Emergency Caffeine Management

For those of us who start off our commute on Main St. in downtown Bexley, we've been treated to a pretty nifty sight these past couple of mornings. With Cup'O'Joe and Starbuck both victims of the power outage, there was no way to make or obtain hot coffee for (literally) miles on Monday. On Tuesday, however, a stand had been set up in front of City Hall with a big sign advertising "Free Coffee!"

On Tuesday, Mayor Brennan was front and center among the Barrista Irregulars, this morning it was Police Chief Rinehart.

I couldn't stop either day, but I really appreciate the gesture. Thanks you guys, and your companions at the coffee stand, and really, thanks to everyone who is working their butts off to get this community back up and running.

Joyce Beatty Hired by OSU

As Vice-President in charge of Outreach and Engagement, effective after her term in the legislature ends.

From the Announcement:

Beatty will begin her new role at Ohio State in January, following the completion of her final term as a state representative.

“This university was founded to improve lives and enrich communities, and our faculty, staff, and students fulfill that mission through thousands of programs in our neighborhoods and around the world,” said Gee. “Joyce is one of the most accomplished public servants I know and exactly the right person to help us take a more comprehensive approach and make our programs even more effective.”

Beatty has served in the Ohio House of Representatives since 1999, representing major portions of the city of Columbus. In 2006, she became the first woman leader of the Ohio House of Representatives’ Democratic Caucus.

When Foreclosures First Started Making Headlines Here

Three years ago this week, the Columbus Dispatch ran an excellent series on a problem that was just then beginning to explode: suburban foreclosures due to bad loans made by greedy lenders, and trapped homeowners who were making their payments, but couldn't sell their homes because the rash of foreclosures in their neighborhoods had lowered property values to the point where even owners who were making their payments had significant negative equity.

For many readers, this was the first look at what would eventually become known as the sub-prime mortgage crisis. The highest profile target of the paper's investigation was Dominion Homes:

-Dominion's two-year default rate is the highest in the nation among homebuilders with mortgage divisions that handled more than 1,000 Federal Housing Administrationbacked loans. It ranks fifth among all types of large lenders.

-The company leads the state in the number of homeowners who defaulted on FHA loans within two years of closing: 221 between August 2003 and July 2005.

-11.5 percent of Dominion?s customers in Franklin County have fallen more than three months behind on their FHA mortgages in their first two years of homeownership. That?s nearly 2? times the national figure. At least half of Dominion?s customers have government-backed mortgages.

-Nearly a third of the Franklin County houses and condominiums built since 1998 that have been listed for sheriff?s sales involved Dominion buyers, a Dispatch analysis found. Of the 1,253 new homes sent to public auction, 395 were built by Dominion and 295 by its larger competitor, M/I Homes.

-Since 2000, Dominion is the only central Ohio builder whose mortgage practices have raised red flags at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, which insures FHA loans. HUD auditors found violations that included false or undocumented income levels for buyers.

When loans go bad, FHA reimburses lenders 100 percent, removing all risks to them and to the brokers who arrange the financing. The reimbursements are paid from insurance premiums paid by every FHA borrower.

As a result of the series, Dominion Homes was subjected to increased HUD scrutiny, lawsuits from customers, and a loss of business. They eventually sold off a majority share of their mortgage business to Wells Fargo.

Even so, the CEO of Dominion Homes was sure to point out at the time the article was published, "that his company operates within the law and remains in good standing with HUD."

Is it possible that Dominion had a friend on the committee that oversees banking and credit?

Someone who introduced a bill to loosen borrowing requirements for government-backed mortgages?

Perhaps.

Garland's Rally Big Fat Success

I'm sure it was because of my promotion here at Blue Bexley, rather than the draw of Sherrod Brown or the hard work put in by the folks at the Garland campaign. Approximately 100 people showed up to a meeting room in Gahanna for a September rally sponsored by the campaign of a challenger in an Ohio State House race. I think it was Ted Celeste who said that it has been a long time since a Democrat in the 20th could fill a room like that, and the room was certainly enthusiastic about Nancy Garland.

