therealnews--2020-01-16--Report: Maryland’s Governor Used Tax Dollars to Enrich Himself

This is a rush transcript and may contain errors .
It will be updated .
Jaisal Noor : Welcome to The Real News .
I ’ m Jaisal Noor .
Maryland governor Larry Hogan is a popular Republican in a deeply Democratic state who believes in climate change , has criticized Donald Trump , and handily won reelection in the 2018 midterms , where Democrats made major gains .
But Hogan and Trump do have at least one thing in common besides being Republicans , of course , corruption , because they both use their positions of power for personal @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s Eric Cortellessa .
Hogan steered millions in state road construction money to areas where his company owned property whose values were certain to rise .
Like Trump , hogan has given control of his companies to close relatives , his brother .
The Hogan administration says he complied with state ethics laws because he was never personally involved in decisions approving the projects .
But Cortellessa writes at least one government official disputes these claims saying it “ doesn ’ t pass the laugh test.
” While the governor has expanded highways @ @ @ @ @ @ @ like himself , he killed the multibillion dollar Red Line , a huge blow to Baltimore ’ s working class black neighborhoods , which have endured disinvestment for generations .
The NAACP ’ s civil rights lawsuit against the cancellation of the Red Line was dismissed by the Trump administration .
Well now joining us to discuss this is Eric Cortellessa of the Washington Monthly , author of the piece Who Does Maryland ’ s Governor Really Work For ?
Larry Hogan has more in common with Donald Trump than his reputation suggests @ @ @ @ @ @ @ also runs the Baltimore Beat .
Thank you both for joining us .
Eric C. : Good to be here .
Jaisal Noor : So Eric , you spent months reporting on this article and you acknowledge you built on reporting the other publications sort of started , but you took it further than other places had before .
Talk about what you found in this piece over this course of months you spent on it .
Eric C. : Sure , sure .
Well before I had started , there were really @ @ @ @ @ @ @ about the governor ’ s real estate business , one in Maryland Matters and one in the Baltimore Sun .
Maryland Matters story came first and that really built off of financial disclosure forms that the governor had submitted to the state ethics commission , which included sort of the real estate LLCs that are subsidiaries of the Hogan company , that if you went through public land records you could find some of the properties that they own .
There are limits to that , by the way , because LLCs are @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in secrecy .
The only public information about an LLC is its resident agent .
You don ’ t know who the partners are , you don ’ t know what the operating agreement entails , and you certainly don ’ t know if they are the minority owner and a property .
So there ’ s a lot that we don ’ t know about the governor ’ s real estate business .
But what the Maryland Matters story did was it laid out the LLCs that he had ownership of at @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 2018 , and included some concerns from Democrats and a few ethics experts about the arrangement .
The governor had not put his real estate holdings in a blind trust , the governor put his brother in charge of the company , and the governor obviously has a great deal of executive authority when it comes to transportation and other matters — giving out government contracts , et cetera .
So what my story did was it really delved into the very specific transportation decisions the governor made that had posed to benefit @ @ @ @ @ @ @ way that the governor does that is through the annual transportation budget .
In Maryland , it ’ s called the consolidated transportation program .
It ’ s a rolling budget that the governor puts out every year that ’ s supposed to last for six years .
What I found through an extensive look at those documents was that there were a number of instances in which he advanced projects that were right nearby properties he owned .
One thing to make clear is that it is the governor ’ s authority @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the transportation budget .
I spoke to a number of former and current officials in Maryland ’ s department of transportation and it ’ s very clear , nothing can move up in the transportation budget without the governor ’ s signing off on it at the very least .
One of the first big things he did in 2015 upon taking office , as you say , was he killed the Red Line .
That was a $ 2.9 billion project , aim to bring mass transit to Baltimore .
There was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of thousands dollars in sunken cost .
It was already put into the construction program by Hogan ’ s predecessor , Martin O ’ Malley , and it had a $ 900 million guarantee in federal aid from the Obama administration .
The governor killed that program , killed that , the Red Line , and by doing that , he freed up a lot of money to spend on roads , highways , and bridges .
One of the first things he did was he greenlit the construction of an interchange in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 58 million for that project to go forward .
That was a decision that he made .
Meanwhile , he ’ s got a number of real estate interest right nearby .
He had a parcel of land right down the road and since then , he has increased his investment and also increased other projects in the area , including a new bridge , embankments , a park and ride , et cetera .
So you know , as the Hogan administration has indeed investing heavily in transportation infrastructure in Brandywine , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ through his private real estate business .
There are other instances too .
He bought a property , a parcel of land in Hyattsville , Maryland in 2015 .
Come 2017 , he approved $ 23.5 million in road and sidewalk improvements right next to it , essentially , on Maryland Route 500 .
That was something that he did .
One thing he also did was in between running in between his election and assuming office , he went and bought a parcel of land from the state highway administration , which @ @ @ @ @ @ @ complex and a residential facility .
Now it ’ s advertised on a site that he ’ s brokering at for $ 2.4 million .
What the story really did was get into the specifics of transportation decisions he made that benefited his private real estate business while in office .
Jaisal Noor : Hogan says … he hadn ’ t spoken with me directly , but through his administration , he says he ’ s complied with ethics laws , that his companies are in a trust and that he hasn ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ personally approved any of these road projects .
That ’ s what his response has been to your reporting , how did your reporting flesh out ?
What did you find ?
Or those things stack up ?
Eric C. : Well , the first thing that he hasn ’ t made the decisions , you know , I had a Maryland Department of Transportation officials say that that wasn ’ t true , that it didn ’ t pass the laugh test .
Warren Deschenaux , who is the long time director @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Services called it a “ ridiculous assertion ” because the governor has the most broadest , most powerful authority over transportation compared to any other governor in the nation because they have the sole authority to move projects up or down on the consolidated transportation program , as I said .
Maryland Department of Transportation officials say , no , that ’ s not true .
The governor did sign off on these decisions .
Someone told me on background the notion that he doesn ’ t make decisions , by the way @ @ @ @ @ @ @ while in office .
He ’ s taken … first of all , a tooth fairy didn ’ t kill the Red Line , right ?
Governor Hogan did .
Second of all , the governor took credit for advancing the Purple Line into construction and that had been an engineering under the O ’ Malley administration .
It only went into construction because the governor made that decision .
It ’ s the same principle with all of these other decisions .
His communications director said that to me when I ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ since it ’ s come out he hasn ’ t been repeating that claim and I think there ’ s a reason for that .
So there ’ s that .
If you look at the ethics disclosure forms , there ’ s a lot of information that ’ s not there that state legislators that I talked to said they needed to know before voting on this transportation project and unwittingly approving projects that were going to boost the profits of the governor ’ s private real estate business .
So for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ t know on governor ’ s financial disclosure form .
He lists the LLCs that he has ownership in , but he doesn ’ t list the specific properties that they ’ re involved with or the dates of acquisition .
That ’ s a really big problem , right ?
Because all it is is a schedule of the 43 LLCs he has ownership man , but we don ’ t actually know what properties that they are involved with .
You have to do a lot of digging and there @ @ @ @ @ @ @ you don ’ t know even if you do comb through public land records because of course a bit of the minority owner in a property that ’ s only going to be in an LLC operating agreement , it ’ s not going to be in the public land records .
The other thing is that one thing that the Hogan administration does is it acts as a broker on deals and what that means is that he ’ s bringing in a lot of private income on undisclosed brokerage fees .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ the real estate business in Maryland in a whole host of ways .
He gives out contracts for a whole bunch of different projects , including like on the Brandywine interchange .
He gave it to Facchina Construction , which was a big campaign contributor .
But a concern that I heard from legislators and Maryland government officials past and present was that he is getting paid by real estate developers all across the state and the public doesn ’ t know who they are .
What contracts have they gotten , what @ @ @ @ @ @ @ things that we don ’ t know .
What it really just shows is that there is a vacuum , a hole in the state ethics laws or the disclosure requirements that could make sure that the government isn ’ t using his public office for personal financial gain .
Jaisal Noor : Hmm .
Lisa , some have argued that … and a lot of them made about Hogan ’ s popularity and some have argued , and there was a recent piece in New Republic by Alex [ inaudible 00:09:58 ] @ @ @ @ @ @ @ he is willing to take resources from black neighborhoods in Baltimore that would have benefited from the Red Line and use that money to invest highways into some of the wealthiest suburban counties in the country .
At the same time while he ’ s claiming to believe in climate change , he ’ s expanding road infrastructure .
What are your thoughts on that ?
Eric C. : So yeah , I think that Larry Hogan is very much aware of racial tropes in this country , racial dog whistles .
You @ @ @ @ @ @ @ you know , when Donald Trump called Baltimore rat infested , it was very hard for us to , in Baltimore media here to get him to really refute that .
I think that Donald Trump said that on like a weekend , and he finally got around to saying something about it Monday .
He very much leans on heavy crime tropes and saying more policing after the uprising that happened following the death of Freddie Gray , he was willing to kind of let National Guard in and that ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ So , yeah , I think that it ’ s something that happened way before Larry Hogan was born .
This country ’ s kind of … in our DNA is the idea that people of color should have little and white people should have lots .
