Mejappz
Elite Member
- Joined
- Dec 16, 2005
- Professional Status
- Certified Residential Appraiser
- State
- Florida
Get to work Dj!!
DINED AND DASHED: FUDGE SIGNS ON AS LOBBYIST
VENTURA, Calif. (July 5, 2024) – Nothing gets more expensive than when
government tries to make it affordable. During the tenure of Housing and Urban
Development Secretary Marcia Fudge, America’s housing prices ballooned
while America’s urban cores deteriorated.
In March, she left her cabinet post, telling USA Today she’d be retiring and
returning to Ohio. That proved only half correct.
Perhaps sensing a date with the unemployment line on November 6, Fudge
and two aides pulled off a well-timed dine-and-dash maneuver. She’s now
cashing in as partner and chair of public policy at Taft Stettinius & Hollister, one
of the nation’s up-and-coming lobbying firms. She shuttles between Cleveland
and Washington.
Aides Imani Edwards and Garrett McDaniel went through the revolving door
along with Fudge. Her former aide Clifton Ronald St Clair Williams III was
awaiting the trio at Taft. The site Legistorm lists Williams as a “Revolving Door
Lobbyist.” Soon Fudge and her courtiers will be added to the list. Fudge
reportedly also had a longtime relationship with Taft lobbyist Lacy Johnson,
partner-in-charge of the firm’s Washington, D.C., office.
According to a Biden White House ethics pledge, Fudge is not permitted to
communicate with HUD employees for two years and is barred for one year
from certain indirect “shadow” lobbying activities. But a loophole allows Fudge
to contact former Capitol Hill colleagues and advise clients about Congress’s
inner workings based on information she gleaned in the executive branch. “A lot
of corporate clients could benefit from spitballing with Secretary Fudge,”
Director Jeff Hauser of the Revolving Door Project watchdog group told the
publication Politico.
Fudge tends to get out over her skis and is prone to the Dunning-Kruger effect.
One of the first things she did on the job at HUD was to violate the Hatch Act by
talking about Ohio politics at a White House press conference. She has also
made bigoted off-the-cuff remarks before large audiences. She was never up to
the job.
Also, she clearly never had an interest in remedying the nation’s broken
government-backed housing market to begin with. To paraphrase Upton
Sinclair: “It’s difficult to get a politician to understand something when her salary
and perks depend on her not understanding it.”
Besides lobbying HUD, her new firm lobbies the departments of Defense,
Transportation, Homeland Security and other agencies, according to
government records.
Atop HUD, Fudge oversaw a White House-led campaign to intimidate,
delegitimize or altogether sideline appraisers in their gatekeeper role in fair
lending. The campaign hinged on a fuzzy notion dubbed “housing equity” and a
contrived problem called “appraiser bias.” The latter is shorthand for “a hunch
that racism is involved when an appraiser’s unsatisfactory value opinion
requires a buyer and seller to go back to the negotiating table.”
The administration has been unduly influenced by the housing lobby, which has
long identified the nation’s 70,000 state-licensed appraisers as a stubborn
impediment to transaction velocity as it accesses federally backed mortgage
funding.
Her 10,000-employee agency, flush with cash from the Coronavirus Response
and Relief Supplemental Appropriations Act, the American Rescue Plan and
the Inflation Reduction Act, has hired outside contractors to ensnare at least
300, but possibly as many as 1,000, state-licensed real property appraisers in
federal investigations.
The complaints appear to be mostly set-ups filed by agenda-driven nonprofits
who have received grants from HUD or complaints filed by straitened borrowers
encouraged by HUD-promoted attorneys. The appraisers contend they were
merely doing their jobs. With its $214 billion in budgetary resources, HUD,
acting as judge, jury and executioner, has forced these mom-and-pop
appraisers to run a gauntlet. Perhaps the recent demise of the Chevron
Doctrine will give them their day in court.
Fudge’s caustic legacy:
• She made abhorrent remarks about appraisers on national news outlets,
generalizing that an appraiser’s skin color dictates his or her level of honesty
and competence. You can view the cabinet secretary’s remarks here.
• On her watch, her agency created a network of crony nonprofits. The agency
announced it had made awards to the groups under its Fair Housing Initiatives
Program. The grants paid the nonprofits to find violations of the Fair Housing
Act by singling out hapless appraisers for simply doing their job.
