Greg Clarke Executive Director Up and Running Again
While the people backside the Issue 7 green-energy initiative on Tuesday's ballot have remained largely secretive, court records reveal that ii of their leaders accept been mired in major personal financial problems that take dogged them for the by fourteen years.
John A. Clarke Jr. and his wife, Irene Gil-Llamas, the married couple who are the key players backside the election measure, filed an unsuccessful multimillion-dollar bankruptcy during the 2007 housing crash. Court records from U.S. Bankruptcy Court, Southern District of Ohio, show the couple beingness hit with more a dozen foreclosure cases on properties they owned, including on their 5,500-square-foot, historic domicile on the Nearly East Side.
Result 7 in Columbus:Murky 'greenish energy' ballot initiative would take millions from Columbus upkeep
The current status of the debt – at one time listed in bankruptcy court filings at about $2.3 million – remains unclear. The couple's Chapter eleven bankruptcy cases were dismissed twice in federal courtroom in 2008. The second time the dismissal was "with prejudice" after they had failed to evidence up at court-scheduled hearings and provide requested disclosures, court records testify.
Without the protection of bankruptcy reorganization, foreclosure cases against the couple stretched into late 2011, months before they began their quest to command tens of millions in taxpayer dollars through what they have called "greenish energy" initiatives, kickoff at the state level, and now in Columbus.
$87 1000000 in city funds would be unregulated
If approved by voters Tuesday, Outcome vii would take a total of $87 million, or about eleven%, from the metropolis of Columbus general fund and put it in the control of a v-member group that calls itself ProEnergy Ohio. The group proposes to utilize $57 million of information technology for a "Clean Energy Partnership Fund" to subsidize electrical rates for city residents through dark-green free energy, but at ProEnergy's discretion.
The initiative besides says it would establish 3 funds which would be controlled by a majority of the petitioners on the ballot. One would be for "educational activity," i for "make clean free energy education and training" and 1 for "minority business enterprise." Each fund would become $ten million of city taxpayer coin, held by an unnamed entity the grouping would designate.
But the grouping's petition contains few specifics, and committee members and one of their attorneys have declined or failed to reply to repeated opportunities offered past The Acceleration to explain their programme and their intentions. In that location is no evidence that they have the experience or staffing to manage the funds or the programs listed in the election initiative.
One thing the petition does spell out is that ProEnergy Ohio would accept unregulated command over the urban center money. Fees the group could charge to administer the $87 million in funds are not capped.
From the Dispatch Editorial Board:Weaselly 'green free energy' group tries to con Columbus voters out of $87 million
How John Clarke and Irene Gil-Llamas ended up in bankruptcy
Bankruptcy records show that mortgage documents executed by Clarke and Gil-Llama also show a lack of controls that reflect the hallmarks of what eventually led to the nationwide housing market plummet that began in 2007: "cash-out" mortgages, open up-concluded mortgages, second mortgages, strict prepayment penalties, interest-merely adjustable borrowing plans that started out at one% but could increase up to 14.5%, and debt payments that could increase by upwardly to vii.5% per month.
The couple used these risky lending devices to assemble an inventory of rental properties, but their plan suddenly went belly-up with plunging holding values, documents indicate. They listed "secured liabilities," or debt backed by collateral, of more than $2 million, which included mortgages on 11 backdrop whose resale value had plunged to roughly one-half the amount they had borrowed.
Ten of the properties were rentals, their bankruptcy filing said, and listed 11 already "closed" foreclosure cases, and 4 properties that had been repossessed by creditors.
According to a motion in bankruptcy court that Clarke and Gil-Llamas filed, tenants and Legal Aid lawyers in Licking County had filed a lawsuit against them that "caused the economic failure of the real manor investments debtors made in Newark, Ohio. Mortgage lenders take pursued foreclosure actions to proceeds command of the Licking County real manor owned by debtors."
Records show the couple paid $72,000 for a Newark apartment building in 2005, merely declared its value at $twenty,000 but ii years after. It has since been torn downwardly.