But I think it ’ s something that is right in his playbook and that he ’ s willing to very much use .
Jaisal Noor : Eric , how have lawmakers responded in the wake of this , in your story ?
Many people you @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the now Senate president said they weren ’ t aware of these conflicts when they voted on these transportation deals .
That was inside … that ’ s now Senate President Bill Ferguson .
I know he ’ s made some comments as well as the speaker of the house , Adrian Jones had made comments on what the legislator , the general assembly is going to do as far as tackling these possible ethics violations .
At the same time , they still need to work together with Hogan to get their @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
I mean it ’ s one thing to note is that we go into this session with two new presiding officers who don ’ t have the same sort of institutional knowledge that their predecessors had had and that would have been beneficial to dealing with revelations such as this .
The reaction that I heard from legislators was that they didn ’ t really know .
You know , they knew that he had a real estate business but they didn ’ t know the extent to which he had made @ @ @ @ @ @ @ I know that there are a bunch of them who would like to see an investigation from the general assembly .
Speaker of the House , Adrian Jones , and indicated that a subcommittee was going to look into this and it was also going to be forward thinking when reviewing the more recent transportation budget that is going to be released today .
Senator Bill Ferguson , who when I spoke to him was extremely alarmed and wanted an investigation from the general assembly , now he ’ s saying he believes @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the state ethics commission .
But I know that there are many members of both the Senate and the house caucus who are concerned about this and want follow-up and want questions that are going to be answered .
You saw a number of them tweet that out the day the story came out , including Baltimore ’ s own , Brooke Lierman .
So I would expect there to be a lot more scrutiny on the current transportation budget that he ’ s proposing .
Whether or not there ’ s going @ @ @ @ @ @ @ pass decisions , I don ’ t know .
But I know that a bunch of legislators want this to be dealt with because it hasn ’ t in the past .
Jaisal Noor : All right , we ’ re almost out of time .
But Lisa , I wanted to end with you and ask you how does … talk about your thoughts and you ’ ve commented this a lot online , but your thoughts on , you know , obviously Eric ’ s great work here , but the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the state of Maryland specifically when it comes to challenging Governor Hogan and even following up and really asking those tough questions have we seen that happen in the press corps in the state ?
Lisa Snowden : I ’ ll start by saying the Maryland Matters piece was written by a former colleague of mine , Eric Erickson .
You know , kind of [ inaudible 00:14:10 ] City Paper guy .
The piece that he would have possibly written for City Paper , I ’ m sure would ’ ve been @ @ @ @ @ @ @ wrote from Maryland Matters .
Not saying nothing bad about Maryland Matters , but City Paper is kind of rooted in the more confrontational kind of journalism and the reason why Ed could not do that is because City Paper was closed .
So part of the things is that journalism is not what it once was .
You know , we have these shrinking newsrooms , we don ’ t have as many bodies on it , but also , you know , the people that we have on these stories now @ @ @ @ @ @ @ That makes for a weaker government for all of us .
The thing that I ’ m always going to rant about as any time you put a camera and microphone in front of me is the race factor .
It ’ s very interesting to me that that New Republic piece that you mentioned , I believe it calls him a crook in the headline .
You don ’ t ever , you very rarely see … .
Jaisal Noor : The most popular crook in American .
Lisa Snowden : Yes @ @ @ @ @ @ @ you don ’ t always often hear about rich white men being called crooks .
Look at the way that this is being covered or not being covered versus here in Baltimore when Catherine Pugh was recently called to the carpet for her involvement with her Healthy Holly books , the book that she was kind of selling to maybe do some more , you know , garner money or favor .
It ’ s very different .
We had the same local press camped out at our house , camped out everywhere @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
I think that you have to say if we ’ re looking at a press that ’ s mostly white , how do you cover somebody who looks like you versus someone who looks very foreign to you ?
How do you cover someone that you ’ re like , “ I can look at them and understand their background and kind of give them the benefit of the doubt , ” versus someone that you know nothing about , that you ’ re born in this racist country that already tells @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , shiftless .
I think that that ’ s a factor there .
Jaisal Noor : Especially when its impacts , these policies are disproportionately impacting working residents of the city and other working class neighborhoods across the state .
Well , I want to thank you both for joining us , Eric Cortellessa .
We ’ ll link to your piece , Who Does Maryland ’ s governor Really Worked For on our website .
Thanks so much for joining us .
Lisa , it ’ s always a pleasure having you @ @ @ @ @ @ @ having us .

Eric Cortellessa and Lisa Snowden discuss new allegations that Larry Hogan siphoned money from public transit projects to build highways that benefited his real estate companies.
Story Transcript
This is a rush transcript and may contain errors. It will be updated.
Jaisal Noor: Welcome to The Real News. I’m Jaisal Noor. Maryland governor Larry Hogan is a popular Republican in a deeply Democratic state who believes in climate change, has criticized Donald Trump, and handily won reelection in the 2018 midterms, where Democrats made major gains. But Hogan and Trump do have at least one thing in common besides being Republicans, of course, corruption, because they both use their positions of power for personal gain, argues the Washington Monthly’s Eric Cortellessa. Hogan steered millions in state road construction money to areas where his company owned property whose values were certain to rise. Like Trump, hogan has given control of his companies to close relatives, his brother. The Hogan administration says he complied with state ethics laws because he was never personally involved in decisions approving the projects. But Cortellessa writes at least one government official disputes these claims saying it “doesn’t pass the laugh test.”
While the governor has expanded highways to the benefit of suburban land owners like himself, he killed the multibillion dollar Red Line, a huge blow to Baltimore’s working class black neighborhoods, which have endured disinvestment for generations. The NAACP’s civil rights lawsuit against the cancellation of the Red Line was dismissed by the Trump administration.
Well now joining us to discuss this is Eric Cortellessa of the Washington Monthly, author of the piece Who Does Maryland’s Governor Really Work For? Larry Hogan has more in common with Donald Trump than his reputation suggests. And our own Lisa Snowden who also runs the Baltimore Beat. Thank you both for joining us.
Eric C.: Good to be here.
Jaisal Noor: So Eric, you spent months reporting on this article and you acknowledge you built on reporting the other publications sort of started, but you took it further than other places had before. Talk about what you found in this piece over this course of months you spent on it.
Eric C.: Sure, sure. Well before I had started, there were really two main articles that had been written about the governor’s real estate business, one in Maryland Matters and one in the Baltimore Sun. Maryland Matters story came first and that really built off of financial disclosure forms that the governor had submitted to the state ethics commission, which included sort of the real estate LLCs that are subsidiaries of the Hogan company, that if you went through public land records you could find some of the properties that they own. There are limits to that, by the way, because LLCs are notoriously non-transparent, they’re cloaked in secrecy. The only public information about an LLC is its resident agent. You don’t know who the partners are, you don’t know what the operating agreement entails, and you certainly don’t know if they are the minority owner and a property. So there’s a lot that we don’t know about the governor’s real estate business.
But what the Maryland Matters story did was it laid out the LLCs that he had ownership of at the time, story came out in 2018, and included some concerns from Democrats and a few ethics experts about the arrangement. The governor had not put his real estate holdings in a blind trust, the governor put his brother in charge of the company, and the governor obviously has a great deal of executive authority when it comes to transportation and other matters — giving out government contracts, et cetera.
So what my story did was it really delved into the very specific transportation decisions the governor made that had posed to benefit his real estate company. The main way that the governor does that is through the annual transportation budget. In Maryland, it’s called the consolidated transportation program. It’s a rolling budget that the governor puts out every year that’s supposed to last for six years. What I found through an extensive look at those documents was that there were a number of instances in which he advanced projects that were right nearby properties he owned.
One thing to make clear is that it is the governor’s authority to move projects up or down in the transportation budget. I spoke to a number of former and current officials in Maryland’s department of transportation and it’s very clear, nothing can move up in the transportation budget without the governor’s signing off on it at the very least.
One of the first big things he did in 2015 upon taking office, as you say, was he killed the Red Line. That was a $2.9 billion project, aim to bring mass transit to Baltimore. There was a lot of … there was hundreds of thousands dollars in sunken cost. It was already put into the construction program by Hogan’s predecessor, Martin O’Malley, and it had a $900 million guarantee in federal aid from the Obama administration. The governor killed that program, killed that, the Red Line, and by doing that, he freed up a lot of money to spend on roads, highways, and bridges.
One of the first things he did was he greenlit the construction of an interchange in Brandywine, Maryland. He allocated $58 million for that project to go forward. That was a decision that he made. Meanwhile, he’s got a number of real estate interest right nearby. He had a parcel of land right down the road and since then, he has increased his investment and also increased other projects in the area, including a new bridge, embankments, a park and ride, et cetera. So you know, as the Hogan administration has indeed investing heavily in transportation infrastructure in Brandywine, he’s also been investing heavily through his private real estate business.
There are other instances too. He bought a property, a parcel of land in Hyattsville, Maryland in 2015. Come 2017, he approved $23.5 million in road and sidewalk improvements right next to it, essentially, on Maryland Route 500. That was something that he did.
One thing he also did was in between running in between his election and assuming office, he went and bought a parcel of land from the state highway administration, which he’s now developing into apartment complex and a residential facility. Now it’s advertised on a site that he’s brokering at for $2.4 million.
