NOTE TO READERS: we submitted several questions and requests for explanations to Brandy Romero on the morning of August 12, and asked by responses by Noon on August 13. We submitted via her two Instagram pages, and e-mailed them to her work e-mail. Romero has yet to respond.
Orange City Council candidate Brandy Romero filed a new Form 700 financial disclosure on Aug. 7 that raises new questions about the finances she has disclosed to Orange voters.
Romero’s August 7 filing presents a substantially different picture of her business income than the Form 700 she filed on March 26.
Romero operates a gift shop on in Old Town Orange called “There’s No Place Like Orange.” The Form 700 she filed on March 26 claimed that during all of 2025 she only received somewhere between $0 and $500 in gross income from her store.
Less than five months later, Romero now reports her gross income from “There’s No Place Like Orange” is more than $100,000.
That’s a big difference.
These are not two different businesses. They are two sworn financial disclosures by the same candidate concerning the same business entity – filed barely four months apart.
Form 700 filers like Romero sign the financial disclosures under penalty of perjury, certifying they have used “all reasonable diligence” in preparing the statement and that the information was true and complete.
So what changed? And why?
Previously Undisclosed Stock Holdings
Romero’s most recent Form 700 lists lists previously undisclosed stock ownership. According to her August 7 filing, Romero owns the following stock:
- $10,000 to $100,000 in Apple shares
- $10,000 to $100,00 in Amazon shares
- $10,000 to $100,000 in Disney shares
[The FPPC doesn’t require disclosure of precise amounts, only ranges.]
Those are significant stock holdings – between $30,000 and $300,000. Why were they not disclosed in Romero’s previous financial disclosures?
The divergent financial disclosures in and of themselves do not explain the why of the discrepancies. Are these significant discrepancies due to incompetency in complete the Form 700 or an intentional effort to conceal income? Was it mere error, a misunderstanding of the Form 700 requirements, a change in the underlying income? Or something else?
But Romero herself has not publicly explained the discrepancy.
That leaves the central question unanswered.
That question is particularly relevant because the Form 700 is not an ordinary financial statement. It is intended to give voters and the public information about the economic interests of public officials and candidates so potential conflicts can be identified.
California law defines reportable “income” broadly and specifically includes a community-property interest in a spouse’s income. It also includes a filer’s pro rata share of income from a business entity in which the filer or spouse has a 10% or greater interest.
The FPPC’s own Form 700 instructions make the requirement even clearer: if a filer or the filer’s spouse is self-employed, the business entity is to be reported on Schedule A-2. The instructions also require disclosure of the filer’s community-property interest in a spouse’s income.
READ: Orange City Council Elections – Who Is Brandy Romero? Part 2
Why Was Her Husband’s Business Missing?
The new filing raises another question.
Romero’s Aug. 7 Form 700 identifies “Deeper Issues Nerdcast” and describes Romero’s relationship to it as “Spouse of Owner.”
She did not disclose this financial interest in her previous Form 700 filings.
This is not an insignificant technical detail.
The FPPC’s Form 700 instructions specifically say that a filer must report the source of income to a spouse or registered domestic partner when the filer’s community-property share is $500 or more during the reporting period. Romero claims $2,000 to $5,000 as the fair market value of her husband’s podcast.
FPPC rules also state that if the filer or spouse is self-employed, the business entity is reported on Schedule A-2.
California law likewise expressly includes a community-property interest in a spouse’s income within the definition of reportable income.
So the question is not whether Romero had to disclose every dollar her husband earned.
The question is why a business owned by her husband was not disclosed on the March filing but appears on the August filing?
The Mari Barke Comparison
The timing is also notable because Orange County voters have just seen what can happen when a public official fails to properly disclose income.
last month, the Orange County Superior Court found Orange County Board of Education member Mari Barke had failed to comply with California’s financial-disclosure requirements after not reporting millions of dollars in income and assets over multiple years. Barke is a staunch advocate of school choice and parental rights and was the target of a lawsuit by a retired judge who is a partisan Democrat and being represented by an partisan Democrat attorney who frequently represents such cases.
