Former Democratic Rep. Jesus Rubalcava was ordered today to repay more than $17,000 to the Arizona Citizens Clean Elections Commission.

The commission unanimously approved the order proposed by Executive Director Tom Collins on Tuesday. Rubalcava will now have 30 days to repay $17,459 from his own personal funds.

In May, a Clean Elections audit found that Rubalcava’s campaign accounting was a mess. He combined his personal funds with campaign funds, and he used the campaign dollars to cover personal expenses, like flights out of state and hotels in Washington D.C., Memphis, San Diego and San Jose.

Rubalcava has not provided documentation to prove his questionable expenditures were actually appropriate.

Those violations alone – and they were joined by others – would have been reason enough for his removal from office under the Clean Elections Act. He resigned in July.

Rubalcava told the commission Tuesday he believes the judgement is “really unfair” and, if given the time to travel across his large district, he could track down business owners he worked with to show his expenditures were legitimate.

“I’m a school teacher, and it’s really difficult for me,” he said during Tuesday’s meeting, adding he would only have time to hunt down the requested documentation on weekends.

Commissioner Mark Kimble was not sympathetic to his argument and pointed out Rubalcava was first served an order of compliance on June 23. Two months later, he said Rubalcava has done nothing to provide the documents he now says he could produce with more time.

Additionally, Kimble said Rubalcava has not contacted the commission for guidance on next steps, which the former representative said were not clear even today.

Commissioner Galen Paton voted in favor of the order but said he wanted Rubalcava to be able to prove he spent money appropriately as he claims he can; for instance, Rubalcava claimed he could produce receipts for about $6,000 paid to a printer for campaign materials.

If such appropriate transactions did occur, Paton said, then surely business owners would be able to provide a record from their own accounting.

Tom Collins said the total owed to the commission could be revised if Rubalcava is now able to provide receipts, but he noted extensions have already been granted and yet no documentation received.

Rubalcava said he was taking receipts to work with him to prepare for the auditing firms; he is a special education teacher in the Buckeye Elementary School District. He said his classroom was moved two times over the Christmas holiday, and some of his receipts were lost in the process.

Though he raised that explanation in a letter sent to the commission in April, Collins said this was the first time Rubalcava had raised the issues he brought up Tuesday.

In fact, Rubalcava previously accepted the auditors’ findings, pointing to his position as a first-time candidate to explain what led to his financial troubles.

“Please acknowledge that I am not by any means challenging the results of the review, nor am I denying any wrong doing,” he wrote in a letter to the commission in April. “More so, this is acknowledgement that my campaign finances were not effectively run and that my lesson has been learned.”