What the story really did was get into the specifics of transportation decisions he made that benefited his private real estate business while in office.
Jaisal Noor: Hogan says … he hadn’t spoken with me directly, but through his administration, he says he’s complied with ethics laws, that his companies are in a trust and that he hasn’t approved, he hasn’t personally approved any of these road projects. That’s what his response has been to your reporting, how did your reporting flesh out? What did you find? Or those things stack up?
Eric C.: Well, the first thing that he hasn’t made the decisions, you know, I had a Maryland Department of Transportation officials say that that wasn’t true, that it didn’t pass the laugh test. Warren Deschenaux, who is the long time director of the Annapolis’ Department of Legislative Services called it a “ridiculous assertion” because the governor has the most broadest, most powerful authority over transportation compared to any other governor in the nation because they have the sole authority to move projects up or down on the consolidated transportation program, as I said.
Maryland Department of Transportation officials say, no, that’s not true. The governor did sign off on these decisions. Someone told me on background the notion that he doesn’t make decisions, by the way, belies a million things he said while in office. He’s taken … first of all, a tooth fairy didn’t kill the Red Line, right? Governor Hogan did. Second of all, the governor took credit for advancing the Purple Line into construction and that had been an engineering under the O’Malley administration. It only went into construction because the governor made that decision. It’s the same principle with all of these other decisions.
His communications director said that to me when I’ve been reporting the story, but since it’s come out he hasn’t been repeating that claim and I think there’s a reason for that. So there’s that. If you look at the ethics disclosure forms, there’s a lot of information that’s not there that state legislators that I talked to said they needed to know before voting on this transportation project and unwittingly approving projects that were going to boost the profits of the governor’s private real estate business.
So for instance, here are things you don’t know on governor’s financial disclosure form. He lists the LLCs that he has ownership in, but he doesn’t list the specific properties that they’re involved with or the dates of acquisition. That’s a really big problem, right? Because all it is is a schedule of the 43 LLCs he has ownership man, but we don’t actually know what properties that they are involved with. You have to do a lot of digging and there’s a lot of stuff that you don’t know even if you do comb through public land records because of course a bit of the minority owner in a property that’s only going to be in an LLC operating agreement, it’s not going to be in the public land records.
The other thing is that one thing that the Hogan administration does is it acts as a broker on deals and what that means is that he’s bringing in a lot of private income on undisclosed brokerage fees. The governor is in charge of regulating the real estate business in Maryland in a whole host of ways. He gives out contracts for a whole bunch of different projects, including like on the Brandywine interchange. He gave it to Facchina Construction, which was a big campaign contributor.
But a concern that I heard from legislators and Maryland government officials past and present was that he is getting paid by real estate developers all across the state and the public doesn’t know who they are. What contracts have they gotten, what favors have they gotten? These are things that we don’t know. What it really just shows is that there is a vacuum, a hole in the state ethics laws or the disclosure requirements that could make sure that the government isn’t using his public office for personal financial gain.
Jaisal Noor: Hmm. Lisa, some have argued that … and a lot of them made about Hogan’s popularity and some have argued, and there was a recent piece in New Republic by Alex [inaudible 00:09:58] who argued he is popular precisely because he is willing to take resources from black neighborhoods in Baltimore that would have benefited from the Red Line and use that money to invest highways into some of the wealthiest suburban counties in the country. At the same time while he’s claiming to believe in climate change, he’s expanding road infrastructure. What are your thoughts on that?
Eric C.: So yeah, I think that Larry Hogan is very much aware of racial tropes in this country, racial dog whistles. You see that in the way that, you know, when Donald Trump called Baltimore rat infested, it was very hard for us to, in Baltimore media here to get him to really refute that. I think that Donald Trump said that on like a weekend, and he finally got around to saying something about it Monday. He very much leans on heavy crime tropes and saying more policing after the uprising that happened following the death of Freddie Gray, he was willing to kind of let National Guard in and that’s something that he even ran on. So, yeah, I think that it’s something that happened way before Larry Hogan was born. This country’s kind of … in our DNA is the idea that people of color should have little and white people should have lots. But I think it’s something that is right in his playbook and that he’s willing to very much use.
Jaisal Noor: Eric, how have lawmakers responded in the wake of this, in your story? Many people you spoke to, including the current, the now Senate president said they weren’t aware of these conflicts when they voted on these transportation deals. That was inside … that’s now Senate President Bill Ferguson. I know he’s made some comments as well as the speaker of the house, Adrian Jones had made comments on what the legislator, the general assembly is going to do as far as tackling these possible ethics violations. At the same time, they still need to work together with Hogan to get their agenda passed.
Eric C.: Right. I mean it’s one thing to note is that we go into this session with two new presiding officers who don’t have the same sort of institutional knowledge that their predecessors had had and that would have been beneficial to dealing with revelations such as this. The reaction that I heard from legislators was that they didn’t really know. You know, they knew that he had a real estate business but they didn’t know the extent to which he had made decisions that posed conflicts of interest. I know that there are a bunch of them who would like to see an investigation from the general assembly. Speaker of the House, Adrian Jones, and indicated that a subcommittee was going to look into this and it was also going to be forward thinking when reviewing the more recent transportation budget that is going to be released today.
Senator Bill Ferguson, who when I spoke to him was extremely alarmed and wanted an investigation from the general assembly, now he’s saying he believes it’s under the purview of the state ethics commission. But I know that there are many members of both the Senate and the house caucus who are concerned about this and want follow-up and want questions that are going to be answered. You saw a number of them tweet that out the day the story came out, including Baltimore’s own, Brooke Lierman. So I would expect there to be a lot more scrutiny on the current transportation budget that he’s proposing. Whether or not there’s going to be a backward looking investigation into pass decisions, I don’t know. But I know that a bunch of legislators want this to be dealt with because it hasn’t in the past.
Jaisal Noor: All right, we’re almost out of time. But Lisa, I wanted to end with you and ask you how does … talk about your thoughts and you’ve commented this a lot online, but your thoughts on, you know, obviously Eric’s great work here, but the lack of this sort of reporting in the state of Maryland specifically when it comes to challenging Governor Hogan and even following up and really asking those tough questions have we seen that happen in the press corps in the state?
Lisa Snowden: I’ll start by saying the Maryland Matters piece was written by a former colleague of mine, Eric Erickson. You know, kind of [inaudible 00:14:10] City Paper guy. The piece that he would have possibly written for City Paper, I’m sure would’ve been very different than the piece that he wrote from Maryland Matters. Not saying nothing bad about Maryland Matters, but City Paper is kind of rooted in the more confrontational kind of journalism and the reason why Ed could not do that is because City Paper was closed. So part of the things is that journalism is not what it once was. You know, we have these shrinking newsrooms, we don’t have as many bodies on it, but also, you know, the people that we have on these stories now have to be worried about access. That makes for a weaker government for all of us.
The thing that I’m always going to rant about as any time you put a camera and microphone in front of me is the race factor. It’s very interesting to me that that New Republic piece that you mentioned, I believe it calls him a crook in the headline. You don’t ever, you very rarely see ….
Jaisal Noor: The most popular crook in American.
Lisa Snowden: Yes, and that’s shocking because you don’t always often hear about rich white men being called crooks. Look at the way that this is being covered or not being covered versus here in Baltimore when Catherine Pugh was recently called to the carpet for her involvement with her Healthy Holly books, the book that she was kind of selling to maybe do some more, you know, garner money or favor. It’s very different. We had the same local press camped out at our house, camped out everywhere, camped out at her consignment shop. I think that you have to say if we’re looking at a press that’s mostly white, how do you cover somebody who looks like you versus someone who looks very foreign to you? How do you cover someone that you’re like, “I can look at them and understand their background and kind of give them the benefit of the doubt,” versus someone that you know nothing about, that you’re born in this racist country that already tells you black people are bad, lazy, shiftless. I think that that’s a factor there.
Jaisal Noor: Especially when its impacts, these policies are disproportionately impacting working residents of the city and other working class neighborhoods across the state.
Well, I want to thank you both for joining us, Eric Cortellessa. We’ll link to your piece, Who Does Maryland’s governor Really Worked For on our website. Thanks so much for joining us. Lisa, it’s always a pleasure having you on.
Lisa Snowden: Great.
Eric C.: Thanks for having us.
Lisa Snowden: Thank you.
Studio: Cameron Granadino, Adam Coley, Will Arenas, Bababtunde Ogunfolaju
Production: Genevieve Montinar, Bababtunde Ogunfolaju
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therealnews--2020-01-16--$600M Property Tax Overcharge Is Eroding Detroit’s Black Homeownership

This is a rush transcript and may contain errors .
It will be updated .
Jacqueline L. : This is Jacqueline Luqman with The Real News Network .
The 2008 recession spurred by the subprime mortgage lending scandal hit Americans hard , but none were as hard hit as African Americans and African American homeowners in particular .
As time has gone by and the country has claimed recovery from the recession , African American homeowners didn ’ t see much of that recovery .
As a matter of fact , they were left with 12 % loss in home @ @ @ @ @ @ @ around 12 % of home equity and African American homeowners lost half of their wealth .
