Glendale candidates address legal issues

Of the 16 candidates for Glendale City Council, school board, and the college’s board of trustees, at least six have records of bankruptcies, tax liens, credit card collections and other matters, a News-Press investigation has revealed.

The candidates blamed different reasons for their troubles — the Great Recession, medical expenses, divorce and bad advice among them. Many, however, stated their financial woes had made them sadly wiser, and perhaps better equipped to oversee the purse strings of the institutions they hope to represent.

The information below was obtained by publicly available sources, and focuses on issues within the last 10 years. Minor traffic violations or legal issues irrelevant to the job being sought have been ignored.

Bankruptcy

Two candidates for Glendale City Council — Edith Fuentes and Evelyne Poghosyan — filed for bankruptcy in 2013 and 2011, respectively.

Poghosyan said the bankruptcy occurred as a result of the 2008 financial downturn, exacerbated by a separation from her now ex-husband and the impending birth of her second child.

Though Poghosyan said she did not want to file, she felt she had no choice.

“I had two young children, and after talking to my financial adviser, it seemed like bankruptcy was the best solution,” she said. “After getting a divorce, it seemed like the way to get a new slate.”

Poghosyan said she’s learned from her financial struggles and that she would take that knowledge to the council dais.

Fuentes won a $200,000 settlement with Glendale city officials in April 2012 based on her claim that she had been demoted due to discrimination and insider politics. City officials countered the former planning administrator had failed to do her job. Following the agreement, she retired in October of that year, receiving approximately half of her final salary of $129,240 as an annual pension.

Despite the influx of cash, Fuentes filed for bankruptcy in 2013, listing more than $140,000 in credit card debt.

For her part, Fuentes said she was the victim of identity theft in 2009, and that around $100,000 of the credit card charges were fraudulent. She said she filed a police report, but was told by Glendale police in 2010 that little could be done.

Under federal law, consumers are not liable for fraudulent credit card charges. Despite this, Fuentes said she followed her attorney’s advice to file for bankruptcy.

“I needed to get it dealt with,” she said.

Glendale Unified School District board candidate Vahik Satoorian, a certified public accountant, filed for bankruptcy in 2009.

County, state and federal agencies also filed a combined 22 tax liens against Satoorian for unpaid federal, state and property taxes. In particular, the filings show a combined $294,172 in liens filed by the Internal Revenue Service alone.

Satoorian, who specializes in tax work, blamed the issues on a “nasty divorce” and the economic downturn.

“It’s true that I ended up in this problem, but it’s because of the financial crisis,” he said. “I couldn’t collect on my work. It was either keep doing the work or just work for the ones that could pay me.”

He said he has long-standing relationships —some spanning decades — with his clients, and couldn’t simply turn them out. But because of this, he said he ran into his own tax trouble.

“It was a like a snowball; taxes, penalties and interest all adding on top of each other,” Satoorian said.

He said he had to sell his home as a result, and still owes the government about $50,000, which he said he is paying off on a monthly basis.

Tax liens

Longtime Glendale Councilman Dave Weaver, who has been on the council for 18 years, also faces tax troubles. According to public records, he and his wife have state tax liens totaling $47,672.

Weaver directed inquires to his wife, Linda Weaver, who he said handles most of the family’s finances. Reached by phone, Linda Weaver said she and her husband “received some bad advice and made some bad investments,” though she declined to share any details.

“We’re doing everything we can to pay it off,” she said, adding they have been paying off the debt in monthly installments.

In an unrelated legal issue, Weaver gave $2,000 and a letter of apology last June to Lolita Gonzalves, who accused the councilman of groping her in a Montrose Mexican restaurant in 2013. Weaver has repeatedly stated the incident was a misunderstanding and not sexual.

Collection cases

School board candidate Todd Hunt has had three collections cases filed against him. Two of which — filed by Citibank and Capital One — resulted in a total $35,612 judgment against the Glendale Kiwanis president. A third, filed by Barclays Bank, is pending for an undisclosed amount.

Hunt said that medical expenses due to his wife’s medical issues stacked up the credit card debt.

“We had quite a few people tell us to declare bankruptcy, but I don’t agree with that,” he said. “We’re responsible for this, and we’re going to get it taken care of.”

He said the whole issue has been “a hard lesson to learn, and certainly not fun.

“As it relates to school board finances, in terms of staying within a budget, it sounds almost counterintuitive, but I think I’m wiser now than I would have been before,” said Hunt.

License troubles

And potential Glendale Community College write-in candidate Michael Miller — who sued the school in 2012 stating the college’s at-large voting system is racially discriminatory — has had troubles with his law license.

According to the bar’s website, Miller was suspended in 2008 for a failure to pay State Bar of California membership dues, and placed on inactive status the following year for a failure to keep up required educational requirements. His license remained inactive until 2012, and he is currently authorized to practice law.

Messages left for Miller were not returned.

In the suit, which he voluntarily dismissed, Miller claimed the current system “has produced a situation in which one highly motivated, politically sophisticated and well-financed ethnic minority group” — later identified as Armenian-Americans — “effectively monopolizes membership on the board.”

The college trustees voted to go to a district-based system starting in 2017 after a different attorney, Kevin Shenkman, threatened to file a suit if Glendale Community College continued to elected its board at-large.