Six of Hogan’s clients won ~40% of housing awards over eight years, beating out 60+ other companies, while Hogan held regular meetings with firm’s leadership
Maryland voters are seeing widespread coverage of how as governor, Larry Hogan personally directed taxpayer dollars to his firm’s clients while holding regular meetings with company leadership. TIME reported Thursday that six of Hogan’s clients won ~40% of competitive housing awards over eight years, beating out 60+ other companies.
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT.
MSNBC: Larry Hogan is a Trump Critic. But a New Report Shows He’s Trumpier than He’d Care to Admit.
- A damning new report in Time magazine suggests that Hogan, who put a family member in charge of his real estate firm while he served as governor, resembles Trump more than we knew. Hogan may have been able to use his power as governor to help boost his business in a manner reminiscent of the former president.
- Before becoming governor, Hogan was the president and principal owner of a real estate brokerage firm in Maryland. When he entered the governor’s mansion, he neither divested from the firm nor formed a blind trust, as politicians sometimes do to maintain an ethical distance from their assets. Instead, Time reports, he put his brother in charge of his company and made executives at the firm trustees. He reportedly kept abreast of the firm’s financial matters and the location of its real estate projects, and held routine meetings with his company’s leaders.
- This matters because Time found that “[o]ver 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 his company’s website.
- According to the magazine, those awards “were concentrated among six developers who competed against more than 60 other companies during that time.” Time found no record of Hogan’s recusing himself from decision-making or the oversight of decision-making that could affect his assets; nor did his office provide examples of any such recusals. Time noted that, according to historians of the state, Hogan’s tenure marks the first time that a Maryland governor made millions of dollars while in office.
- In practice Hogan did participate in matters that affected his business. And Maryland public ethics 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.’”
- Several government watchdogs told Time that Hogan’s failure to recuse was an outright conflict of interest. Others say it warrants investigation. Sen. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., posted on X: “What’s going on here?”
- Hogan’s set-up generated, at the very least, the appearance of a conflict of interest and appears to have potentially allowed him to use the governor’s mansion to enrich himself. This is a situation in which Hogan, even if he did nothing illicit, seems to have done something self-serving and inappropriate.
- Even without the Time exposé, we know that Hogan isn’t the moderate so many Marylanders have claimed he is. As governor he vetoed criminal justice reform, renewable energy initiatives, voters’ rights bills and bills that would have increased the number of abortion providers in Maryland… there’s no reason to think he wouldn’t often side with the GOP [in the Senate.]
- The most recent revelations should only give Marylanders more reason to pause and consider whether he deserves the trust of liberals and good-government fans that he claims he does.
WTOP: Time Magazine’s Eric Cortellessa on New Financial Controversy in Md. Senate Race
- Eric Cortellessa, a staff writer at Time Magazine, joined WTOP’s Shawn Anderson and Anne Kramer to discuss the latest developments.
- Cortellessa: We don’t know where Hogan’s outside income came from directly, largely because Larry Hogan has refused to disclose it. We know that Larry Hogan made $2.4 million during the first three years of his tenure, when his official governor salary ranged from $165,000-180,000.
- Cortellessa: Hearkening back to my original story in the Washington Monthly, which… focused on transportation infrastructure projects he advanced, it mainly focused on two… In his disclosure form, he reported earning somewhere between $100,000 and $1 million on unimproved real estate in Brandywine, and somewhere between $500,000 and $1 million on unimproved real estate in Hyattsville.
- Cortellessa: The first story… triggered new ethics legislation that, I should say, was passed unanimously in the Maryland General Assembly, meaning Republicans and Democrats voted for it alike.
- Cortellessa: He’s not able to cite a single fact in any of these stories that is untrue, because the facts are true, and I think that the response signals that it is a political vulnerability for him, going into these final weeks of the election, because Larry Hogan has tried to present himself as a kind of beacon of integrity and high office, and this obviously punctures that perception.
WJLA: Hogan Approved Up to $1.8M in Housing Benefits to Clients of his Firm as Governor: Report
- Records show over Hogan’s eight-year term in office, nearly 40% of Maryland’s competitive affordable housing awards were given to six developers, all clients of HOGAN… Those six developers competed against more than 60 other companies.
- The governor voted on grants or loans for several of his company’s developers. Over one year, he approved between $600,000 and $1.8 million in loans and grants to four of HOGAN’s companies listed on the company’s website.
- 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.”
- The report claims 47% of Hogan’s private firm’s clients in 2016 won state funds and federal low-income housing tax credits.
- Hogan has repeatedly faced criticism and questions about his real estate business, including whether he steered road improvement money to areas where his company owned property, though some of the road projects were conceived before Hogan was elected. At least two ethics complaints were filed against the governor in the matter, but there have been no findings by state officials that Hogan violated ethics rules.
Baltimore Banner: Hogan’s Past Affordable Housing Votes Questioned as Conflict of Interest
- U.S. Senate candidate and former Gov. Larry Hogan is facing renewed questions about his real estate company, following a report Thursday that he voted to approve subsidies for affordable housing developers that his firm may have worked with in the past.
- While he was governor, Hogan voted five times in favor of state aid for affordable housing projects undertaken by developers that were listed, at one point, on a website for the Hogan companies as partners the firm had worked with, Time magazine reported on Thursday.
- The votes came at the Board of Public Works, a powerful three-member panel that has the final say on state contracts and major spending. The governor chairs the three-member board, which also includes the state treasurer and state comptroller.
- “The law requires him to recuse himself from conflicts of interest and he clearly had conflicts of interest,” former Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh, who has criticized Hogan this campaign season, told reporters on a call Thursday.
- U.S. Rep. Jamie Raskin, a Democrat who served in the state senate while Hogan was in office, said the former governor has some explaining to do.
- “I don’t know. I don’t want to prejudge it without hearing his side of the story, but it does not look good now,” Raskin told reporters.
Baltimore Sun: Alsobrooks Questions Hogan’s Independence; He Says Her Campaign is ‘Based on Lies’
- Time magazine published a story saying Hogan approved millions of dollars in competitive housing contracts to six developer clients of his real estate brokerage firm, representing ‘nearly 40% of the competitive affordable housing awards overseen by’ Hogan during his tenure as governor.
- Richard Painter, a former White House ethics lawyer, told Time the awards represented ‘a serious conflict of interest.’
- Time said Hogan declined to provide details of his relationship with the developers.”
Maryland Matters: Alsobrooks, Hogan Seek to Frame the Election Narrative in Snippy TV Debate
- Neither candidate was asked Thursday about a new report in Time magazine that said the Maryland Board of Public Works, which Hogan presided over as governor, on several occasions awarded lucrative state housing contracts to clients of Hogan’s real estate firm.
- The report said that almost 40% of all competitive affordable housing contracts granted during Hogan’s tenure went to companies represented by his firm, which his brother took over when Hogan became governor.
- Democrats seized on the report, suggesting that Hogan, at a minimum, had violated state ethics laws by not disclosing the conflict of interest or recusing himself during these Board of Public Works votes.
- “All of this creates many questions, questions that Gov. Hogan needs to answer,” former state Attorney General Brian Frosh (D) said on a call Thursday organized by the Maryland Democratic Party.
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