African Americans have not only never recovered from the 2008 recession , but many continue to suffer lingering damage from it .
Here to talk with me about what is happening to homeowners in Detroit as one of the lingering after effects of the 2008 recession , is Mark Betancourt .
Mark is a freelance reporter based in Washington DC and contributed to a groundbreaking report that was published in Detroit News this week about this issue @ @ @ @ @ @ @ joining me today .
Mark Betancourt : Thanks for having me .
Jacqueline L. : Mark , how did you become involved in doing this investigation into the property tax issue in Detroit ?
And how did you go about your investigation ?
Mark Betancourt : Well , believe it or not , back in the summer of 2017 , I actually heard about the tax foreclosure crisis in Detroit because a friend of mine who had just moved there posted on Facebook something about tax foreclosure .
And the first thing I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
I didn ’ t even know that a property could be seized by the government for not paying taxes , just the same way that a bank can seize a property for not paying a mortgage .
So I started looking into it and I came across all this research and reporting that people had already done showing that there were actually significantly over assessed taxes that had contributed to this massive foreclosure crisis in Detroit .
Since 2008 , about a third of the properties in the city of Detroit have @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s since 2008 .
So it ’ s just a massive number of properties and it ’ s been this massive kind of rolling , revolving problem where properties that get taken away from their owners stand vacant for awhile , and started to crumble or they burned down or they get destroyed one way or another .
And so there ’ s just this continual , perpetual destruction , physical destruction of the city as well as people losing their homes .
So I got into it when I pitched a story @ @ @ @ @ @ @ couple of stories for Vice News about that and just had learned so much that I wanted to do something for the local news .
I want to do something for the local outlets so that people there would really have something to use going forward to understand the situation better .
I got together with a reporter at the Detroit News , their investigative reporter , Christine McDonald , who has been covering this issue for years and knows everything there is to know about it .
And I connected with Christine @ @ @ @ @ @ @ do to really quantify this problem in a way that hadn ’ t been done before .
And the main thing that was missing was people didn ’ t have a sense of how overtaxed they were .
Everyone who got a tax bill in Detroit is starting in about 2010 , probably had a sense that things had bottomed out and yet their tax bill hadn ’ t really gone down .
The median sale price in Detroit lost about 75 % of value , so the median sales went down by @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of years , between 2006 and 2009 .
The city didn ’ t lower the property assessments that it uses to base tax bills .
So people were still getting tax bills essentially based on pre-crash home values or homes that in a lot of cases had lost the vast majority of their value in a very short period of time .
The city did gradually , year by year try to reduce values .
And then by 2017 , the state had actually gotten involved and essentially required them , forced them @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the city , which hadn ’ t been done for 50 years essentially .
And once they ’ d done that , they had what they believed to be much more correct values to use .
And so what we did was we sort of took that as a baseline .
We said , “ Okay , if the 2017 values are more accurate , looking back to the previous years before that 2010 to 2016 , can we judge the accuracy of those home assessments based on the 2017 reappraised value ?
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ we created this sort of a rough estimate of how overtaxed people were .
Jacqueline L. : So Mark , just to give us an understanding of how large , wide , deep , how incredibly massive this problem is , how much is the estimated over tax burden for residents in Detroit between this period of time ?
Mark Betancourt : So in the aggregate , all together , we estimated that between 2010 and 2016 , the city over taxed people by more than $ 600 million , and that ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ We believe that our estimate is conservative for a number of reasons .
So that ’ s an at least number .
It was probably quite a bit worse than that in real life .
Jacqueline L. : Okay .
So I know when people are hearing that number , probably their mouths are dropping and they ’ re probably wondering how does a city that knows its property values had been reduced by 70 % over a period of three years , continue to overtax its residents to the tune of at @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ?
How did this happen ?
Mark Betancourt : So a number of things were happening in the city of Detroit starting around the time of the recession .
There were a number of scandals , a number of mismanagement scandals at the city government level .
And then obviously you had the crash , which was devastating to the city .
And then you had bankruptcy .
The city went into the largest municipal bankruptcy in American history in 2013 .
And leading up to that , there was just a massive @ @ @ @ @ @ @ actually looking at not even be able to make its payroll at some point .
And so they had this kind of continually losing the resources that they were using in the assessor ’ s office , which is the part of the government that sets these home values to determine what tax bills should be .
They ’ ve just had very little to work with .
They had a lack of expertise in their staff .
They had terrible , terrible records during that time .
And so they really just @ @ @ @ @ @ @ even really knowing what they had in terms of city values .
And were really struggling to do anything that was even remotely accurate during that time .
Jacqueline L. : So this is a situation where maybe there wasn ’ t nefarious intent like there was with the subprime lending crisis that led to the recession that affected so many people , especially in Detroit .
But this was a case of a city that city officials who were actually trying to make their way through the recession as it affected them @ @ @ @ @ @ @ overwhelmed with their own financial problems , they really dropped the ball on notifying the homeowners of how this situation affected them .
Is that pretty much accurate ?
Mark Betancourt : That ’ s accurate .
Just to be clear there , there is a process to appeal assessments in place in the state of Michigan .
People do have a right to challenge the assessments that the city sets , but that ’ s a process that we were told by the former city assessor who conducted this reappraisal , was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ state that the assessor ’ s office was at the time , if everybody in the city , which we calculated to be over 90 % of the homeowners in the city , had come in to challenge their assessments , they wouldn ’ t have been able to handle that volume of appeals .
So in that sense , whether or not the city let people know that this was happening and people had a pretty good sense that it was happening , there wasn ’ t a whole lot they can @ @ @ @ @ @ @ process is difficult .
It ’ s hard to do without a lawyer and a lot of times it takes months .
So a lot of people didn ’ t even know they could do that .
Does that answer your question ?
Jacqueline L. : Yes .
That absolutely answers one question , but then the other question I have is , back to the responsibility of the city , the city knowing that even though it ’ s facing bankruptcy and facing other financial problems , at some point did it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that the city of Detroit could have done or should ’ ve done to notify residents and to provide assistance for them ?
And at what point do you think the city was aware of just how big this issue was before this independent assessor made his assessment ?
Or do you think they were aware of just how big this overtaxation bill was before your investigation ?
Mark Betancourt : I do think that they probably had a pretty good sense .
From the people I ’ ve talked to , they @ @ @ @ @ @ @ didn ’ t have a good handle on the values and what the value should be .
A lot of people would say during that time it was also very difficult .
There were a lot of what we call distressed sales during that time , which is foreclosures , homes selling for much less than they would normally be worth in a normal market , and it just really threw off the assessor ’ s office , even trying to figure out how do we set values here .
That said , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ all had to deal with that after the housing crisis and they were struggling with it more than others , for longer than others and really just didn ’ t have the capacity to do that job .
I also want to point out that the city had responsibility for setting the assessments in the first place , but both Wayne County has direct oversight over that assessment process .
It ’ s their responsibility to point out if there are inequities in the assessment roles .
It ’ s also the state @ @ @ @ @ @ @ all of the assessor ’ s office in Detroit and make sure that people are being taxed fairly .
And we actually spoke to the former chair of the state tax commission , Doug Roberts , who expressed regret that they didn ’ t act sooner and that they didn ’ t really know about it until my colleague Christine McDonald at the Detroit News started reporting on it in the newspaper .
He really felt like that was not the way to find out about it .
Jacqueline L. : Hmm .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ didn ’ t feel like that was the way he should have found out about the job that he was responsible for doing .
That ’ s very interesting .
So Mark , some Detroit residents have already lost their homes because of this overtaxation .
They couldn ’ t pay the tax bills that were assessed on their homes at values that were at pre-recession levels .
Even if people bought their homes at a price that was post recession , let ’ s say a resident , someone bought a home @ @ @ @ @ @ @ at $ 60,000 , but the post recession cost was $ 6,000 , $ 7,000 , they may have bought it at auction .
Because the property was still taxed at the pre-recession value , people didn ’ t realize that the bill was incorrect and some people fell behind and they lost their homes and they did not know that there was assistance for them .
Is there any recourse for the people who have already lost their homes through this period of time ?
Mark Betancourt : The short answer is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ lose your home to tax foreclosure is , as you alluded to and gets sold in a tax auction or it gets offered at least in a tax auction .
If it ’ s sold , someone else owns it now .
And so a lot of times what happens is that investors buy in the auction and then they basically take the people who are living in those houses and turn them into renters .
They say , “ Hey , you lost your house .
Do you want to just start @ @ @ @ @ @ @ now.
” So that ’ s happened to a lot of people , but that deed belongs to someone else now .
The other thing that happens is , if the property is not sold in the tax auction , the city of Detroit basically inherits it .
They own it as part of an entity called the Detroit Land Bank , and they actually now own a third of the city .
The city owns a third of itself because of that process , basically just filling up the land bank with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ lives in anymore .
So that ’ s where maybe there may be some room for the city to do something .
If somebody has lost their home and it ’ s ended up in the land bank and it ’ s still a livable home , it ’ s possible that the land bank would be able to come up with some way to return those properties to people , but that has not been figured out yet at this stage .
