MAYOR REVISES CAMPAIGN FUND FIGURES.

Byline: Jim Skeen Staff Writer

LANCASTER - Mayor Frank Roberts said Wednesday that his re-election campaign war chest is closer to $12,000 rather than the $62,676 reported on his campaign disclosure statement he filed last week.

The $62,676 included money he raised over the past five elections, which he said he included because of a change in state reporting forms and the desire to keep open an option to collect on a personal loan.

``They changed the forms. I hear people in other areas have been having the same problems,'' Roberts said. ``I haven't spent a lot of money on it (this year's re-election bid) at all.''

Roberts' war chest for this year's election is $11,959, a calculation from his reports show.

Roberts said he listed the previous contributions because he was told by state officials that he had to do so in order to be eligible to reimburse himself for $3,175 for a loan to himself during a previous mayoral campaign.

Adding to the confusion, the mayor said, was a change in the reporting forms that deleted a column to separately report contributions from a previous campaign.

Mayoral candidate Norm Hickling, a former Northrop Grumman executive who is now the office manager of High Desert Medical Group, is leading the mayoral candidates in fund raising. Hickling reported contributions of $15,481 in his bid to unseat Roberts.

The three other mayoral challengers, Anthony Booth, William Fender and Gene Gaynor, filed statements saying they did not anticipate raising or spending more than $1,000 on each of their campaigns.

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Photo:

(color) Frank Roberts

Faces new reporting rules