I recorded the entire thing on audio, and got a few pictures, but I don't know how they turned out because I couldn't upload anything to my computer at home due to Ike. Several pictures and the newsiest bits can be found in a series of reports by Justin Miller on PolitickerOH.com.

Now, to be fair, it's been a while since a Democrat could get most anyone like Ted Celeste into a room in the 20th. It's clear that the state and local party are behind Nancy, and that bodes very well for her chances in November.

It hasn't been as clear to me that there has been that kind of party support for David Robinson, running for the U.S. House in the 12th District. Not that there's been any animosity, but with open seats in the 15th and 7th, Robinson's fight isn't just against an incumbent, it's for attention. Two things popped out at me regarding the Robinson campaign at the rally on Sunday. First, the more people that can listen to him in person, the more votes he's going to get. I'd really like to see what he can do in front of one of those Obama-sized crowds. Second, I'm more hopeful that I'll get that chance today than I was on Saturday. Most of the speakers were understandably focused on talking about Nancy Garland, Barack Obama, and Sherrod Brown, but when Sherrod was speaking he not only mentioned Robinson, he opened with a reference to a (kinda-had-to-be- there-but) hilarious line from Robinson's remarks, and prominently listed Robinson's campaign when talking about the overall battle in November. It was possibly my imagination, but it seemed that the tone of some of Brown's statements were not only approving of Robinson, but disapproving of others who were not treating the race in the 12th with the same seriousness.

Like I said, perhaps my imagination, but Senator Brown is certainly capable of pulling ears that few others could.

Payday Loan Charge More Than a Technicaltity

From Blue Bexley, 08/13/2008:

Given that OPC's website exclaims in bold that "We pay by the hour, not by the signature," either Hagan is wrong, OPC is lying, or someone other than OPC is paying circulators. That last seemed the most likely, so I pursued it first. At least one source told me that Arno Political Consultants had been brought in by the lenders to collect signatures along with OPC.

So, is it all the fault of Arno and a pay-per-signature compensation model come back to make a mockery of the process? That's really unclear.

...

So, I don't doubt that some circulators are lying to get signatures. I've heard the audio. I'd like for it to stop, but until I can figure out who's actually collecting signatures, who's paying them, how they're paying them, and which of them are consistently lying, it's difficult to figure out who's to blame.

From Blue Bexley, 08/21/2008:

Every entity collecting signatures for the referendum effort is required by law to file a 'Form 15' with the Secretary of State. Lisa Renee at Glass City Jungle tried to get the SOS to tell her who had filed the forms, and was given a pretty silly runaround. I can sympathize.

From Openers, 09/12/2008:

Anyone supervising the collection of signatures must file a Form 15, which asks for the circulators' names and addresses and the names of their employers before they can start collecting signatures.

The secretary's office said it cannot find any evidence that a Form 15 was filed by Arno Political Consultants, a California firm hired by the lenders to collect many of its signatures.

"One of the penalties if you don't file the Form 15 is a misdemeanor, but separately, you could get thrown entirely off the ballot," said Sandy Theis, spokeswoman for the Vote Yes on Issue 5 Committee. The group had filed a public records request asking to see the form.

The group asked Brunner "to throw them off the ballot, and if you can't do that, then at least throw out the signatures collected by this group," Theis said.

We know that some petition circulators were giving voters misleading information in order to convince them to sign. In order to determine the source of the problem, it is necessary to know who was actually supervising and training those circulators. The failure by Arno to file a Form 15 acted to obstruct legitimate inquiries into election irregularities. Any notion that Arno, a company that has conducted a number of signature gathering campaigns in Ohio, simply was unaware of the requirement or just forgot to turn in the form would strain credulity.

Several months ago I wrote that the most important story that would come out of this petition process wasn't going to be about the Payday Lending Bill itself (I'm pretty confident that Issue 5 will pass if it stays on the ballot), but the success or failure of new signature collection methods applied in a compressed time period. It's now obvious that the Lenders did not have confidence that they could make the ballot without resorting to questionable methods that have led to hundreds of thousands of rejected signatures in the past. The allegation, if true, that this decision was illegally hidden from the public and state is a serious cause for complaint.


See Also GCJ, where Lisa Renee continues to out-hustle me on this story :)