City agency cracking down on unpaid blight fines

Detroit — A city agency working to collect unpaid blight tickets is turning up the heat on a couple hundred property owners who owe Detroit nearly a quarter-million dollars.

An amendment in the state act governing tax foreclosure was signed this year by Gov. Rick Snyder, preventing bidders in foreclosure auctions from acquiring new properties if they owe back taxes or blight fines.

Miriam Blanks-Smart, who heads the city’s Department of Administrative Hearings, said her department generated a report on bidders with unpaid blight tickets and gave it to the Wayne County treasurer’s office to ensure bidders are held accountable under the new law. The bidders, she said, are prohibited from closing on the properties unless outstanding judgments are paid.

“This is the way that we stop recalcitrant property owners from continuing to amass property and allowing them to be in blighted conditions,” Blanks-Smart said. “If you want to go in there and want to buy property, the state law provides that you are going to maintain the property you already do have.”

The Department of Administrative Hearings is an independent city agency that works to enforce city code for property maintenance and blight prevention.

The office keeps record of blight tickets issued in Detroit and whether they have been paid. For the October bidders, the department for the first time under the new law examined the list of the successful bidders and ran it against its database to determine how many had outstanding judgments. Outstanding fines are collectable for 10 years.

Blanks-Smart said 203 successful bidders for the October 2015 tax auction list had unpaid blight tickets involving 365 property addresses in Detroit owing more than $242,000. The outstanding fines were sent electronically to the bidders in mid-November.

As of Nov. 30, $21,597in revenue had been collected from the tax auction bidders on the list. The total however does not include online credit card payments which take up to 48 hours to process and have not yet been factored into the tally.

Blanks-Smart says she hopes the effort will put a stop to the “revolving door” of individuals and companies that are buying up properties in Detroit, failing to maintain them and then acquiring more and allowing the same circumstances to unfold.

The new law requires auction bidders sign an affidavit declaring they don’t owe taxes or blight fines and are subject to perjury charges for lying. County officials have said they don’t have the staff to vet every buyer.

David Szymanski, an assistant to the Wayne County Treasurer, said 79 bidders with Detroit blight violations in the October auction had resolved them as of Nov. 20. Others were at risk of having sales canceled.

“When it is determined there is an issue we send an email to the affected party and give them time to resolve the issue,” he said. “Most who take action to resolve do so swiftly. For those who do not we send a follow up email giving an additional three days to resolve.”

Between July 1, 2014, and June 30, 2015, blight judgments entered against property owners totaled $4.4 million. But the city was able to collect just $992,000, Blanks-Smart said.

In another initiative to improve collections, Blanks-Smart said the department has been working with a law firm to take property owners to Wayne County Circuit Court to garnish their assets to pay blight judgments.

“People don’t show up in court and they think they don’t have to appear,” she said. “When judgments are entered against them, they can ignore the judgments. But we are getting tougher.”

Recently, more than 300 such garnishment actions were filed and a court officer has visited the homes of property owners with orders of execution to get the money.

So far, dozens seizure orders have been executed, resulting in the collection of more than $37,000 since September.

“This is the city’s effort to let people know that we are not going to allow them to sit on these unpaid judgments,” Blanks-Smart said. “We are taking you to circuit court and we are going after your assets.”

CFerretti@detroitnews.com