In general , people who have already lost their homes @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ You ’ re not going to get those back.
” But I think another important thing is , there are a lot of people who still owe tax debt .
There ’ s a vast amount of tax debt out there that both the city and Wayne County have tried to come up with ways to help people pay off that debt .
And before , they haven ’ t really had a way to reduce that debt given that it was inflated to begin with .
And I do want to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ County just recently announced a new payment plan program where at least for the poorest homeowners who qualify based on their income , it would potentially wipe out a significant amount of the debt , not all of it , but a significant amount of the debt for those homeowners .
It remains to be seen how many of those people will be able to qualify for that and sign up for it and time to make use of it before they ’ re foreclosed , if they are at risk of foreclosure @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and the County are saying at this point is their best option to try to address this .
Jacqueline L. : It ’ s good that the city and the County are doing something to help current homeowners meet this unfair tax obligation .
But it would seem that they would extend the deadline or provide more latitude for people , considering how long they ’ ve let this situation fester .
But Mark , I want to ask you , you just said that this program is for the poorest residents .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ in Detroit who are affected by this issue ?
I ’ m familiar with Detroit , but I don ’ t want to be presumptuous , but I feel like this is an issue that has affected predominantly African American homeowners who believe that owning a home was their gateway to the American dream and amassing some type of legacy to leave to their offspring and children .
Am I correct in that ?
What are the demographics of who is affected by this terrible situation in Detroit ?
Mark Betancourt : No @ @ @ @ @ @ @ city is pushing 80 % black .
Most of the homeowners in the city are African American .
There ’ s also been research to the effect that people in a majority African American neighborhoods have been 10 times more likely to be at risk of tax foreclosure , which means they carry tax debt than people in other neighborhoods .
So it is absolutely something that is disproportionately affecting African Americans in the city .
It ’ s also the poorest big city in the nation .
And the poverty rate in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ about one in three Detroiters that lives in poverty .
And so there are really people who are making decisions , really , really tough decisions about what bills to pay and what to pay for at any given month , any given week .
And part of the problem with tax debt is that the County doesn ’ t foreclose on a property until it ’ s been delinquent for three years .
And so when you ’ re making decisions about food , that ’ s something that can wait .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ allow this tax debt to build up .
And it does gather interest .
If you ’ re not on one of the county ’ s payment plans , the debt actually gathers interest at 18 % a year .
And so people can really rack up massive debts that they really have no hope of paying unless they get on top of it early .
And because partly because people ’ s taxes were so over assessed to begin with , a lot of people never have the chance to pay off @ @ @ @ @ @ @ hope for is to kind of spin their wheels on one of these payment plans and keep paying what they can to avoid foreclosure .
Jacqueline L. : This is a pretty massive problem in Detroit that you worked on investigating and uncovering .
Do you have a sense that this kind of an issue is not isolated to Detroit ?
Maybe not of this magnitude , but do you have a sense that this isn ’ t unusual ?
Mark Betancourt : What happened in Detroit really is the result of a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ massive disasters that really , I think very few other American cities have experienced .
So many things happening all at once from government mismanagement , to the crisis hitting particularly hard there , to really these sort of like interlocking things of what state the assessor ’ s office was in at the time and the bankruptcy happening at the same time .
There are very few places where all those things happened at once and those things all really ganged up on Detroit to create the situation that we see now @ @ @ @ @ @ @ city that ’ s struggling with poverty , with a large portion of its homeowners in poverty could experience a similar perfect storm .
Maybe the factors would be different , maybe there would be other things that would compromise the city ’ s ability to function , but the truth is that unless we are all vigilant about our property taxes and we always understand what ’ s going into them , these things can happen .
It ’ s a complex issue .
It took us years , Christine , my @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to really track down how this has worked and who ’ s responsible and how to even quantify it .
And so it ’ s a lot to expect a homeowner to understand that .
And I think in that way , we have to kind of be more conscious of how we ’ re holding our governments to account for how they tax us given that this sort of thing can happen .
Jacqueline L. : Well , I really appreciate the incredible work that you and Christine have done on this @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
I hope that the information that came forward will be a benefit to not just residents of Detroit , but like you said , anyone who is living in poverty and is not sure about how they ’ re being taxed as far as their property is concerned , to give them a heads up to take a closer look and to inform them on how to ask what questions of their elected officials in these issues .
So Mark Betancourt , thank you so much for joining me today .
Mark @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Appreciate it .
Jacqueline L. : And thank you for watching .
This is Jacqueline Luqman with The Real News Network in Washington DC .

African-American homeowners in Detroit don’t just face lingering damage from the 2008 recession. The city is suffering from a foreclosure crisis after overcharging homeowners $600 million in property taxes.
Story Transcript
This is a rush transcript and may contain errors. It will be updated.
Jacqueline L.: This is Jacqueline Luqman with The Real News Network. The 2008 recession spurred by the subprime mortgage lending scandal hit Americans hard, but none were as hard hit as African Americans and African American homeowners in particular. As time has gone by and the country has claimed recovery from the recession, African American homeowners didn’t see much of that recovery. As a matter of fact, they were left with 12% loss in home equity compared to white homeowners who lost around 12% of home equity and African American homeowners lost half of their wealth. African Americans have not only never recovered from the 2008 recession, but many continue to suffer lingering damage from it.
Here to talk with me about what is happening to homeowners in Detroit as one of the lingering after effects of the 2008 recession, is Mark Betancourt. Mark is a freelance reporter based in Washington DC and contributed to a groundbreaking report that was published in Detroit News this week about this issue. Mark, thanks so much for joining me today.
Mark Betancourt: Thanks for having me.
Jacqueline L.: Mark, how did you become involved in doing this investigation into the property tax issue in Detroit? And how did you go about your investigation?
Mark Betancourt: Well, believe it or not, back in the summer of 2017, I actually heard about the tax foreclosure crisis in Detroit because a friend of mine who had just moved there posted on Facebook something about tax foreclosure. And the first thing I did was I Google the tax foreclosure. I didn’t even know that a property could be seized by the government for not paying taxes, just the same way that a bank can seize a property for not paying a mortgage.
So I started looking into it and I came across all this research and reporting that people had already done showing that there were actually significantly over assessed taxes that had contributed to this massive foreclosure crisis in Detroit.
Since 2008, about a third of the properties in the city of Detroit have actually been tax foreclosed, that’s since 2008. So it’s just a massive number of properties and it’s been this massive kind of rolling, revolving problem where properties that get taken away from their owners stand vacant for awhile, and started to crumble or they burned down or they get destroyed one way or another. And so there’s just this continual, perpetual destruction, physical destruction of the city as well as people losing their homes.
So I got into it when I pitched a story to Vice News. I did a couple of stories for Vice News about that and just had learned so much that I wanted to do something for the local news. I want to do something for the local outlets so that people there would really have something to use going forward to understand the situation better.
I got together with a reporter at the Detroit News, their investigative reporter, Christine McDonald, who has been covering this issue for years and knows everything there is to know about it. And I connected with Christine to just find out what could we do to really quantify this problem in a way that hadn’t been done before. And the main thing that was missing was people didn’t have a sense of how overtaxed they were. Everyone who got a tax bill in Detroit is starting in about 2010, probably had a sense that things had bottomed out and yet their tax bill hadn’t really gone down. The median sale price in Detroit lost about 75% of value, so the median sales went down by about 75% just in a couple of years, between 2006 and 2009. The city didn’t lower the property assessments that it uses to base tax bills. So people were still getting tax bills essentially based on pre-crash home values or homes that in a lot of cases had lost the vast majority of their value in a very short period of time.
The city did gradually, year by year try to reduce values. And then by 2017, the state had actually gotten involved and essentially required them, forced them to reappraise every single individual property in the city, which hadn’t been done for 50 years essentially. And once they’d done that, they had what they believed to be much more correct values to use.
And so what we did was we sort of took that as a baseline. We said, “Okay, if the 2017 values are more accurate, looking back to the previous years before that 2010 to 2016, can we judge the accuracy of those home assessments based on the 2017 reappraised value?” And so that’s how we created this sort of a rough estimate of how overtaxed people were.
Jacqueline L.: So Mark, just to give us an understanding of how large, wide, deep, how incredibly massive this problem is, how much is the estimated over tax burden for residents in Detroit between this period of time?
Mark Betancourt: So in the aggregate, all together, we estimated that between 2010 and 2016, the city over taxed people by more than $600 million, and that’s at least $600 million. We believe that our estimate is conservative for a number of reasons. So that’s an at least number. It was probably quite a bit worse than that in real life.
Jacqueline L.: Okay. So I know when people are hearing that number, probably their mouths are dropping and they’re probably wondering how does a city that knows its property values had been reduced by 70% over a period of three years, continue to overtax its residents to the tune of at least $600 million for this long? How did this happen?
Mark Betancourt: So a number of things were happening in the city of Detroit starting around the time of the recession. There were a number of scandals, a number of mismanagement scandals at the city government level. And then obviously you had the crash, which was devastating to the city. And then you had bankruptcy. The city went into the largest municipal bankruptcy in American history in 2013. And leading up to that, there was just a massive hemorrhage of resources. The city was actually looking at not even be able to make its payroll at some point. And so they had this kind of continually losing the resources that they were using in the assessor’s office, which is the part of the government that sets these home values to determine what tax bills should be. They’ve just had very little to work with. They had a lack of expertise in their staff. They had terrible, terrible records during that time. And so they really just were kind of casting about, not even really knowing what they had in terms of city values. And were really struggling to do anything that was even remotely accurate during that time.
