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| Sacramento, California - The following is a letter to AHRC from CAI lawyer Beth Grimm, the CAI-CLAC lobbyist and publicist in Sacramento, and AHRC's response.
LETTER FROM BETH GRIMM
Publicist, lobbyist for Community Associations Institute & California Legiislative Action Committee - Sacramento, California
My name is Beth Grimm. I am a condo lawyer. You have discussed me on your site. You do not even know me or what I do.
I have not practiced collections law or done any liens, foreclosures or any other collection actions for more than at least 6 years.
I am one of the limited number of knowledgeable attorneys in CID law and practices that represent homeowners. I write and produce materials that are free to help homeowners and others who need to know the laws and cannot afford an attorney. I get grateful remarks and comments everyday on my site and the value of it.
You do not even know who I am. Yet you write incorrect statements about me. You are doing a disservice to the owners who are entitled to free, valuable information.
Beth Grimm
Contact information: Don't bother
AHRC RESPONSE TO BETH GRIMM'S LETTER
Dear Ms. Grimm:
As a full reply to your letter would require a book, AHRC will limit itself to a few main points.
For 15 years, homeowners from Orange County have been trying to defend their homes against the activities of you and other CAI-CLAC lawyer/lobbyists, who have consistently tried to write laws in order to strip us of our constitutional and property right. For example:
1. You lobbied Dan Hauser (D-Arcata), Chair of the Assembly Housing Committee, to introduce AB 1793 on behalf of CAI-CLAC to legalize non-judicial foreclosure for fines on arbitary rules that homeowner associations could conjure up. He was so much in your pockets that he refused to allow homeowners to provide either input or objections.
So we asked the media for coverage when we came to testify against AB 1793. When the cameras of a Sacramento TV station appeared at the hearing on AB 1793, Dan Hauser was so shocked that he shelved AB 1793. In fact, the fine and forecloure bill was never brought up again.
2. We then discovered that you and James Lingle were lobbying for AB 1545 which you had Julie Bornstein(D), Vice Chair of the Assembly Housing Committee, author for you to put assessment liens before the first trust deed. **
We received letters from both you and Lingle asking us to organize a meeting of our members so that both of you could fly down to explain why AB 1545 was "good for the homeowners". Instead, we joined the opposition by the bankers and informed all the lawmakers that AB 1545 would let you CAI lawyers walk away with the equity in a home for a few hudred dollars of delinquent dues. We also pointed out that banks would be highly reluctant to lend mortgages to homeowners in homeowner associations if their mortgage was not the first lien.
When four AHRC members were surpise guests at the CAI-CLAC luncheon you organized to give a plaque to Julie Bornstein on the day before she was to lobby the Assembly Committee for AB 1545, we wondered why you and Lingle, the two CAI-CLAC communication directors - suddenly appeared and sat down at our table.
That evening we were also at the banquet at Sutter's Club where you gave a plaque to Dan Hauser, and where a CAI director from Virginia regaled everybody with the CAI sucesses in California, and spoke of replicating the California sucesses in other States.
Next morning we watched and photographed the "CAI Day at the Capitol" - where you all lobbied lawmakers. Hauser and Bornstein and their consultants were whispering with CAI lobbyists in an auditorium full of dark suited CAI-CLAC lawyers and managers - all of whom piously asserted that they "represented homeowners" - while simultaneously pushing for anti-homeowner bills and ignoring what the three homeowners said.
In your fierce two year battle against the homeowners to pass AB 1545, you had managers using homeowner association newsletters to tell homeowners to flood lawmakers with calls to pass AB 1545. You told the homeowners they would be stuck with higher dues when the bank failed to pay their dues on the foreclosed homes. The homeowners and the lawmakers staff had no idea the bill would also put assessment liens before the first trust deed.
Ultimately, like AB 1793, AB1545 failed.
