Six of Hogan’s clients won ~40% of housing awards over eight years, beating out 60+ other companies
Years prior, Hogan’s clients won 0% of projects
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT.
TIME: Exclusive: Larry Hogan Approved Millions for His Firm’s Listed Clients as Governor
By Eric Cortellessa
October 10, 2024
- As governor, Hogan’s powers would range from setting rules for housing projects to awarding grants and tax credits to developers.
- Over Hogan’s eight years in office, nearly 40% of the competitive affordable housing awards overseen by the governor went to developers listed as clients on HOGAN’s website, according to a TIME review of public records. Those awards were concentrated among six developers who competed against more than 60 other companies during that time.
- As one of three members of the Board of Public Works, an administrative body that determines how taxpayer money gets spent, Hogan voted on five occasions to issue additional loans or grants to four of those same developers, according to public records.
- All the while, Hogan continued to hold regular meetings with his company’s leaders, according to his official meeting calendar, which was obtained by the Washington Monthly via a FOIA request in 2019.
- “It’s definitely a serious conflict of interest,” says Richard Painter, chief White House ethics lawyer in the George W. Bush Administration. “He should have stayed away from it.”
- Maryland law prohibits government officials from taking part in decisions in which they or a close relative have a known financial interest, or if the decision could reasonably be expected to “result in a conflict between the private interest and the official State duties of the official.”
- When running for reelection in 2018, he revealed making $2.4 million during his first three years in office from undisclosed sources, making him the first governor in Maryland history to make millions of dollars while in office, according to historians of the state. Hogan’s official annual salary ranged from $165,000 to $180,000. On a recent financial disclosure form he reported a net worth between $12.3 and $35 million.
- During his tenure, however, Hogan didn’t disclose to at least one other BPW board member his relationship to the developers via his brokerage firm.
- TIME could find no record of Hogan recusing himself from an official government decision.
- Legal and ethics experts say Hogan’s role overseeing and approving competitive affordable housing awards while his firm’s listed clients competed for public funds he controlled requires further scrutiny.
- “It’s wrong on its face,” says Danielle Brian, executive director of the Project on Government Oversight.
- “There is a law that appears to prevent this from happening.” Says Douglas Colbert, a University of Maryland law professor: “There’s an absolute need for a full investigation, and the report should be made public.”
- “Ultimately the governor can say, Yay or Nay,” says a senior DHCD official who worked in the Hogan Administration… “The governor is responsible.”
- In previous rounds of competitive affordable housing project awards under Hogan’s predecessor… HOGAN’s listed companies won 0% and 30% of the awards respectively.
- When Hogan’s first awards were announced in January 2016, HOGAN’s listed clients won 47% of all state funds and Low-Income Housing Tax Credits (LIHTC), which are federal funds disbursed by the state, and an additional 27% of the waivers, which effectively greenlight the projects.
- Taken together, his company’s listed clients won between 25% and 43% of the tax credits and grants, and between 33% and 53% of the waivers in each round. The fall 2020 round broke Maryland state records.
- The governor personally voted on grants or loans to several of the same HOGAN-listed developers from his seat on the three-member Board of Public Works. From 2016 to 2017, he approved between $600,000 and $1.8 million in loans and grants to four different companies that were listed as clients of HOGAN.
- “The state has a large role to play in this because they actually allocate the credits. Hogan, as governor, was in charge of that,” says Bart Harvey, a former affordable housing developer in Maryland and former director of Fannie Mae. “Developers, knowing that, may on their own go to his entity because they think they get a step up in the very competitive tax credit allocation process.”
- The DHCD awards and BPW votes are not Hogan’s first brush with potential conflicts of interest as governor. After the Washington Monthly reported in January 2020 on Hogan advancing transportation infrastructure near properties his real-estate firm owned… A Maryland lawmaker proposed new ethics legislation and the government watchdog group Public Citizen filed an ethics complaint in February 2020… A year later, the Maryland General Assembly unanimously passed the ethics bill, which enhanced disclosure requirements for public officials. Hogan quietly let the bill become law without his signature.
- He reported making between $100,001 to $1 million on unimproved real estate in Brandywine and between $500,001 to $1,000,000 on unimproved real estate in Hyattsville.
- As governor, Hogan kept a close relationship with his trustees and his brother, whom he put in charge of the company. He had at least eight meetings with them between 2015 and 2018, his first three years in office.
- Don Fox, former general counsel for the U.S. Office of Government Ethics in the George W. Bush and Barack Obama Administrations, says that Hogan approving awards to any of his firm’s clients, past or present, is cause for concern… Hogan’s trust agreement and approving of awards to his firm’s listed clients, he adds, is unlike anything he has ever seen. “That would just never fly under the federal system.”
- For now, HOGAN’s website remains clear about the advantages of doing business with the company: “If you want to determine the best strategy for taking your property through the governmental entitlement process as well as achieve the best development potential and highest return on your investment,” it says, “you only need to turn to HOGAN.”
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