Jacqueline L.: So this is a situation where maybe there wasn’t nefarious intent like there was with the subprime lending crisis that led to the recession that affected so many people, especially in Detroit. But this was a case of a city that city officials who were actually trying to make their way through the recession as it affected them. And because they were just so overwhelmed with their own financial problems, they really dropped the ball on notifying the homeowners of how this situation affected them. Is that pretty much accurate?
Mark Betancourt: That’s accurate. Just to be clear there, there is a process to appeal assessments in place in the state of Michigan. People do have a right to challenge the assessments that the city sets, but that’s a process that we were told by the former city assessor who conducted this reappraisal, was hired to conduct this reappraise that the state that the assessor’s office was at the time, if everybody in the city, which we calculated to be over 90% of the homeowners in the city, had come in to challenge their assessments, they wouldn’t have been able to handle that volume of appeals. So in that sense, whether or not the city let people know that this was happening and people had a pretty good sense that it was happening, there wasn’t a whole lot they can necessarily do about it and that appeals process is difficult. It’s hard to do without a lawyer and a lot of times it takes months. So a lot of people didn’t even know they could do that. Does that answer your question?
Jacqueline L.: Yes. That absolutely answers one question, but then the other question I have is, back to the responsibility of the city, the city knowing that even though it’s facing bankruptcy and facing other financial problems, at some point did it seem to you that there was more that the city of Detroit could have done or should’ve done to notify residents and to provide assistance for them? And at what point do you think the city was aware of just how big this issue was before this independent assessor made his assessment? Or do you think they were aware of just how big this overtaxation bill was before your investigation?
Mark Betancourt: I do think that they probably had a pretty good sense. From the people I’ve talked to, they had a pretty good sense that they didn’t have a good handle on the values and what the value should be. A lot of people would say during that time it was also very difficult. There were a lot of what we call distressed sales during that time, which is foreclosures, homes selling for much less than they would normally be worth in a normal market, and it just really threw off the assessor’s office, even trying to figure out how do we set values here. That said, assessor’s offices around the country all had to deal with that after the housing crisis and they were struggling with it more than others, for longer than others and really just didn’t have the capacity to do that job.
I also want to point out that the city had responsibility for setting the assessments in the first place, but both Wayne County has direct oversight over that assessment process. It’s their responsibility to point out if there are inequities in the assessment roles. It’s also the state tax commission’s responsibility to oversee all of the assessor’s office in Detroit and make sure that people are being taxed fairly. And we actually spoke to the former chair of the state tax commission, Doug Roberts, who expressed regret that they didn’t act sooner and that they didn’t really know about it until my colleague Christine McDonald at the Detroit News started reporting on it in the newspaper. He really felt like that was not the way to find out about it.
Jacqueline L.: Hmm. That’s interesting, that he didn’t feel like that was the way he should have found out about the job that he was responsible for doing. That’s very interesting.
So Mark, some Detroit residents have already lost their homes because of this overtaxation. They couldn’t pay the tax bills that were assessed on their homes at values that were at pre-recession levels. Even if people bought their homes at a price that was post recession, let’s say a resident, someone bought a home that was valued at a pre-recession value at $60,000, but the post recession cost was $6,000, $7,000, they may have bought it at auction. Because the property was still taxed at the pre-recession value, people didn’t realize that the bill was incorrect and some people fell behind and they lost their homes and they did not know that there was assistance for them. Is there any recourse for the people who have already lost their homes through this period of time?
Mark Betancourt: The short answer is no. Essentially what happens when you lose your home to tax foreclosure is, as you alluded to and gets sold in a tax auction or it gets offered at least in a tax auction. If it’s sold, someone else owns it now. And so a lot of times what happens is that investors buy in the auction and then they basically take the people who are living in those houses and turn them into renters. They say, “Hey, you lost your house. Do you want to just start renting from me because I own it now.” So that’s happened to a lot of people, but that deed belongs to someone else now.
The other thing that happens is, if the property is not sold in the tax auction, the city of Detroit basically inherits it. They own it as part of an entity called the Detroit Land Bank, and they actually now own a third of the city. The city owns a third of itself because of that process, basically just filling up the land bank with these properties that in most cases nobody lives in anymore. CORRECTION: The estimation that Detroit owns 1/3 of all property through the Detroit Land Bank was quoted in error. The more accurate estimate is that the Land Bank represents 1/4 of the total property of the city.]
So that’s where maybe there may be some room for the city to do something. If somebody has lost their home and it’s ended up in the land bank and it’s still a livable home, it’s possible that the land bank would be able to come up with some way to return those properties to people, but that has not been figured out yet at this stage.
In general, people who have already lost their homes, the city is telling them, “You’re not going to get those back.” But I think another important thing is, there are a lot of people who still owe tax debt. There’s a vast amount of tax debt out there that both the city and Wayne County have tried to come up with ways to help people pay off that debt. And before, they haven’t really had a way to reduce that debt given that it was inflated to begin with.
And I do want to point out that the city and the County just recently announced a new payment plan program where at least for the poorest homeowners who qualify based on their income, it would potentially wipe out a significant amount of the debt, not all of it, but a significant amount of the debt for those homeowners. It remains to be seen how many of those people will be able to qualify for that and sign up for it and time to make use of it before they’re foreclosed, if they are at risk of foreclosure. But that is what the city and the County are saying at this point is their best option to try to address this.
Jacqueline L.: It’s good that the city and the County are doing something to help current homeowners meet this unfair tax obligation. But it would seem that they would extend the deadline or provide more latitude for people, considering how long they’ve let this situation fester.
But Mark, I want to ask you, you just said that this program is for the poorest residents. What are the demographics of the people in Detroit who are affected by this issue? I’m familiar with Detroit, but I don’t want to be presumptuous, but I feel like this is an issue that has affected predominantly African American homeowners who believe that owning a home was their gateway to the American dream and amassing some type of legacy to leave to their offspring and children. Am I correct in that? What are the demographics of who is affected by this terrible situation in Detroit?
Mark Betancourt: No, you’re right. The city is pushing 80% black. Most of the homeowners in the city are African American. There’s also been research to the effect that people in a majority African American neighborhoods have been 10 times more likely to be at risk of tax foreclosure, which means they carry tax debt than people in other neighborhoods. So it is absolutely something that is disproportionately affecting African Americans in the city.
It’s also the poorest big city in the nation. And the poverty rate in Detroit is about a third, so about one in three Detroiters that lives in poverty. And so there are really people who are making decisions, really, really tough decisions about what bills to pay and what to pay for at any given month, any given week. And part of the problem with tax debt is that the County doesn’t foreclose on a property until it’s been delinquent for three years. And so when you’re making decisions about food, that’s something that can wait. And so a lot of times people allow this tax debt to build up. And it does gather interest. If you’re not on one of the county’s payment plans, the debt actually gathers interest at 18% a year. And so people can really rack up massive debts that they really have no hope of paying unless they get on top of it early. And because partly because people’s taxes were so over assessed to begin with, a lot of people never have the chance to pay off everything they owe. All they can hope for is to kind of spin their wheels on one of these payment plans and keep paying what they can to avoid foreclosure.
Jacqueline L.: This is a pretty massive problem in Detroit that you worked on investigating and uncovering. Do you have a sense that this kind of an issue is not isolated to Detroit? Maybe not of this magnitude, but do you have a sense that this isn’t unusual?
Mark Betancourt: What happened in Detroit really is the result of a perfect storm, just many interlocking and massive disasters that really, I think very few other American cities have experienced. So many things happening all at once from government mismanagement, to the crisis hitting particularly hard there, to really these sort of like interlocking things of what state the assessor’s office was in at the time and the bankruptcy happening at the same time. There are very few places where all those things happened at once and those things all really ganged up on Detroit to create the situation that we see now.
That said, I think any city that’s struggling with poverty, with a large portion of its homeowners in poverty could experience a similar perfect storm. Maybe the factors would be different, maybe there would be other things that would compromise the city’s ability to function, but the truth is that unless we are all vigilant about our property taxes and we always understand what’s going into them, these things can happen. It’s a complex issue. It took us years, Christine, my partner at the Detroit News even longer to really track down how this has worked and who’s responsible and how to even quantify it. And so it’s a lot to expect a homeowner to understand that. And I think in that way, we have to kind of be more conscious of how we’re holding our governments to account for how they tax us given that this sort of thing can happen.
Jacqueline L.: Well, I really appreciate the incredible work that you and Christine have done on this investigation and what you’ve revealed. I hope that the information that came forward will be a benefit to not just residents of Detroit, but like you said, anyone who is living in poverty and is not sure about how they’re being taxed as far as their property is concerned, to give them a heads up to take a closer look and to inform them on how to ask what questions of their elected officials in these issues.
So Mark Betancourt, thank you so much for joining me today.
Mark Betancourt: Thanks for having me. Appreciate it.