• Due to the intimidation and sidelining of appraisers during Fudge’s tenure,
home prices predictably swelled as more appraisers were denied a safe space
to conclude values that might displease commissioned salespeople and draw a
HUD complaint. Her efforts affected underwriting safeguards at the FHA,
Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the VA. It’s no coincidence the credit-rating
agency Fitch reported early this year that homes were overvalued nationally by
11.1%. On Fudge’s watch, the median U.S. home price ballooned from
$373,200 in January 2021 to $436,900 in March 2024. At least some of this
inflationary effect is the result of Fudge’s campaign to intimidate appraisers.
• During her tenure, lobbyists for hundreds of special interests converged on
HUD, paying tens of millions to get their issues before this captured federal
agency.
• Last year, HUD Chief of Staff Jenn Jones was accepting emails only from a
list of pre-approved senders to her government Office 365 account. Private
citizens and officials from other agencies or other branches of government were
not able to freely email her without her pre-approval. HUD’s Freedom of
Information Act Office stonewalled a request to obtain the list. Later, it denied
the list existed. HUD has ignored other document requests from private
individuals and appraiser publications.
• Fudge worked to allow convicted felons to become so-called “discrimination
testers.” In a rulemaking notice in 2023, HUD signaled it wanted to allow
convicted felons to be involved in the entrapment of private citizens. (You can’t
make this up.)
• Until late April, a HUD web portal benefiting cronies, known as HUD
Exchange, was operated by an agency whose stated mission was to provide
resources for wounded, ill and injured service members and their families.
Whatever the case, homebuyers can’t afford the benefits of whatever products
Fudge is now peddling to government agencies.
# # #
Jeremy Bagott is a real estate appraiser and former newspaperman. His most
recent book, “The Ichthyologist’s Guide to the Subprime Meltdown,” is a
concise almanac that distills the cataclysmic financial crisis of 2007-2008 to its
essence. This pithy guide to the upheaval includes essays, chronologies,
roundups and key lists, weaving together the stories of the politics-infused
Freddie and Fannie; the doomed Wall Street investment banks Lehman and
Bear Stearns; the dereliction of duty by the Big Three credit-rating services; the
mayhem caused by the shadowy nonbank lenders; and the massive
government bailouts. It provides a rapid-fire succession of “ah-hah” moments
as it lays out the meltdown, convulsion by convulsion.
DINED AND DASHED: FUDGE SIGNS ON AS LOBBYIST
VENTURA, Calif. (July 5, 2024) – Nothing gets more expensive than when
government tries to make it affordable. During the tenure of Housing and Urban
Development Secretary Marcia Fudge, America’s housing prices ballooned
while America’s urban cores deteriorated.
In March, she left her cabinet post, telling USA Today she’d be retiring and
returning to Ohio. That proved only half correct.
Perhaps sensing a date with the unemployment line on November 6, Fudge
and two aides pulled off a well-timed dine-and-dash maneuver. She’s now
cashing in as partner and chair of public policy at Taft Stettinius & Hollister, one
of the nation’s up-and-coming lobbying firms. She shuttles between Cleveland
and Washington.
Aides Imani Edwards and Garrett McDaniel went through the revolving door
along with Fudge. Her former aide Clifton Ronald St Clair Williams III was
awaiting the trio at Taft. The site Legistorm lists Williams as a “Revolving Door
Lobbyist.” Soon Fudge and her courtiers will be added to the list. Fudge
reportedly also had a longtime relationship with Taft lobbyist Lacy Johnson,
partner-in-charge of the firm’s Washington, D.C., office.
According to a Biden White House ethics pledge, Fudge is not permitted to
communicate with HUD employees for two years and is barred for one year
from certain indirect “shadow” lobbying activities. But a loophole allows Fudge
to contact former Capitol Hill colleagues and advise clients about Congress’s
inner workings based on information she gleaned in the executive branch. “A lot
of corporate clients could benefit from spitballing with Secretary Fudge,”
Director Jeff Hauser of the Revolving Door Project watchdog group told the
publication Politico.
Fudge tends to get out over her skis and is prone to the Dunning-Kruger effect.
One of the first things she did on the job at HUD was to violate the Hatch Act by
talking about Ohio politics at a White House press conference. She has also
made bigoted off-the-cuff remarks before large audiences. She was never up to
the job.
Also, she clearly never had an interest in remedying the nation’s broken
government-backed housing market to begin with. To paraphrase Upton
Sinclair: “It’s difficult to get a politician to understand something when her salary
and perks depend on her not understanding it.”
