Last September, I gave away the open secrets of how L.A. Times’ David Zahniser is able to break stories about potential political corruption. It mainly came down to occasionally peeking at online filing statements made available, for free, at the City of L.A.’s Ethics Commision website.

Earlier today, City Controller candidate Wendy Greuel released a list of L.A.’s biggest deadbeat taxpayers – 16 businesses each owing somewhere between $112,000 and $3,067,000 to the city’s coffers. (via LAist)

Now, if you want to get some of the peanut butter in that chocolate (or vice versa, I love Reeses), what’ll you get?

That’s for you to find out.

Pull up the Office of Finance’s Top Debtors List (.pdf) in one window, and in another enter some of those business names into the City of L.A.’s Campaign Contributions seach page (be sure to try the “business name” and “employer” field’s seperately). I can’t promise anything interesting will come up, because it all depends on your definition of the word interesting.

If you find anything worth noting, please leave it in the comments. Might make you feel like Woodward and Bernstein. Or at least a little like Zahniser.

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