Imagine owning a piece of land — your childhood backyard, in fact — and finding out that a construction company had built a brand new home on it without permission? Then, imagine moving your family across the country into a new rental home, moving in, living there for a while, and then being told your “landlord” doesn’t really own the place at all — and you have to move out immediately?
These things sound unthinkable — a builder could “buy” property, get permits, start construction, without anyone noticing the land hadn’t been sold?!? — but they are quite real. You can hear all the gory details at two recent episodes of The Perfect Scam, which I host for AARP’s Fraud Watch Network. Before I get into those details, however, I’d like to share an opinion.
While America’s national political discourse certainly seems toxic and hostile, I don’t think nearly enough has been said about local government and local politics. While it’s easy to get riled up watching debates on TV, the truth is most people are not immediately impacted by national politics. Local government touches their day-to-day lives far more often. And sadly, I think for most citizens, their only interface with “government” of any kind comes in the form of a parking ticket, or an unwelcome visit from a city inspector, and of course, a property tax bill. These things are generally very negative experiences. They usually come with a large helping of frustration.
I have often mulled over a sequel to my book “Gotcha Capitalism” called “Gotcha Governing.” Since politicians can’t be honest about the real cost of things, they have found more and more creative ways to fund government with hidden taxes and fees (I’m looking at you, red light cameras.) Fill your life with enough gotchas, and anger turns to helpless rage pretty quickly. And so, these frustrations pile up, one on the other, until a day comes every two years or so to express that rage in the only way we know how — to “vote the bums out.”
There is only one potential balance to this pile of mounting frustration, born of sales tax creep and permit delays: Competency. We all hate taxes, but we are all glad bridges are built and restaurants don’t make us sick. I know the gotcha-weary masses often casually suggest this or that government department should be eliminated. I think we could use a return to some old-time civics studies, in which the young people of America would learn that our country, our society, is held together by millions of faceless, non-political bureaucrats who toil in obscurity. Without them, our restaurants would indeed make people sick; our buildings would fall down or catch fire; our land records would be lost entirely; and so on.
I know what you are thinking! If someone can build a home on property they don’t own, what good is this army of bureaucrats? Haven’t we lost all those land records anyway?
No, we haven’t. Thankfully, the stories I’m sharing today are strange and terrible. That’s why they are outrageous to our sensibilities. Somewhere deep inside, we all still believe in “the system,” even if it fails us occasionally.
And there is my warning today. Because both these stories involve technology creep. Neither of these crimes would have been possible without criminals deploying a set of new digital tools that ease their work; and without governments neglecting their jobs, perhaps with the foolhardy faith that technology would do it for them.
Here’s what I know. In many a government (and corporate!) office, a single person stands between competency and chaos. It’s Mildred, who has worked in the county recorder’s office for 30 years, and is the only one who really knows where the documents are kept. It’s Mario, who knows enough to speak up when two or three complaints about that construction company arrive, or makes sure that elderly couple gets to the front of the line when they need a quick permit to (finally) install central air.
I fear we’ve lost respect for the Mildreds and Marios of our society. We are quick to offer them early retirement; even quicker to ignore them when they complain about switching to some new cloud-based software. That’s a grave mistake.
That’s not our only mistake, however. When you read (hear, I hope!) about what happened to Daniel Kenigsberg in Connecticut and Phillip Rumple in Colorado, I fear you might think “I’m not surprised.” And that’s what I’m worried about. Our lack of competency in local government — often replaced by a healthy dose of gotcha governing — is leading to a cynicism death spiral. It’s no wonder people take out their frustration at the ballot box and in Internet comments.
If you know a Mario or a Mildred, thank them. Cherish them. More important, support them with investment and demand competency. More than ever, we need the solid middle-class lives that good government jobs can provide, and we need good government.
As for Daniel Kenigsberg in Connecticut and Phillip Rumple:
Daniel owned a lot in Fairfield, Connecticut where he was raised in the post-war 1950s. The successful New York physician planned to give it to his children. But one day, visiting a childhood friend in hospice, he saw a half-built home on his land. A criminal had impersonated Daniel and “sold” the property to a developer, who then cleared more than 100 trees off the land and started home construction. Lawsuits followed, but there was no realistic way to restore the land to its former state. Daniel had to agree to a forced sale. The experience landed him in a pretty “dark place.” A short portion of the transcript for this episode
“[00:25:23] Daniel Kenigsberg: I must admit that even though I haven’t lived there since I went to college, I’ve always been kind of a, a chauvinist about the state of Connecticut. It’s, you know, is I think maybe the most highly educated state in the country, certainly one of them. Fairfield County is one of the wealthiest, most educated counties in the country. I uh, I’ve always thought that this is a very kind of a developed part of the United States. People I know there who are professionals, you know, people who practice medicine there tend to be, you know, very good doctors. I think uh, the legal system there, in my experience, has worked like pretty darn well. And you know this is kind of disillusioned because there have been a whole bunch of people who, in this whole chain of events, kind of fell down on the job. So kind of disillusioned me about my home state, but you know, again, it’s not the fault of Connecticut, it’s probably something that’s much more endemic in our greater society.
[00:26:22] Bob: But I could see this being really troubling if something, ’cause if I were you, my brain would be searching to other places in my life where a system I assumed would protect me, won’t protect me, and what, what could that mean?[
[00:26:33] Daniel Kenigsberg: Well you can, you can get to a pretty dark place.
As for Phillip Rumple, he flew from Las Vegas to Denver to tour a potential rental home for his family. After meeting a real estate agent, seeing the place and chatting with neighbors, he signed a lease, flew home, and moved his children. They unloaded their furniture, lived in the place for three days, and then a steady stream of strangers started knocking on the door claiming “they” had actually rented the home. Turns out a criminal had posed as an agent, and the place was really owned by a large firm that rents single-family dwellings around the country. The company allows “self-guided” tours via smartlocks. Criminals have latched on to this arrangement and are giving tours and renting homes they don’t own. From the episode:
[00:25:52] Bob: What does Phillip want listeners to learn from his experience?
[00:25:57] Phillip Rumple: That no matter how much diligence you have, you don’t have enough. When I think about everything he provided to us, and I think about that I could have also just gone down to the county court here in Denver as well and looked at the documents myself, that still wouldn’t have been enough, because I have all the right information, and I have the right names on it. That doesn’t mean that it was the right information. It was just information that was presented to me. How do I verify this person? How do I verify that this person is related to this product? How do I verify this product is owned by this person? There is no definitive way to do that other than hoping that the ID information they give you matches the ID information on the government document. That’s the best due diligence that you can have.
[00:26:38] Bob: And I, I can’t imagine, I mean it’s absurd to suggest that people go to the county records office every time they rent a place.
[00:26:44] Phillip Rumple: It is crazy to suggest it, but when I spoke to the county recorder, they’re like, they wish more people would.
I hope you’ll consider listening to Family Left Homeless After Rental Scam and How Scammers can Sell Your Land Without You Knowing.
But even more, I hope you’ll think about the risks from creeping cynicism in our society that is born from a creeping lack of competency, aided by overreliance on technology.
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