The judge ordered Barke to pay $81,800 in civil penalties, plus attorneys’ fees and costs. The court found that the omissions were not merely technical and did not accept Barke’s contention thhat she was misled by her former husband’s advice regarding financial disclosures.
The dollar amounts Romero failed to disclose are smaller than in Barke’s case, but the principal is the same.
California’s disclosure law does not allow an elected official or candidate to simply ignore a spouse’s economic interests- regardless of how large or small. The law expressly includes community-property income, while the FPPC instructions specifically address income and business interests belonging to a spouse.
The purpose is not merely to satisfy a bureaucratic filing requirement. The purpose is to allow voters to know who is financially connected to a public official before that official exercises governmental power.
New Questions Compound Earlier Irregularities
These newly-raised questions do not arrive in a vacuum.
OC Independent previously reported that Romero’s claims about her business ownership didn’t line up with the available corporate and professional records.
We reported that Romero claimed to be the owner of OEM Materials & Packaging when in fact it is her mother who is the founder, owner and CEO of the company. Romero is an account executive for her mother’s company.
Romero – who didn’t respond to our requests for comment and explanation despite her written promise to do so – told a sympathetic blogger, “Jeez, that’s the best they can come up with against me? I OWN 25% of the company!”
If Romero has responded to our questions instead of blowing them off, we would have included that in the article. Nonetheless, when Romero tells voters she owns a company, they’ll reasonably assume she owns the whole thing – and not the she has a minority stake in her mother’s company.
Indeed, Romero is still claiming she is the owner of OEM Materials & Packaging. Her candidate website states:
“As the owner of OEM Materials & Supplies, a company nominated Best Family-Owned Small Business in Orange County four years in a row, Brandy knows the value of hard work, fiscal responsibility, and showing up for your neighbors.”
That statement is quite simply, false and misleading.
Speaking of Romero’s campaign website, is used to have an “Ask Me Anything!” section where people could submit questions about her candidacy. That was one of the ways in which OC Independent submitted questions to Romero for our earlier articles. It has since been removed.
We reported that her Rose & Hart LLC had been suspended by the California Franchise Tax Board. Rose & Hart LLC is the vehicle through which she apparently operates as an account executive for her mother’s company, OEM Materials & Packaging. It is also the entity through which she owns her “There’s No Place Like Orange” store.
We reported that Romero was two months delinquent on paying $5,375.07 in quarterly property taxes on her home. Romero paid the delinquent property tax a few hours after we published our story detailing the matter.
Romero – who didn’t respond to our requests for comment and explanation despite her written promise to do so – offered a misleading explanation to a sympathetic blogger:
Blogger: “And, you were a couple months late paying your property taxes?”
Romero: “Oh I paid it, I always pay my property taxes, I just never received the notice for April, but it’s paid.”
In the same article, city council candidate Romero claimed she didn’t respond to my questions because she didn’t know me, and painted our very reasonable and legitimate questions and generous timeline for response as suddenly “demanding” answers.
The blogger has since removed these passages from his post, for some reason.
The reality is Romero only paid her delinquent property taxes once OC Independent brought the matter into the public square.
We reported that Romero was the only member of the Park Planning and Community Events Commission who had not her ethics training course as required by state law. She had been appointed to the commission in June 2025 and had until the end of that year to complete ethics training.
It was not until after OC Independent reported on her failure to do that Romero finally completed her ethics training.
Now her financial disclosure itself has changed substantially.
That makes the Aug. 7 filing more than a routine campaign document.
It adds another piece to a growing record of questions about how Romero describes her businesses, her finances and her compliance with the disclosure obligations that apply to candidates for public office.
Those are reasonable questions for any candidate seeking a seat on the Orange City Council.
They are especially reasonable for a candidate who has made her business experience a central part of her argument for why voters should elect her.
Thus far, Romero’s strategy has been to ignore these very legitimate questions about these very real issues or dismiss them as “attacks.” Her attitude seems to be “I love Orange so much that I don’t need to follow the rules.”
Romero’s Form 700 says she used all reasonable diligence and that the information she provided was true and complete.
The public now deserves to know what happened between March 26 and Aug. 7 that caused the financial picture to change so dramatically.
