KeNo's Housing and Economic Portal: Friday December 24 Housing and Economic stories

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Oakland Mayor-Elect's Car Booted Over Parking Tickets - (www.ktvu.com) Oakland Mayor-elect Jean Quan (who is most likely lying out her teeth - see story below) said Wednesday the reason she accumulated several unpaid parking tickets and wound up having her car booted outside City Hall on Tuesday was because she was busy. Quan, who has been on the Oakland City Council for eight years and will become mayor on Jan. 3 after narrowly winning this month's election, said in a statement that, "Over the course of the last year, my family and I have been extraordinarily busy on my campaign." "During that time we accumulated several parking tickets," she said, adding that her husband, Dr. Floyd Huen, who handles the family's bills, "thought that we were reasonably current."

M&R: Coin toss settles Oakland city parking war - (www.sfgate.com) The great parking war between Oakland City Councilwomen Desley Brooks and Jean Quanover who gets the favored spot next to City Hall has been resolved with a coin toss - but not before everyone got in their two cents. For more than two months, Brooks and Quan had been battling over who would get to park closest to the City Hall door. For Brooks, however, the issue was much bigger than a few feet of asphalt - it involved principle and went "to the heart" of how the Oakland City Council functions, according to an e-mail she shot out to constituents after we broke the news of her crusade Monday. Brooks wrote that because she was elected to the council five months before Quan - although they were both sworn in together in January 2003 - the spot was hers by virtue of seniority.

Bank of America in Municipal Bid-Rigging Case Tip of Iceberg - (www.bloomberg.com) Bank of America Corp.’s agreement to pay $137 million in restitution for taking part in a nationwide bid-rigging conspiracy for municipal-investment contracts may soon be followed by more settlements to repay the scheme’s victims, the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division head said. “Stay tuned to this channel -- I think you will see a lot more activity in the coming weeks and months,” Christine Varney, the antitrust chief, told reporters yesterday. “We are committed to getting restitution, full restitution, to all the municipalities that were victims of this scheme.” Bank of America, which has assisted the government probe of the $2.8 trillion municipal-bond market since at least 2007 in return for leniency, has provided documents, e-mails and recordings of phone calls, according to court records of civil suits. In September, Douglas Lee Campbell, formerly employed by the bank’s municipal derivatives group, pleaded guilty to taking part in a conspiracy to pay state and local governments below- market rates on investments purchased with bond proceeds.

Caught by mistake in foreclosure web - (news.yahoo.com) Christopher Marconi was in the shower when he heard a loud banging on his door. By the time he grabbed a towel and hustled to his front step, a U.S. marshal's sedan was peeling out of his driveway. Nailed to Marconi's front door was a foreclosure summons from Wells Fargo, naming him as a defendant. But the notice was for a house Marconi had never seen — on a mortgage he never had. Tom Williams was in his kitchen thumbing through the mail when he opened a letter from GMAC. It informed him that the bank would confiscate his house unless he immediately paid off his mortgage balance of $276,000. But Williams had never missed a mortgage payment. And his loan wasn't due to mature until 2032. Warren Nyerges opened his front door in Naples, Fla., to find a scraggly-haired summons server standing on his stoop. He plopped a foreclosure notice from Bank of America in Nyerges' hands. But Nyerges had paid for his house in cash. And he'd never had a checking account, much less a mortgage, with Bank of America. By now, you may have heard the stories of bank robo-signers powering through hundreds of foreclosure affidavits a day without verifying a single fact. But most of those involved homeowners who had stopped paying their mortgage. They were genuine defaulters. Now a new species of homeowner is getting pushed into foreclosure hell.

"Irish People Owe Nothing To Banks, Billionaires" - (www.dailybail.com) Video and text from youtube page: Ireland faces the most severe welfare cuts and tax hikes in its history - the high price it has to pay for receiving an international bailout. The budget is about to face a parliamentary vote, with protesters gathered outside the Parliament building. But Socialist Party MEP, Joe Higgins believes the Irish financial system is already broken beyond repair.

Property tax error increases assessment - (www.wgnradio.com) It doesn't take a rocket scientist, or a real estate agent, to know property values aren't exactly soaring in today's troubled housing market. So you can imagine Michael Ensign's surprise when he opened his most recent property tax bill to find his two-bedroom condo in Chicago's Roscoe Village neighborhood had a slight jump in value. According to the Cook County Assessor's office, the 1,445-square-foot condo was worth $209,444 in 2008. Its value in 2009? A whopping $834,770. The impact on Ensign's taxes was predictably harsh. Last year, he paid $2,287.42 for his second-installment tax bill. This year's second installment was a heart-stopping $9,593.31. After picking his jaw up off the floor, Ensign began the frustrating task of trying to convince the county there had been a mistake. Ensign said he was told the reassessment had been conducted a year ago and his time to appeal the decision had long since passed. His only option, he was told, was to pay the $9,593.31 by the Dec. 13 due date, then appeal later. If he won his appeal, the county would issue a "certificate of error," then refund the overpayment, a process that could take months.