Task force can help
In an editorial last month, we urged city of Milwaukee officials to move more urgently against landlords who use the cover of limited liability companies to protect them from paying property taxes and fines on rundown properties, which was exposed by a Journal Sentinel Watchdog investigation. This week, two Milwaukee aldermen announced plans to do just that. The Common Council needs to follow through.
“We need somebody on this end who takes ownership,” said Ald. Terry Witkowski in an interview with the Journal Sentinel. He and Ald. Michael Murphy want to create a task force as “a crucial first step in improving the city’s game plan for dealing with the problems posed by unscrupulous landlords who hide behind LLCs while they exploit our most disadvantaged residents, and squeeze the last ounces of value from properties they own,” the two said in letters sent to the heads of three city agencies and Presiding Municipal Court Judge Phillip Chavez.
“The refusal of these shameless landlords to adhere to even minimal standards of upkeep is aggressively blighting our neighborhoods.”
Murphy and Witkowski are right. While there are many responsible owners of inner city property who face difficult challenges in maintaining old buildings with a transient population, what some landlords allegedly are doing is reprehensible. City officials need to be much more aggressive in making sure that such landlords clean up their acts.
A task force could help focus city efforts and lay out a strategic plan for dealing with this crisis. It could help ensure that everyone is on the same page, and that city officials agree on the urgency of the job.
Joseph Boucher, a Madison attorney who was involved in drafting the LLC law, said on this page Wednesday that changes in the law aren’t necessary; that what’s needed is “diligence in going after bad actors. We must think creatively, but use the tools that exist more consistently: tax sales, building codes and associated penalties, state statutes on liquidation of companies and litigation to reveal and seek redress for abusive activities.”
OK, we’ll buy that for now. And if the task force can help provide that creativity and get agencies to use the available tools, terrific. We just hope the task force doesn’t take too long to make its recommendations. While this challenge requires a thoughtful response, it also requires a quick response.