A pro-homeowner lawyer and a sheriff sent us the lists of Dan Hauser's political donors. Homeowners wrote to these donors to stop him from writing bills for CAI foreclosure lawyers. They told Hauser's donors that while he was a lawmaker from a district with very few homeowners associations, he was working with foreclosure lawyers from Orange County and Sacramento to write homeowner association laws to help the lawyers take homes and equity for lawyers fees.
3. Shortly after, you organized the industry battle against AB1317, the first homeownerr amendment to the Davis Stirling Act which we asked Jackie Speier (D) to author. The bill was gutted but it passed. You then put out a list of lawmakers who voted for the bill to target them.
4. You were an industry lobbyist of the industry-dominated Senate Housing Committee that Senator Barbara Lee set up to review the Davis Stirling Act. When the Wall Street Journal wrote an article about the only consumer member on the panel, you and CACM lobbyist Karen Conlon - who had never met the consumer member - wrote disparaging letters to the Wall Street Journal, attacking the consumer member. [and in turn were attacked by pro-homeowner lawyer and author Melvin Thomas and CHAMPEON , a Riverside County advovate group .
The CAI foreclosure lobbyists stacked Senator Lee's panel, and, along with you, attempted, to use the panel to write laws favorable to the HOA industry, e.g. auto-extend homeowner associations with sunset clauses, make member taping of homeowner association meeting illegal (to prevent homeowner having evidence that countered falsified association minutes.)
5. Homeowners and board members have complained about your involvement in elections, access to records, and rewrites of CCRs, and rules enforement.
6. After all this - and much more - are you by your letter trying to convince the public that you are now pro-homeowner? A leopard does not change its stripes us easily.
You say that you are making "materials that are free to help homeowners and others who need to know the laws and cannot afford an attorney". Is this really a device to secure more business for yourself? And are you,in significant part, explaining the shackles that you helped impose on homeowners? Are you still conspiring and organizing in the backrooms of the legislature, and misleading young reporters in the media?
James Lingle,who told us he's been involved in Sacramento legislaton since 1978, told Linda Rappotini of the Los Angeles Daily News that he authored "20 consumer protection bills for homeowners". Virtually all the bills that you and Lingle battled for in Sacramento for the past 15 years, were foreclosure industry protection bils.
Before informing Linda of the misleading quote about Lingle in her article, we asked Lingle for a list of the bills. He could only remember a handful which included AB 1545 which he called a "super lien homeowner protection bill." By no stretch of the imagination were these "consumer protection bills".
7. The Joint Committee on Boards, Commissions and Consumer Protection and the public were further deceived at the televised public hearings to determine whether Californians should be taxed for the new "educational" office, paneled by industry, that you have been promomoting for decades. Lingle, the CAI veteran lobbyist, a long time homeowner association foreclosure and contruction defect lawyer, appeared on the Joint Committee Public hearing panel as simply a "board member." Clearly, a lot of collusion between CAI lobbyists and legislative aides transpired to produce such a facade. That would be like naming somebody such as Jack Abramoff as an adviser to the government.
We have watched CAI lobbyists, lawyers and managers deceive lawmakers, judges, the media and the public, time after time, and then walk away, with our rights, equity and homes. These are the stories we will continue to record on AHRC.
In closing, please let us know what "incorrect statements" have been written about you on AHRC. Please tell us what you now actually do, as we know that lawyers do not work for free. If any fact we record is false, please provide us with the facts. We will, of course, make the necessary corrections.
Sincerely,
AHRC Staff
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FOOTNOTES:
** We designed a Christmas card with a Santa Houser Santa's elf Julie Bornstein riding a sleigh bearing gifts for CAI-CLAC lawyers and mailed it to all the California legislators media and our members. The card listed all the bills they were shepherding through the legislature for CAI that year. Lawmakers said they found the card on their desks when they returned from their Chistmas break.
We also began a radio program to inform California homeowner about pending bills, lawsuits and foreclosures because the local media (Jan Hickenbotton your sister lobbyist , a founder of CACM was the CID columnist at the Los Angeles Times then) was refusing to cover pending bills. |
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