Crain’s Detroit Business: Detroit suing 700 property investors for unpaid taxes
The city of Detroit is in the process of filing 700 lawsuits by Thursday against landlords and housing investors in a new effort to collect unpaid property taxes on abandoned homes that have already been forfeited to the government.
By the end of November, the litigation sweep may hit 1,500 companies and investors whose abandonment of Detroit homes is blamed for contributing to the city’s neighborhood blight epidemic.
Motor City Law PLLC, working on behalf of the city, has filed more than 60 lawsuits since Aug. 18 in Wayne County Circuit Court and the rest of the lawsuits will be filed before a Thursday statute of limitations deadline, Detroit attorney Andrew Munro told Crain’s.
The lawsuits target banks, land speculators, limited liability corporations and individuals with three or more rental properties in Detroit who typically buy the homes for cheap at a Wayne County auction and then eventually stop paying property tax bills and lose the home in foreclosure, Munro said.
The Detroit News: Michigan GOP black outreach official sounds off
Activists defending President Donald Trump are calling on the Michigan Republican Party’s director of African American engagement to resign after he criticized a presidential pardon and argued that standing by Confederate monuments will not help the GOP convert minority voters.
Wayne Bradley, who is black and helps run the state party’s permanent office in Detroit, took to Facebook this weekend and lambasted former Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Arizona, who was pardoned by Trump on Friday after defying a court order to stop patrols targeting immigrants.
“Violating civil rights and ignoring the laws does not make anyone a hero,” Bradley wrote. “A lot of people have lost (sight) of what being a Conservative is, this ain’t it.”
In a separate post, Bradley bashed Confederate monuments as “participation trophies” that “celebrate losers” and sided with calls to tear down reminders of slavery-era Civil War figures. In doing so, he broke with Trump, who has said it’s “sad to see the history and culture of our great country being ripped apart.”
Detroit Free Press: Michigan standardized test results reveal troubling trend
Michigan’s elementary and middle school students are slowly making gains in math and social studies on the state’s tough standardized exam. But a troubling trend is obvious in results released Tuesday: That progress is overshadowed by declines nearly across the board in reading and writing, as well as continued struggles in science.
The declines in reading and writing couldn’t come at a worse time, given the state is upping the stakes and requiring schools, with some exceptions, to hold back students whose performance indicate they’re not reading at grade level. Those rules kick in during the 2019-20 school year.
The Michigan Department of Education this morning released the results of the Michigan Student Test of Educational Progress and the Michigan Merit Exam. Results show droves of students across all grade levels and subjects failed the important tests that were taken this spring.
The M-STEP tests students in English language arts and math in grades three through eight, in science in grades four and 11, and in social studies in grades five and eight. The MME is a high school exam that for the second year in a row includes the SAT as well as state-created tests in science and social studies. It is taken by 11th graders.
from Watchdog.org
via IFTTT