According to the Licking County Clerk of Courts office, 10 foreclosure actions were filed against the couple in that county alone from February through April of 2007. All those cases are closed.
A full of $18,413 in credit card debt also was listed in the defalcation case. A 2008 filing in the case said Gil-Llamas received credit counseling "that outlined the opportunities for available credit counseling and assisted me in performing a related budget analysis."
More than recent filings in Franklin County Common Pleas Court against the couple were past the city and land for unpaid income taxes.
Couple defends Issue 7
The Dispatch visited the Clarke and Gil-Llamas dwelling on Wednesday. Clarke was not there, but Gil-Llamas was. Asked for details well-nigh the Issue vii initiative, she said the ballot language speaks for itself.
"We're trying to do what the legislation says," Gil-Llamas said of Upshot 7. "We're trying to help minorities get a head start, assist with energy efficiency, install monitoring devices."
Asked about another green-free energy ballot initiative ProEnergy Ohio initiated final calendar week with Columbus for a hereafter election, even earlier the current Issue 7 is even decided, Gil-Llamas said she didn't know annihilation about the larger $107 million effort — fifty-fifty though her name is on the petition documents.
Gil-Llamas ended the conversation before answering any questions most her and her husband's financial troubles, saying she couldn't talk further because they were getting ready for Halloween.
Daniel van Hoogstraten, spokesman for the campaign trying to defeat Issue 7, said the couple's financial history is a big red flag.
"John Clarke's sketchy financial dealings and legal troubles are even more than reason he and his visitor accept no business controlling city resources," van Hoogstraten said in an e-mail. "Every Columbus voter should understand that Result seven is a scam — it would cause devastating cuts to city services and hand that money over to John Clarke and his corrupt conduce."
More:Opinion: Voters should decline effect 7; lawmakers need to ensure this never happens again
Nana Watson, the executive director of the NAACP'south Columbus affiliate, said Clarke called her on Midweek morning time, request about her arrangement's thoughts on Issue 7, and told her the initiative would assist minorities.
"We are telling people to vote no," she said she told him.
"We retrieve it's a bad idea, considering nosotros don't know who's backside information technology," Watson told The Acceleration. "Information technology'due south problematic. You're hiding something because you won't give united states full disclosure. How is this going to assist Black people?"
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Legal troubles surround dark-green initiative'southward backers
In December, a Franklin Canton yard jury indicted Clarke on 4 felony counts related to the running of the Issue 7 campaign, charging that in July and Baronial of 2019, Clarke "did knowingly state falsehoods" in a state entrada finance report as to the source or amounts of contributions, and likewise that he altered campaign finance information already filed.
Quondam Franklin County Prosecutor Ron O'Brien said in Dec that investigators plant that five people listed on the campaign finance written report, i of whom was listed every bit contributing $13,000 and the other four listed as contributing $10,000 each, really had given nothing.
Clarke's trial was scheduled for Tuesday, just was connected to Jan. 31 under an order signed by Franklin County Common Pleas Court Gauge Chris Brownish.
Todd Helpbringer, president of Helpbringer Mortgage Services, said Clarke's and Gil-Llamas' financial state of affairs is emblematic of the 2007 housing implosion, which economists say was the major factor leading to the Great Recession in 2008.
"The market was just flushed with what I called light-headed financing. I wouldn't allow that. I couldn't empathize that," Helpbringer said.
"If a person can't pay, are we really helping them? All those foreclosures, all those bankruptcies," he said.
Despite their fiscal history, Clarke and Gil-Llamas have managed to hang onto their primary residence, though it has traded ownership several times since 2012 before landing back in Gil-Llamas' proper name in 2022 for $464,000.
In September 2020, the couple took out a $500,000 line of credit on their habitation, records prove. That'south almost the unabridged $503,800 value that the Franklin Canton Auditor'southward part places on the 121-year-old house.
Dispatch reporter Jim Weiker contributed to this report.
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Set up for the 2022 ballot in Columbus
Source: https://www.dispatch.com/story/news/2021/10/29/columbus-ohio-ballot-issue-7-john-clarke-irene-gil-llamas/8582164002/
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