MOTION IN HOBOKEN RENT CONTROL CLASS ACTION SUIT COULD STOP RENT LEVELING OFFICE PROCEDURES

MOTION IN HOBOKEN RENT CONTROL CLASS ACTION SUIT
COULD STOP RENT LEVELING OFFICE PROCEDURES
City’s Legal Fees topped $300,000 in 2009 in rent control alone.

HOBOKEN, NJ – JUNE 2, 2010 - Hoboken’s rent control ordinance came under fire again today, as class action litigants have pushed to stay rent leveling office procedures that were found to be unconstitutional in previous litigation.

“When a municipality’s executive and legislative branches act in an arbitrary and capricious manner while performing their duties, the judiciary is the sole remaining branch of government to protect the victims of their actions,” reads the summary of the motion, which would halt “legal rent calculations” and prevent further irreparable harm from occurring.

“The rent leveling office is working with archaic procedures and technology – and the regulations it is enforcing are not even part of the law,” says Charles Gormally, the attorney representing the Class. “It is telling that the City goes unrepresented at most class action court hearings and has never offered its own defense. It is perhaps the most dysfunctional municipal response I have seen in 25 years of litigating these matters.”

The rent leveling office follows a set of procedures to determine legal rents that a court found arbitrary and capricious because they contradicted previous policy, were inconsistent with the ordinance, and relied on corrupted records.”

“Property owners have been respectful of the City’s process and we would still prefer that the City rectify rent control trauma through Council action, but an ordinance is one year in the making and seems to have no end,” says Ron Simoncini, Executive Director of Mile Square Taxpayer Association, which represents the City’s property owners. “Too many owners have had dire financial consequences through no fault of their own as a result of the City’s callous neglect when it comes to property rights. Thankfully the Class representatives are acting to stop this situation from continuing.”

“There are four people in the rent leveling office when most cities this size only employ one; they administer the Ordinance in arrears rather than basing it on registration – completely backward,” says Mr. Simoncini. “We recently found that in 2009 the City spent hundreds of thousands of dollars defending and otherwise sustaining the rent-leveling ordinance and it lost every case that came before a judge. The sad thing is, the City forced us to file an OPRA request in order to get the amount spent for legal representation; they were 8 months late in delivering the figures; and finally in frustration we had to sue them to get the data.

“This is a City whose residents have been through two years of fiscal supervision by the state and been promised reform. They are entitled to know how their government is spending their money – it turns out to be as embarrassing a situation as so many others in Hoboken: they are spending taxpayers’ money to defend an ordinance that they have acknowledged needs to change, but that they do not have the political will to take required action.”

Hoboken’s own attorney recently was quoted as saying that the City intended to obviate the lawsuit through Council’s reformation of the rent leveling ordinance, but a draft that took over a year to see the light of day was circulated, was incomplete and did not reflect numerous issues that need to be addressed.

“We frequently have said the most advantageous resolution of this matter would be a debate between owner and tenant representatives and a subsequent vote by the Council on significant differences,” says Mr. Simoncini. “Ann Holtzman, who is now Hoboken’s zoning official, coordinated the Committee on Rent Control hearings on the matter and observed that there was mostly agreement between tenants and landlords – why would any draft ordinance not be informed by those meetings? The answer can only lie in politics.”

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