Jacqueline L.: And thank you for watching. This is Jacqueline Luqman with The Real News Network in Washington DC.
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This is a rush transcript and may contain errors .
It will be updated .
Taya Graham : Hi , I ’ m Taya Graham , and I ’ m a reporter for The Real News Network .
It was a milestone that received little attention , but could have big implications .
For only the second time , women outnumber men in the US workforce .
In fact , women now represent 50 % of the entire population of people who are employed .
But what is driving this trend , and what does this historic milestone say about @ @ @ @ @ @ @ finally , will this pattern lead to something that has proved elusive for American workers despite years of supposed economic gains , better pay , and working conditions for both men and women ?
Bear in mind , the US still maintains one of the worst gender wage gaps in the world , ranking 53rd for pay equity worldwide between women and men , so should we be concerned that bringing women into the workplace in greater numbers is all part of an effort to drive down wages and lower costs ?
Well @ @ @ @ @ @ @ what this means and the implications for all workers , I ’ m joined by professor Katherine Moos .
She teaches economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and is a member of PERI , the Political Economy Research Institute .
She has also won several prestigious awards , most recently the Edith Henry Johnson Memorial Award In Economics .
Professor Moos , thank you so much for joining us .
Katherine Moos : Thank you for having me .
Pleasure is all mine .
Taya Graham : So , do you think @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in the workforce is an indication of the beginning of an economic crisis ?
Now , I know that sounds odd , but for example , the first time that women outnumbered men in the workforce was during the Great Depression , and then again in the Great Recession of 2008 , so is this change a sign of possible economic crisis ?
Katherine Moos : I wouldn ’ t say that an increase in the ratio of women in the workforce to men is an indicator of an oncoming recession .
What @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a reflection of deeper structural changes that have been taking place in our economy for some time , as well as persistent sex segmentation in the labor market .
We still have women being segmented into traditionally female type of jobs and men into more male type of jobs , and we ’ re seeing that there ’ s an expansion in sectors like healthcare and education and retail , which are traditionally female , and then a contraction or stagnation in some of the male sectors , like mining .
We ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ ve seen no major increase in some other male sectors .
So I wouldn ’ t be interpreting this as an indication of an oncoming recession , more that there are deeper structural changes going on in the economy for some time .
Taya Graham : You know , it ’ s interesting that you were talking about industries like healthcare expanding and teaching .
During the economic crisis of 2008 , more men lost their jobs because of women .
Is this because employers are holding onto low-paid workers , most @ @ @ @ @ @ @ more high-earning employees ?
Is this because employers are retaining low-paid women ?
Why do you think that ’ s happening ?
Katherine Moos : That can certainly happen within a firm or within an industry , that employers will hold on to the low-wage workers and let go of some of the higher-earning workers , but what we ’ re seeing in this most recent jobs report is that it ’ s really happening between sectors , so I wouldn ’ t interpret it as all of the high-wage workers are being @ @ @ @ @ @ @ certain sectors are just not growing , and these happen to be the sectors that are traditionally considered male or masculine .
These are the ones that are more prone to outsourcing , whereas things like healthcare and education and retail really have to be done here if we want people to retain the benefits of them .
If we want people to be able to hire someone to provide healthcare in their home , they have to be here , whereas some of the more masculine jobs are being outsourced .
Taya @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the key takeaways from this economic expansion is that wage growth has been slow despite good jobs numbers .
How do you see this playing out for workers in general , especially minimum wage workers ?
Katherine Moos : Yes , so we do see in this recent job report that the greatest expansion of jobs is in low-wage jobs , and we see this with increases in jobs in retail , which tend to be low-wage , other lower-paying jobs in the healthcare sector like home healthcare aides , other types of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ course minimum wage policy will have an effect in the sense that it puts upward pressure on wages overall if we ’ re able to really secure a decent toolbar in terms of wages .
Taya Graham : You know , one thing that ’ s interesting in terms of the recent jobs growth is that women have really been driving these numbers .
More women are coming into the job market .
What do you think is driving this trend ?
Like for example , is it technology apps like Lyft that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was previously male-only , like cab driving ?
Katherine Moos : There is some evidence that women are joining some fields like driving , for example , because they feel more comfortable because of the apps .
It may also reflect some changes in what we consider to be a male or a female job .
It may no longer be the case that only men drive cabs .
Whether or not that has everything to do with the platform or the app remains to be seen , or if it reflects sort @ @ @ @ @ @ @ around who gets to drive cabs .
Taya Graham : Now , as women are entering the workplace , how much do you think this has to do with the workplace becoming more flexible ?
I mean , are women making inroads that are actually changing the nature of the workplace ?
For example , more people are working remotely now .
Do you think this flexibility is because of women and women being in senior positions ?
Katherine Moos : I think that increased flexibility which benefits workers , because there ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , flexibility that benefits workers can be a very useful way to attract and retain women workers both in higher-level management positions as well as more junior-level workers .
I think one of the constraints for women in the workforce today and for some time is the need to balance bread-winning and caregiving activities , and I think as our society starts to reckon with this and starts to create policies that really make it possible for people , not just women , people of all genders , to balance their paid and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ women in the workforce .
I think more official policies are being put in place that allow people to work from home , to telecommute , to make flexible hours , and these are all a really good thing .
Taya Graham : Now , African-American women have always been part of the workplace and have not struggled to be in the workplace , but instead have struggled to have the economic wherewithal to be able to stay at home with children or as caregivers .
Do you think these numbers are any @ @ @ @ @ @ @ what do these numbers mean for women of color ?
Katherine Moos : That ’ s a great question .
I think the idea that women are joining the workforce in greater numbers is a really complicated one .
In some ways , it might reflect changes in our society .
Women have gained greater access to higher education , greater access to jobs .
As you say , women of color have always been working .
They ’ ve always needed to earn income as well as do unpaid care work , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ complicated story , of course , when you take race into account .
It ’ s not just the story of female empowerment and getting the corner office , it ’ s also the story of continually needing to bring home an income to support themselves and their families , and so the fact that there ’ s growth in low-wage work I think doesn ’ t bode well for the idea that women of color are necessarily gaining from this .
They may just be sort of holding on to the labor @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for some time and the need to support their families through their earned incomes .
Taya Graham : You know , professor , something you touched on earlier was healthcare and education and how they were both big contributors to job growth for women .
Are the numbers of women in the job force increasing because of the growth of these industries , or is it more complicated than that ?
Because some people have argued that there ’ s sort of like a loss of prestige for , quote , women ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ or nursing .
Is that why there ’ s room for growth in these industries , or is it something different ?
Katherine Moos : That ’ s an interesting question .
I think that there is growth in these industries .
I mean , as the population ages , we have greater healthcare needs .
As we make expansions in education , we need to hire more teachers .
But I do think that the point about what is the prestige level of these jobs is an important one .
I don @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a loss in prestige .
I think there ’ s this sort of continual issue in terms of getting the respect and the prestige and the high pay that these jobs really do deserve , so I think it ’ s more of a persistent problem than losing a prestige .
Taya Graham : Now , here ’ s my last question for you .
The World Economic Forum predicted it would take over one hundred years for the wage gap between men and women to close in the US , so what @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the US government to improve the score of the US and its ranking in the World Economic Forum so we don ’ t have to wait another hundred years for parity as the forum predicts ?
What would you suggest the US government take on this policy ?
Katherine Moos : Yes .
Well , I ’ m not willing to wait a hundred years , I think you aren ’ t either , so I think first , we need to create a lot of policies that will help families balance @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that I mean major public investments in daycare , in pre-K , in school-aged programs , to help families with children .
We need major public investments in care for elderly people , for people with illness , people who are have disabilities , so that women and other people in the family don ’ t have to drop out of the labor force to care for people in their family .
That ’ s one thing is major investments in things like education and care .
The next would be a set @ @ @ @ @ @ @ allow people , men and women , to take time off when they do need to care for themselves or for their families but [ inaudible 00:11:15 ] still able to maintain this income .
There should both be care that is provided by the society as well as make it possible to provide it by the family .
So those are the first two things .
Next , there are some great policies that a number of places have adopted , my home state of Massachusetts being the first , that make @ @ @ @ @ @ @ history of prospective- Katherine Moos : This is a very important way to level the playing field .
If people come in with an work history of lower wages because maybe they ’ ve been discriminated in the past , or they are leaving a sector of low wages , that former pay shouldn ’ t follow them , right ?
So making it illegal to ask prospective employees what their salary history is is a very important policy .
Finally , my final recommendation would be to strengthen the role of unions @ @ @ @ @ @ @ when people are able to bargain collectively , when workers are able to demand better wages , there ’ s greater parity and greater fairness between men and women and between people of different races when unions are strong and when rights for collective bargaining are strong .
Taya Graham : Professor Moos , thank you so much for your economic insights .
We really appreciate them , and I hope the US government takes you up on some of your suggestions .
Katherine Moos : Thanks so much .
Taya Graham : @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Graham , and I ’ m your host .
Thank you for joining me for The Real News Network .

Katherine Moos discusses December’s employment data, which shows that for the second time in history women outnumber men in the U.S. workforce. The first time was during the Great Depression. Women still earn less than men, so by hiring more women employers are saving on payroll expenses.
