East Bay officials are getting free tickets to Warriors, Raiders and A’s games through a process that has built-in conflicts of interest, lacks transparency and raises the specter of governmental corruption, according to the draft of a scathing new report from the Oakland Public Ethics Commission.

The commission found that all of Oakland’s City Council members and Mayor Libby Schaaf failed to complete the paperwork required by city and state law that shows the public purpose for which they used or gave away tickets in the past two years. Some, like the mayor, missed only a few reports, but others filed none at all.

Of the 11,000 tickets made available to the City Council and mayor in 2015 and 2016, nearly a third were not reported through the required disclosure form, meaning there is no way for the public to find out who got those tickets or why. The tickets are considered city assets — ones amounting to hundreds of thousands of dollars each year.

“We have a transparency problem. These tickets are city resources, and we don’t know how a certain number of them are being used,” commission Chair Marc Pilotin told The Chronicle. “I don’t know why the proper disclosures are not being made.”

The Coliseum and Oracle Arena are owned by Oakland and Alameda County and managed by the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum Authority. City, county and authority officials receive free tickets to all events, including sold-out concerts and playoff games. Most of the seats are in luxury suites.

Under California law, tickets are considered gifts to public officials and thus subject to a strict monetary cap of $470 from a single source in a given year. Oakland’s restriction is even tighter. An official can’t get more than $250 in gifts from someone. If the gift giver is doing business with the official, as would be the case with the sports teams, it can’t exceed $50.

But Oakland and Alameda County, like some other jurisdictions, have created exemptions that allow officials to use or give away the tickets for “public purposes,” meaning the gift rules don’t apply. To claim an exemption, the proper paperwork — a form of the state Fair Political Practices Commission — must be filled out for each set of tickets.

City and county officials can claim, for instance, that they are conducting personal “oversight” of the facilities by attending games or concerts, or they can give away the tickets to deserving community activists, students or city employees.

“I’m not even sure what reviewing facilities means,” Heather Zona, an ethics commissioner and lawyer, said at the group’s Monday night meeting. “It doesn’t strike me that you need to attend an entire Warriors game to review the facilities. And why a Warriors game versus a monster truck rally?”

The city ethics commission primarily looked at Oakland officials, but also briefly mentioned Alameda County officials and their ticket use, too.

The commission found that every City Council member had unreported tickets, meaning there’s no record of why they were used or to whom they were given. Larry Reid had 1,004 unreported tickets, Noel Gallo had 998, Desley Brooks had 972, Rebecca Kaplan had 268, Dan Kalb had 144, Annie Campbell Washington had 64, Lynette Gibson McElhaney had 58, and Abel Guillén had 36. Schaaf had 12.

Failure to file the form documenting how the tickets were used could lead to hefty fines — up to $5,000 per violation or three times the amount unlawfully received, whichever is greater. The commission is conducting an investigation to see whether any laws were broken or fines are warranted.

A representative for Schaaf said her office was looking into why the commission found 12 instances of unreported tickets. Most likely, “we either were not actually issued tickets for those events or a scheduled event did not occur,” said Erica Terry Derryck, the spokeswoman.

Both Gallo and Guillén said they had assigned staff members to fill out the forms, but those staffers no longer work for them, and the unreported tickets piled up. Gallo said most of his unreported tickets went to his family, and some to community volunteers.

Kalb disputed the number of unreported tickets in the commission’s draft report. He said that of the 56 unreported tickets the commission showed him, for instance, 42 of those were indeed reported correctly.

Others didn’t reply to requests for comment regarding their unreported ticket use.

The commission recommended to the city that officials “review” the facilities no more than once or twice a year, and never during the playoffs or other high-value games. The group also urged the city to centralize the ticket distribution process, cap how many tickets a single person can get and make the information more accessible to the public. It will be up to the City Council to approve or reject the commission’s recommendations.

The commission discovered that not only are tickets routinely given to the same city staffers over and over again — or to the friends, relatives and campaign supporters of Oakland officials — but also that a huge number of tickets go unused. The report found that roughly 2,200 tickets in 2015 and 2016 were never touched.

“It does concern me that a large chunk of tickets are going to waste,” Pilotin said. “Conceivably we’re forgoing money to get these tickets.”

Even when the tickets are used, city officials tend to give away the cheap seats while rewarding themselves with the most valuable tickets, the commission found.

“Public officials have been using the more expensive tickets themselves, for the purpose of ‘reviewing facilities,’ while providing the less expensive tickets to city staff and third party individuals,” the report said.

Although the data are largely incomplete, given that so many officials did not file their forms, the report found that the biggest personal user of tickets was Christopher Dobbins, a member of the Coliseum Authority board, who reported using 406 last year on himself or his family.

Other notably active ticket users were City Attorney Barbara Parker, who used 278 tickets on herself or relatives; Councilman Reid, who reported 382 such tickets; Councilwoman McElhaney, who reported using 237 tickets; and Councilman Guillén, who tallied 220.

Guillén, Gallo and Kaplan said they wanted the city to scrap the practice of giving them tickets.

“I have told city staff that my office will no longer be accepting or distributing our allotment of tickets moving forward and we will respect the outcome of the Public Ethics Commission’s investigation,” Guillén said.

The commission concluded that many city officials have a “cavalier” attitude toward the tickets and consider them perks of the job. Council members have an inherent ethical conflict, the commission said, because they are the people who approve the lease agreements that earmark tickets to the city while being the direct recipients of those tickets.

“The participation of elected officials in the contract approval process in which the officials receive free tickets, creates, at a minimum, a perception of both a personal conflict of interest and misuse of public resources for personal gain,” the report said.

What’s more, the elected officials who sit both on the City Council and the Coliseum Authority Board get extra free tickets because of their dual positions. Those two are Reid, and up until this week, Kaplan, whose term on the joint powers board just expired.

“It’s double-dipping,” Dana King, an ethics commissioner, said at the Monday meeting. “I mean, you get tickets as a City Council member, you get tickets as being on the authority, and you’re negotiating their contracts.”

Kaplan has introduced legislation that would do away with tickets for officials and instead sell them and use the money for homelessness and other services.

The commission’s recommendations and report — which were prompted by stories in The Chronicle, KPIX 5 and East Bay Times last year — are set to be finalized at the group’s April meeting. A separate investigation by the commission to see whether city officials broke any laws or policies is ongoing.

Kimberly Veklerov is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: kveklerov@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @kveklerov

Read the report

The draft report of the Oakland Ethics Commission can be found at http://bit.ly/2lV8rvo.

Distribution of tickets by Oakland City Council and mayor, 2015-16

Rebecca Kaplan Larry Reid Desley Brooks Noel Gallo Annie Campbell Washington Lynette Gibson McElhaney Abel Guillén Dan Kalb Libby Schaaf Another public official 8 4 34 8 20 2 Self/family 48 4 81 237 220 42 39 City staff 300 2 340 618 186 512 233 Not used 176 2 254 456 544 411 320 62 Third party 516 4 393 735 497 420 132 Unreported 268 1,004 972 998 64 58 36 144 12