Besides lobbying HUD, her new firm lobbies the departments of Defense,
Transportation, Homeland Security and other agencies, according to
government records.
Atop HUD, Fudge oversaw a White House-led campaign to intimidate,
delegitimize or altogether sideline appraisers in their gatekeeper role in fair
lending. The campaign hinged on a fuzzy notion dubbed “housing equity” and a
contrived problem called “appraiser bias.” The latter is shorthand for “a hunch
that racism is involved when an appraiser’s unsatisfactory value opinion
requires a buyer and seller to go back to the negotiating table.”
The administration has been unduly influenced by the housing lobby, which has
long identified the nation’s 70,000 state-licensed appraisers as a stubborn
impediment to transaction velocity as it accesses federally backed mortgage
funding.
Her 10,000-employee agency, flush with cash from the Coronavirus Response
and Relief Supplemental Appropriations Act, the American Rescue Plan and
the Inflation Reduction Act, has hired outside contractors to ensnare at least
300, but possibly as many as 1,000, state-licensed real property appraisers in
federal investigations.
The complaints appear to be mostly set-ups filed by agenda-driven nonprofits
who have received grants from HUD or complaints filed by straitened borrowers
encouraged by HUD-promoted attorneys. The appraisers contend they were
merely doing their jobs. With its $214 billion in budgetary resources, HUD,
acting as judge, jury and executioner, has forced these mom-and-pop
appraisers to run a gauntlet. Perhaps the recent demise of the Chevron
Doctrine will give them their day in court.
Fudge’s caustic legacy:
• She made abhorrent remarks about appraisers on national news outlets,
generalizing that an appraiser’s skin color dictates his or her level of honesty
and competence. You can view the cabinet secretary’s remarks here.
• On her watch, her agency created a network of crony nonprofits. The agency
announced it had made awards to the groups under its Fair Housing Initiatives
Program. The grants paid the nonprofits to find violations of the Fair Housing
Act by singling out hapless appraisers for simply doing their job.
• Due to the intimidation and sidelining of appraisers during Fudge’s tenure,
home prices predictably swelled as more appraisers were denied a safe space
to conclude values that might displease commissioned salespeople and draw a
HUD complaint. Her efforts affected underwriting safeguards at the FHA,
Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the VA. It’s no coincidence the credit-rating
agency Fitch reported early this year that homes were overvalued nationally by
11.1%. On Fudge’s watch, the median U.S. home price ballooned from
$373,200 in January 2021 to $436,900 in March 2024. At least some of this
inflationary effect is the result of Fudge’s campaign to intimidate appraisers.
• During her tenure, lobbyists for hundreds of special interests converged on
HUD, paying tens of millions to get their issues before this captured federal
agency.
• Last year, HUD Chief of Staff Jenn Jones was accepting emails only from a
list of pre-approved senders to her government Office 365 account. Private
citizens and officials from other agencies or other branches of government were
not able to freely email her without her pre-approval. HUD’s Freedom of
Information Act Office stonewalled a request to obtain the list. Later, it denied
the list existed. HUD has ignored other document requests from private
individuals and appraiser publications.
• Fudge worked to allow convicted felons to become so-called “discrimination
testers.” In a rulemaking notice in 2023, HUD signaled it wanted to allow
convicted felons to be involved in the entrapment of private citizens. (You can’t
make this up.)
• Until late April, a HUD web portal benefiting cronies, known as HUD
Exchange, was operated by an agency whose stated mission was to provide
resources for wounded, ill and injured service members and their families.
Whatever the case, homebuyers can’t afford the benefits of whatever products
Fudge is now peddling to government agencies.
# # #
Jeremy Bagott is a real estate appraiser and former newspaperman. His most
recent book, “The Ichthyologist’s Guide to the Subprime Meltdown,” is a
concise almanac that distills the cataclysmic financial crisis of 2007-2008 to its
essence. This pithy guide to the upheaval includes essays, chronologies,
roundups and key lists, weaving together the stories of the politics-infused
Freddie and Fannie; the doomed Wall Street investment banks Lehman and
Bear Stearns; the dereliction of duty by the Big Three credit-rating services; the
mayhem caused by the shadowy nonbank lenders; and the massive
government bailouts. It provides a rapid-fire succession of “ah-hah” moments
as it lays out the meltdown, convulsion by convulsion.