Story Transcript
TAYA GRAHAM: Hi. I’m Taya Graham and I’m a reporter for The Real News Network.
It was a milestone that received little attention but could have big implications. For only the second time in the past decade, women outnumber men in the US workforce. In fact, women now represent 50% of the entire population of people who are employed. But what is driving this trend, and what does this historic milestone say about the job market in general? And finally, will this pattern lead to something that has proved elusive for American workers despite years of supposed economic gains, better pay, and working conditions for both men and women?
Bear in mind, the US still maintains one of the worst gender wage gaps in the world, ranking 53rd for pay equity worldwide between women and men, so should we be concerned that bringing women into the workplace in greater numbers is all part of an effort to drive down wages and lower costs?
Well, to help me drill down on what this means and the implications for all workers, I’m joined by professor Katherine Moos. She teaches economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and is a member of PERI, the Political Economy Research Institute. She has also won several prestigious awards, most recently the Edith Henry Johnson Memorial Award In Economics. Professor Moos, thank you so much for joining us.
KATHERINE MOOS: Thank you for having me. Pleasure is all mine.
TAYA GRAHAM: So, do you think the increase in the ratio of women in the workforce is an indication of the beginning of an economic crisis? Now, I know that sounds odd, but for example, the first time that women outnumbered men in the workforce was during the Great Depression, and then again in the Great Recession of 2008, so is this change a sign of possible economic crisis?
KATHERINE MOOS: I wouldn’t say that an increase in the ratio of women in the workforce to men is an indicator of an oncoming recession. What I would say is that it is a reflection of deeper structural changes that have been taking place in our economy for some time, as well as persistent sex segmentation in the labor market.
We still have women being segmented into traditionally female type of jobs and men into more male type of jobs, and we’re seeing that there’s an expansion in sectors like healthcare and education and retail, which are traditionally female, and then a contraction or stagnation in some of the male sectors, like mining. We’ve seen a decrease, and we’ve seen no major increase in some other male sectors. So I wouldn’t be interpreting this as an indication of an oncoming recession, more that there are deeper structural changes going on in the economy for some time.
TAYA GRAHAM: You know, it’s interesting that you were talking about industries like healthcare expanding and teaching. During the economic crisis of 2008, more men lost their jobs because of women. Is this because employers are holding onto low-paid workers, most of them women, and then firing more high-earning employees? Is this because employers are retaining low-paid women? Why do you think that’s happening?
KATHERINE MOOS: That can certainly happen within a firm or within an industry, that employers will hold on to the low-wage workers and let go of some of the higher-earning workers, but what we’re seeing in this most recent jobs report is that it’s really happening between sectors, so I wouldn’t interpret it as all of the high-wage workers are being let go so much as evidence that certain sectors are just not growing, and these happen to be the sectors that are traditionally considered male or masculine.
These are the ones that are more prone to outsourcing, whereas things like healthcare and education and retail really have to be done here if we want people to retain the benefits of them. If we want people to be able to hire someone to provide healthcare in their home, they have to be here, whereas some of the more masculine jobs are being outsourced.
TAYA GRAHAM: You know, one of the key takeaways from this economic expansion is that wage growth has been slow despite good jobs numbers. How do you see this playing out for workers in general, especially minimum wage workers?
KATHERINE MOOS: Yes, so we do see in this recent job report that the greatest expansion of jobs is in low-wage jobs, and we see this with increases in jobs in retail, which tend to be low-wage, other lower-paying jobs in the healthcare sector like home healthcare aides, other types of lower-paid healthcare workers, and so of course minimum wage policy will have an effect in the sense that it puts upward pressure on wages overall if we’re able to really secure a decent toolbar in terms of wages.
TAYA GRAHAM: You know, one thing that’s interesting in terms of the recent jobs growth is that women have really been driving these numbers. More women are coming into the job market. What do you think is driving this trend? Like for example, is it technology apps like Lyft that allow women to enter a field that was previously male-only, like cab driving?
KATHERINE MOOS: There is some evidence that women are joining some fields like driving, for example, because they feel more comfortable because of the apps. It may also reflect some changes in what we consider to be a male or a female job. It may no longer be the case that only men drive cabs. Whether or not that has everything to do with the platform or the app remains to be seen, or if it reflects sort of other cultural changes in our society around who gets to drive cabs.
TAYA GRAHAM: Now, as women are entering the workplace, how much do you think this has to do with the workplace becoming more flexible? I mean, are women making inroads that are actually changing the nature of the workplace? For example, more people are working remotely now. Do you think this flexibility is because of women and women being in senior positions?
KATHERINE MOOS: I think that increased flexibility which benefits workers, because there’s also flexibility that benefits the employer, flexibility that benefits workers can be a very useful way to attract and retain women workers both in higher-level management positions as well as more junior-level workers. I think one of the constraints for women in the workforce today and for some time is the need to balance bread-winning and caregiving activities.
And I think as our society starts to reckon with this and starts to create policies that really make it possible for people, not just women, people of all genders, to balance their paid and unpaid responsibilities, we will see more women in the workforce. I think more official policies are being put in place that allow people to work from home, to telecommute, to make flexible hours, and these are all a really good thing.
TAYA GRAHAM: Now, African-American women have always been part of the workplace and have not struggled to be in the workplace, but instead have struggled to have the economic wherewithal to be able to stay at home with children or as caregivers. Do you think these numbers are any different for them, or basically, what do these numbers mean for women of color?
KATHERINE MOOS: That’s a great question. I think the idea that women are joining the workforce in greater numbers is a really complicated one. In some ways, it might reflect changes in our society. Women have gained greater access to higher education, greater access to jobs. As you say, women of color have always been working. They’ve always needed to earn income as well as do unpaid care work, and so it’s a more complicated story, of course, when you take race into account.
It’s not just the story of female empowerment and getting the corner office, it’s also the story of continually needing to bring home an income to support themselves and their families, and so the fact that there’s growth in low-wage work I think doesn’t bode well for the idea that women of color are necessarily gaining from this. They may just be sort of holding on to the labor force participation they’ve been doing for some time and the need to support their families through their earned incomes.
TAYA GRAHAM: You know, professor, something you touched on earlier was healthcare and education and how they were both big contributors to job growth for women. Are the numbers of women in the job force increasing because of the growth of these industries, or is it more complicated than that? Because some people have argued that there’s sort of like a loss of prestige for, quote, women’s jobs, like elementary school teaching or nursing. Is that why there’s room for growth in these industries, or is it something different?
KATHERINE MOOS: That’s an interesting question. I think that there is growth in these industries. I mean, as the population ages, we have greater healthcare needs. As we make expansions in education, we need to hire more teachers. But I do think that the point about what is the prestige level of these jobs is an important one. I don’t know that there’s a loss in prestige. I think there’s this sort of continual issue in terms of getting the respect and the prestige and the high pay that these jobs really do deserve, so I think it’s more of a persistent problem than losing a prestige.
TAYA GRAHAM: Now, here’s my last question for you. The World Economic Forum predicted it would take over one hundred years for the wage gap between men and women to close in the US, so what do you think should be the policy of the US government to improve the score of the US and its ranking in the World Economic Forum so we don’t have to wait another hundred years for parity as the forum predicts? What would you suggest the US government take on this policy?
KATHERINE MOOS: Yes. Well, I’m not willing to wait a hundred years, I think you aren’t either, so I think first, we need to create a lot of policies that will help families balance their bread-winning and caregiving responsibilities. By that I mean major public investments in daycare, in pre-K, in school-aged programs, to help families with children. We need major public investments in care for elderly people, for people with illness, people who are have disabilities, so that women and other people in the family don’t have to drop out of the labor force to care for people in their family. That’s one thing is major investments in things like education and care.
The next would be a set of paid family leave policies that do allow people, men and women, to take time off when they do need to care for themselves or for their families but [inaudible 00:11:15] still able to maintain this income. There should both be care that is provided by the society as well as make it possible to provide it by the family. So those are the first two things. Next, there are some great policies that a number of places have adopted, my home state of Massachusetts being the first, that make it illegal for employers to ask salary history of prospective-
TAYA GRAHAM: Interesting.
KATHERINE MOOS: This is a very important way to level the playing field. If people come in with an work history of lower wages because maybe they’ve been discriminated in the past, or they are leaving a sector of low wages, that former pay shouldn’t follow them, right? So making it illegal to ask prospective employees what their salary history is is a very important policy.
Finally, my final recommendation would be to strengthen the role of unions and collective bargaining. We know that when people are able to bargain collectively, when workers are able to demand better wages, there’s greater parity and greater fairness between men and women and between people of different races when unions are strong and when rights for collective bargaining are strong.
TAYA GRAHAM: Professor Moos, thank you so much for your economic insights. We really appreciate them, and I hope the US government takes you up on some of your suggestions.
KATHERINE MOOS: Thanks so much.
TAYA GRAHAM: Thank you. My name is Taya Graham and I’m your host. Thank you for joining me for The Real News Network.
Studio: Will Arenas, Taylor Hebden
Production: Genevieve Montinar, Taylor Hebden, Shir Hever
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