Duke Ellington note to families- 75 families already cleared by OSSE

[Anonymous]

What have been identified as the core methods of residency fraud here? This should be a policy problem with a longer term solution.

[Anonymous]

Core method?

Presenting documentation related to a residence which is not, in fact, your residence.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:curious.. was the Ellington renovation really 200 MILLION dollars? If that is true, where did the money come from? taxpayers?

I've never seen publication of the final number. A year and a half before completion, news articles stated the figure as 180 Mil.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:curious.. was the Ellington renovation really 200 MILLION dollars? If that is true, where did the money come from? taxpayers?

I've never seen publication of the final number. A year and a half before completion, news articles stated the figure as 180 Mil.

Search the archives. IT's been debated to death on other threads.

DC owns the Ellington building, managed the design and the renovation. The renovation was paid from the city's capital budget. Same budget that pays for every other DCPS renovation.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:curious.. was the Ellington renovation really 200 MILLION dollars? If that is true, where did the money come from? taxpayers?

I've never seen publication of the final number. A year and a half before completion, news articles stated the figure as 180 Mil.

Search the archives. IT's been debated to death on other threads.

DC owns the Ellington building, managed the design and the renovation. The renovation was paid from the city's capital budget. Same budget that pays for every other DCPS renovation.

And the reason why, if your DC neighborhood school has not been renovated yet, DCPS suddenly has found cost-cutting religion. After Ellington, the cupboard is pretty bare. But don't fret. Some kid from PG County is getting an arts education in a Taj Mahal on your dime.

[Anonymous]

From the Post: "Blaeuer said many of the families earlier lived in Maryland and fell behind on their mortgages after the Great Recession. They moved in with parents who have homes in the District, although they never signed formal leases. Some rented their Maryland homes to friends and family, formally or informally."

And if you believe this, I've got a bridge in PG County to sell you. This is a clear, after-the-fact attempt to obfuscate fraud.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:curious.. was the Ellington renovation really 200 MILLION dollars? If that is true, where did the money come from? taxpayers?

I've never seen publication of the final number. A year and a half before completion, news articles stated the figure as 180 Mil.

Search the archives. IT's been debated to death on other threads.

DC owns the Ellington building, managed the design and the renovation. The renovation was paid from the city's capital budget. Same budget that pays for every other DCPS renovation.

And the reason why, if your DC neighborhood school has not been renovated yet, DCPS suddenly has found cost-cutting religion. After Ellington, the cupboard is pretty bare. But don't fret. Some kid from PG County is getting an arts education in a Taj Mahal on your dime.

Not necessarily! The city is spending 158.7 on Coolidge HS and its 346 students. They are designing for 670 students with a maximum capacity of 800 (and also another 580 middle school students).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:From the Post: "Blaeuer said many of the families earlier lived in Maryland and fell behind on their mortgages after the Great Recession. They moved in with parents who have homes in the District, although they never signed formal leases. Some rented their Maryland homes to friends and family, formally or informally."

And if you believe this, I've got a bridge in PG County to sell you. This is a clear, after-the-fact attempt to obfuscate fraud.

Apparently OSSE - DC AG's office - disagree with your conclusion.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:From the Post: "Blaeuer said many of the families earlier lived in Maryland and fell behind on their mortgages after the Great Recession. They moved in with parents who have homes in the District, although they never signed formal leases. Some rented their Maryland homes to friends and family, formally or informally."

And if you believe this, I've got a bridge in PG County to sell you. This is a clear, after-the-fact attempt to obfuscate fraud.

Apparently OSSE - DC AG's office - disagree with your conclusion.

At some point, the AG's office makes a decision that they can stop digging. That point is subject to political influence.

Did they take the families' word for it, or did they go question the people who allegedly were informal tenants in the Maryland homes, checking where they filed tax returns, voted, registered cars, enrolled their own kids in school, etc.? Did they check whether the Ellington families took the homestead exemption on the Maryland homes? Did they look at where the Ellington families got health insurance (if Medicaid or through a state exchange, it could be informative) or public benefits? Did they contact the tax office in MD to see if any of the families claimed rental income, or look at their bank statements to see if rental income was coming in?

