Tax lien program comes under scrutiny

By Ed Runyan

Delinquent property taxes have fallen from $50 million to $10 million since 2000.

YOUNGSTOWN — Boardman real estate agent and township Trustee Kathy Miller told county commissioners Thursday she thinks the county’s delinquent tax lien sale program has outlived its usefulness and wants it to be ended.

Surprisingly, Mahoning County Treasurer Lisa Antonini, whose office started the program, says Miller may be right.

“After eight years, we may not need to use lien sales,” Antonini said later Thursday of the program former Treasurer John Reardon started in 2000. Her office evaluates all of its programs on an annual basis, she said, and could, in fact decide to discontinue the program after its next evaluation, she said.

Miller told commissioners Thursday at their regular meeting that the program has “had a devastating effect” on Mahoning County, especially because so many properties acquired through the program have gone to out-of-state investors who have failed to maintain the properties.

She said the treasurer’s office turned over the authority to recover delinquent property taxes to a for-profit company, American Tax Funding LLC of Florida, in 2000.

And with all of the liens that were sold to American Tax Funding and then to other out-of-state investors, concern for the properties or the neighborhoods around them has diminished compared to when local owners had them, she said.

She asked commissioners to halt the program and have it audited so that questions about its value can be answered.

Miller said the original goal of the program was good — to reduce the $50 million in property tax delinquencies on the books.

But now that the amount of delinquent taxes has fallen to around $10 million, using that method now is “like using an atomic bomb instead of a firecracker to solve the problem with unpaid taxes.”

Miller cited the example of a Springfield Township home worth about $70,000 with no mortgage in which the owner fell a couple of thousand dollars behind on her property taxes.

She learned that American Tax Funding had filed for foreclosure on the property to recover the delinquent taxes, meaning she faced the possibility of being removed from her house.

Miller says it seems to her that if the treasurer’s office were handling delinquent taxes the way it did before 2000, the woman would have been shown more consideration and not threatened with eviction over a relatively small amount of tax delinquency.

Antonini said something to understand about the process is that someone who falls behind on property taxes gets four warning letters over nine months before the lien is sold to American Tax Funding.

Then the homeowner gets one year before American Tax Funding can file foreclosure, Antonini said.

She added that the current delinquency program in place now has made it clear to property owners that they must pay the taxes or there will be consequences.

“I’m not going to apologize for a program that has worked,” Antonini said.

runyan@vindy.com