Boston Globe: In Mass., private companies can make a killing, legally, if you can’t keep up with your property taxes

It didn’t take long for the newest case in PLF’s nationwide initiative to end home equity theft to catch the eye of Sean Murphy, a prominent 30-year Boston Globe reporter whose current beat is consumer advocacy.

Murphy details the saga that caused the Mucciaccios to lose their family home—and all of its equity—in Easton, Massachusetts, to a private company and the January 6 lawsuit PLF filed on the family’s behalf. As Murphy writes:

“What attracted the [Pacific Legal] foundation’s interest (and mine) is that Massachusetts is one of only about a dozen states that allow municipalities — and companies that take over their tax title liens — to reap windfalls when they take properties from tax delinquents like Mucciaccio.”

“That’s because they are allowed to keep whatever equity there is in the property after back taxes, interest, and fees are paid.”

California’s attack on donor privacy draws supreme scrutiny

Do you have the right to privately support charities and causes you believe in? And what standard applies when the government wants the identities of otherwise-anonymous donors of nonprofit organizations?

The U.S. Supreme Court will tackle these questions this term in Americans for Prosperity Foundation v. Becerra. The case challenges California’s donor disclosure law requiring all nonprofits to submit IRS forms with donors’ names and addresses.

PLF has weighed in with a friend-of-the court brief, and Jeremy Talcott says that based on its own track record on the First Amendment, the Supreme Court should recognize the importance of such anonymity and find the law unconstitutional.

Houston-area contractors brace for additional racial set-asides

Last year in Texas, both Harris County and the Port of Houston completed their first-ever disparity studies on public contracting. Both studies found that minority-owned businesses win public contracts at lower rates than they should, because of racial discrimination.

Yet despite frequent criticism that disparity studies are flawed and unreliable, Harris County—like many other local governments—plans to use its study as a basis to enact a minority business enterprise (MBE) program that sets aside public contracts for minority-owned businesses. The Port of Houston will likely follow.

Erin Wilcox shows us how government attempts to combat racial discrimination by mandating more of it are rife with serious constitutional and practical problems, not to mention corruption and fraud.

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