I would not put it past OSSE to have caught some DC residents in this dragnet. The goal was to find all the families whose documentation was questionable, and after questioning some of the answers could turn up as DC.

But I would also not put it past the AG to do the tiniest bit of digging and accept what the families provided rather than looking into this aggressively, leading to some people continuing to get away with residency fraud. The DC government does not really want to know the truth here.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:curious.. was the Ellington renovation really 200 MILLION dollars? If that is true, where did the money come from? taxpayers?

I've never seen publication of the final number. A year and a half before completion, news articles stated the figure as 180 Mil.

Of course it came from tax payers. For DC public school parents, it also came at the expense of necessary capital improvements to other needy and deserving public school buildingings throughout the system

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:From the Post: "Blaeuer said many of the families earlier lived in Maryland and fell behind on their mortgages after the Great Recession. They moved in with parents who have homes in the District, although they never signed formal leases. Some rented their Maryland homes to friends and family, formally or informally."

And if you believe this, I've got a bridge in PG County to sell you. This is a clear, after-the-fact attempt to obfuscate fraud.

I also don't believe that kid, the dance/senior. wasn't living with his mom and her fiance in MD. So what if she had a DC license?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Core method?

Presenting documentation related to a residence which is not, in fact, your residence.

OK, I think most people would get what I'm asking, though I'm always appreciative of snark. The good stuff makes my day.

Just to lay out some scenarios - would love it if someone who had a sense of the actual factual would chime in:

Did people mostly rely on a relative with DC residency who would help them say that the child was resident at that home?

Would they use someone else's water bill and have their name added?

Would they offer a fake address no one would check?

Would they use a car registration that was out of date?

Did they pretend their child was in care of someone in DC who was not actually serving as a guardian?

Something else I haven't thought of?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Core method?

Presenting documentation related to a residence which is not, in fact, your residence.

OK, I think most people would get what I'm asking, though I'm always appreciative of snark. The good stuff makes my day.

Just to lay out some scenarios - would love it if someone who had a sense of the actual factual would chime in:

Did people mostly rely on a relative with DC residency who would help them say that the child was resident at that home?

Would they use someone else's water bill and have their name added?

Would they offer a fake address no one would check?

Would they use a car registration that was out of date?

Did they pretend their child was in care of someone in DC who was not actually serving as a guardian?

Something else I haven't thought of?

All of the above + rent an apartment/house/room in DC and say that is their residence.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:From the Post: "Blaeuer said many of the families earlier lived in Maryland and fell behind on their mortgages after the Great Recession. They moved in with parents who have homes in the District, although they never signed formal leases. Some rented their Maryland homes to friends and family, formally or informally."

And if you believe this, I've got a bridge in PG County to sell you. This is a clear, after-the-fact attempt to obfuscate fraud.

I also don't believe that kid, the dance/senior. wasn't living with his mom and her fiance in MD. So what if she had a DC license?

Well he's now living with his grandmother in the District and she is a formal guardian. The AG / courts will have to sort out if the mother owes back tuition.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:From the Post: "Blaeuer said many of the families earlier lived in Maryland and fell behind on their mortgages after the Great Recession. They moved in with parents who have homes in the District, although they never signed formal leases. Some rented their Maryland homes to friends and family, formally or informally."

And if you believe this, I've got a bridge in PG County to sell you. This is a clear, after-the-fact attempt to obfuscate fraud.

I also don't believe that kid, the dance/senior. wasn't living with his mom and her fiance in MD. So what if she had a DC license?

The explanation sounds more than a bit far-fetched to me: The parents/caregivers fell behind on their mortgages on the Maryland house, but some friends and family agreed to pay rent in MD while living there, and other family let the caregivers live in DC for free, while collecting rent on the MD property in order to catch up on the MD mortgage? So that way, there's no paper trail to prove the student was living in DC, and no paper trail to prove that friends/family were paying rent in MD?

If that's the explanation, then, just...wow.