how I plan to run the city budget if elected — putting the community at the center to ensure money is spent wisely on the basic functions of good government,” he said.

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