On August 5th, 2011, blogger Zach W at bloggingblue.com broke the news that Republican Jonathan Steitz rented his Kenosha, Wisconsin duplex to a registered sex offender last year. That sex offender was arrested in Wisconsin recently for failing to update his residency information with the state of Minnesota.
The Kenosha News reported last week that Steitz is now under investigation for violating a Kenosha ordinance prohibiting landlords from renting to registered sex offenders if the rental unit is within 2,500 feet of a school. The duplex is just over 1,000 feet from a Kenosha middle school. Steitz and his family lived in the duplex they own for a number of years, so they were well aware that it's near a school. The Steitzs currently reside in a rented home in Pleasant Prairie, Wisconsin.
Steitz is challenging Democratic incumbent State Senator Robert Wirch in an August 16th recall election.
Steitz claims that because the offender was originally charged as a minor and that court documents are sealed, he had no way of knowing about his tenant's past and that the tenant's sex crime did not turn up in a background check performed by the rental agent hired by Steitz.
Let's look at that claim.
The tenant, Karl Lindquist, moved into Steitz's rental unit in October, 2010, and was charged with non-compliance in June of this year. According to Steitz, Lindquist has since moved out of the duplex. Steitz says he was unaware of the sex offense record of his tenant until police notified Steitz in late May or early June, around the time Lindquist was arrested for failing to notify Minnesota officials of his new address.
I am going to go out on a limb and say that Steitz's is either lying about performing a background check, or that his agent lied to him about performing the background check, or that Steitz was made aware of Lindquist's criminal record and Steitz rented to Lindquist, anyway. The reason I say this is because Wisconsin court records are readily available to anyone with an internet connection and a computer. If Steitz's rental agent had performed a background check on Lindquist as Steitz claims, at a minimum they would have found out that Lindquist has at least three drunk driving convictions, a conviction of disorderly conduct/domestic abuse, and a judgment against him for $1,888.05 from Johnson Bank.
My best guess is that Steitz's agent never performed the background check. If one is desperate to rent out a duplex, one might overlook the violence and the serial drunk driving, but who would rent to someone with a judgment against him for not paying his bills?
Lindquist's Wisconsin criminal record takes about 10 seconds to discover. Every parent in Wisconsin knows how to do this because the first thing they do when their daughter brings home a new boyfriend is check him out on CCAP.
On that site, the person doing the alleged background check would have also found that one of Lindquist's former addresses was in Minnesota. That should have prompted a search of Minnesota's online records, which is where Zach W at bloggingblue found Lindquist's sex offender information, complete with photographs.
The conservative web site WisconsinReporter.com says they had a conversation with Steitz on Friday, August 12th:
“I had no way of knowing about it,” he said. “He still had the responsibility to register when he moved to Wisconsin. The police department contacted me, and I fully cooperated.”
“I’m the father of four young children, so the suggestion that I would knowingly rent to a sex offender is completely absurd.”
Bullshit.
Zach W figured it out in a few minutes. Granted, the Wisconsin arrest for sex offender non-compliance happened after Steitz rented to Lindquist, but the Minnesota records were available the whole time, as were the Wisconsin records for drunk driving and domestic abuse. In no case can Steitz credibly claim that Lindquist's Wisconsin criminal record was not available. More importantly, his claim that the Minnesota court records were sealed is totally irrelevant. Lindquist was on the Minnesota sex offender list which was available online to anyone - Steitz didn't need to see details of the crime. Lindquist is a registered sex offender. That's all Steitz needed to know in order to comply with Kenosha's ordinance.
Steitz is not an idiot, and he has no credibility claiming ignorance. He's a lawyer.
Maybe he can represent himself if he winds up facing a penalty for renting to a sex offender. According to the Kenosha News:
State Senate hopeful Jonathan Steitz is facing allegations he violated Kenosha’s sex offender residency ordinance when he rented an apartment to an out-of-state offender last year.
City Attorney Ed Antaramian said Tuesday that he will refer the matter to the Police Department for further investigation.
Steitz is either lying or negligent. Either one disqualifies him from holding public office, in my opinion.