That slimy car dealer Tom Ganley, a self-funding teabagging millionaire who is trying to buy progressive congresswoman Betty Sutton’s seat (Oh-13), has been accused of sexual assault by a former supporter isn’t the only big story escaping from Ohio today. There’s another one with potentially greater impact on home owners, mortgage holders, and the entire residential real estate market.
Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner has asked Department of Justice to investigate the way mortgage documents have been notarized and has suggested that that could possible make the whole foreclosure process in Ohio illegal.
Her interest is two-fold: the Secretary of State’s office licenses notaries, and foreclosure and eviction affect people’s ability to vote. She has already issued a directive to deal with the latter.
She has posted on her SOS website about what she is doing and why:
http://www.sos.state.oh.us/...
She also has a long and very technical column today at Huffington Post that is worth reading if this issue concerns you:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
Some here will probably disagree mightily that Obama wisely engaged guys like Summers and Geithner because they knew how to “clip the wires so the bomb didn’t detonate,” in her words.
But you’ll likely agree with her that financial market’s sleight-of-hand trading with mortgages has had a devastating impact on homeowners, neighborhoods, and cities, and that the questionable mass notarization of mortgage documents greased the speculation while possibly skirting legality.
What really strikes me is how much all of our Democratic officeholders in Ohio have used their offices creatively to try to shore up the well-being of the state’s citizens. Treasurer Kevin Boyce has done it, working with businesses and individuals on programs that strengthen their financial solvency. Attorney General Richard Cordray has done it, suing giant corporations that have cheated citizens and winning hundreds of millions of dollars in settlements. And Jennifer has done it in her office, looking at ways to make voting easier and more transparent and to get voters engaged in the system — and now this.
I’ve been to two programs in the last two days for Maryellen O’Shaughnessy, the dynamic Democrat running to replace Jennifer so I’ve been thinking a lot about her opponent Jon Husted who seems to be expected by “everybody” to win — and what replacing someone like Jennifer with someone like him would mean for Ohio.
I cannot imagine any situation in which Husted would do what Jennifer is doing. In fact, he would do his best to overlook such potential fraud and shut down an investigation — perhaps because these big banks include some of his contributors and friends, who knows? He says he will actually unload the business services division onto the Department of Development, which Republican John Kasich, if he is elected governor, plans to privatize and turn over to corporate CEOs to run. The business services division provides 70% of the SOS office’s income, according to Maryellen, so this would make it virtually unable to oversee elections effectively. But who cares if you’re a Republican! Fair elections? Feh!
Jennifer Brunner will be leaving office in January (pray that she leaves it to Maryellen!), but I have a feeling we haven’t heard the last of her by a long shot. And I have a feeling we haven’t heard the last of these notarization irregularities she’s unearthed and their impact on the housing crash.