D.C. Attorney General Karl A. Racine (D) on Tuesday filed a lawsuit against the owner of a vacant Ward 6 building, alleging that they have made false statements since at least 2015 to avoid paying increased taxes on the property.
Owners of vacant and blighted properties in the city are charged a higher property tax rate, an incentive to ensure District buildings are taken care of and put to good use. Racine’s lawsuit centers on a red-brick property at 1000 C Street NE that has long been a source of frustration for neighbors, even spurring the creation of a Twitter profile impersonating the building.
In July, D.C. Council chair Phil Mendelson (D) told The Washington Post that the building had been taxed as vacant for just six months in the past 13 years and had been reclassified by the D.C. Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs at least 31 times in the past decade.
Those reclassifications, Racine’s suit alleges, are a result of the building’s owners’ “repeated misrepresentations to the District in their continuous effort to avoid an increased tax burden,” dating as early as 2006, falsely indicating that the building was occupied. For more than 10 years, the suit reads, the “formerly stately home has sat conspicuously vacant: boarded up, overgrown, and with masonry degrading, the roof in a state of perpetual and visible decay.”
The suit identifies George Papageorge as the building’s owner; he owns the property through the company 10th and C Street Associates....
COLUMBUS, OH (WOWO) A legal dispute involving Columbus-based startup OH.io and three former executives has escalated with new court filings and a statement from their attorney disputing allegation...