I have lived here a long time. I kinda know a couple of people on the Board, knew about others indirectly. They're not getting rich from this.

I have dealt with the board on little issues before, they helped.

I guess if this is a pissing contest between the board and the Howard Hughes Corp., I'm believing the people who live here.

I think there is a lot of money to be made in development around here. Who stands to make it?

My parents and student loans pay for my tuition and housing, plus money I saved between 4 year university and law school. Many young people who are students nowadays do this.

It’s not my place to reveal who the CA resident that requested and sent me the documents are—many community members trying to speak out against the dominant narrative have been aggressively ridiculed by Allies of Lakey Boyd, and so are understandably hesitant to publicly stick their neck out on the line like that. I know this resident’s motivation was to hold Lakey accountable for one of MANY of her highly questionable actions in office

You have an interesting definition of a bully. To me, a bully is someone who picks on the powerless and those weaker than them (I.e. what Howard Hughes Corporation, Lakey, and their defenders do). But calling out people in positions of authority for gross corruption and abuses of power (what I do) is accountability, not “bullying”. I guess we may have to agree to disagree on this one?

Be careful, you need to have a rental license in Howard County if you want to rent rooms/or a property. If you choose not to get the license and rent away you can be fined.

Unemployed law student with years of unpaid activism? Who's paying your tuition? How do you afford food and housing? Something's not adding up.

Which CA resident requested those documents? Have they been working with the board? Did you ask about their motivations for passing these documents on to you? I'm not surprised someone would use you to fight their fight, since you have a reputation here and elsewhere as being a caustic bully who is willing to say anything about those you don't like. Easier for this "CA resident" to hide behind you than to make this case publicly.

It's actually a pity you're not getting paid, since you're clearly doing someone else's bidding.

CA Board member Brian England is a member of the political organization Jake founded.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/481987473223843/posts/609286050493984/

As an unemployed law student, that’d be nice if this conspiracy theory was true haha. But no, I did this all for free, and I’ve got years of unpaid activism and other writing to show for, as well

The documents I used were requested by a CA resident under the MD HOA Act and sent to me, but this was not assisted by the CA Board members involved in the dispute with Lakey Boyd.

My interest in this as a HoCo resident is that what happens in Columbia is not contained to just Columbia. Howard Hughes Corporation has sway county-wide, so them funding a slate of candidates for CA absolutely does impact the whole county

How much was the writer paid for this piece and who is paying him? Note that HoCo Watchdogs is a private, for-profit corporation, so their finances are purposefully shrouded in mystery.

It's also noteworthy that this writer is a law student and he is defending the Columbia Association board, which has spent hundreds of thousands of community dollars on legal fees over the last several years. Has the writer been promised a job with the lawyers who seem more than happy to stoke these expensive community fights?

It's clear that someone pointed him in the direction of the documents he used to make this flimsy and verbose "case"; was it an attorney or a member of the current board with whom he has an undisclosed relationship? How else to explain why someone who lives and works outside Columbia would choose to get involved the homeowner's association politics?

Well, this is interesting. I keep wondering what the hell was really going on? I don't know if this is the story or not, but I do think that money had to have something to do with all the turmoil.

Post on the Nextdoor app. There are always people looking for rooms to rent on there.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B09C6C6BR1?psc=1&ref=ppx_pop_mob_b_asin_title I bought this a month or two ago when my work vehicle had a slow leak in one tire and had to be refilled every couple days. Works great, you set the desired pressure and it'll shut off when it hits it. Charges off a USB-C cable, the same kind most phones use, so you can just charge it up and keep it in you trunk with a jumper box or something.

All I know is if I was wrongfully smeared, and up for re-election soon, I would probably want the record set straight on what actually went down

It’s more that, and I don’t mean this in a “burn it down” anti-civic sense, sometimes a situation is so dumb it’s better to move to the forensics/recovery phase.

I wish all the board, and Boyd for that matter, health and love and happiness, but smearing/rehabilitating them is a misapplication of everyone’s energy.

I’d love a full outside accounting of what happened, and laws/bylaws enacted to prevent similar issues in the future.

Even if you think the CA Board incumbents failed at maintaining control over a rogue President, wouldn’t you want the replacements to at least acknowledge that what Lakey was doing was problematic in the first place? Would you say that people who defend what she did would actually be even more harmful than the incumbents, who did not act quickly enough to stop it?

I am the Author of this piece. Until last September, I was the President of Progressive Democrats of Howard County, and am now Vice President of Our Revolution Howard County, another progressive grassroots group that formed out of the Bernie Sanders campaign, and is dedicated to getting corporate money out of politics. How is this culture war propaganda? I want racial Justice and equity in this County, not people who say they care about it but then act against it. That is unfortunately what Lakey Boyd was doing…

What was biased/not objective about this piece?

What are you talking about? What issue did I not know what I was talking about? The Lake Elkhorn issue? What did I not know about that?

I’m sorry, Allan, but pushing out a CA President who would’ve cost the organization millions, and maybe even their tax-exempt status, is NOT a waste of hundreds of thousands of dollars! In fact, it was Lakey’s decisions which cost the CA millions, as described in the piece

Yes. And a new lease which is $1 million+ cheaper than the previous one. An explanation is needed for such a drastic change

You make zero sense.

The previous tenant’s lease was active from 2013-2021, and the lease for the new tenant was signed in December 2021. Both tenants were in the same industry, using the same open space for the same reasons. So it is a good comparison

Your point about the pandemic is a good one, but keep in mind that the terms of Lakey’s 2021 contract can still be in place as late as 2032, well after the effects of COVID have subsided. I addressed the point you’re making in the blog. I’ve copied and pasted that part below, to show that residential tenants were certainly not extended this same courtesy:

“Defenders of former CA President Boyd may argue that the terms of the December 2021 lease contract awarded to the new Howard Hughes Corporation tenant (The Collective 13) was signed during the COVID-19 pandemic and that the lower monthly rent rate and no annual inflation adjustments were justified due to “pandemic hardship”.

It is true that many businesses were struggling financially during the pandemic and that the previous tenant did not renew their lease potentially because they were unable to afford the monthly rent rates they were being charged under their contract established in 2013.

In a case such as this one, would a rent reduction for a future tenant be justified?

Let’s address that question with a few other questions:

How many Howard Hughes Corporation residential tenants were either evicted or did not renew their leases during COVID due to financial hardship?

Did the future tenants who moved in after the prior tenants were forced out due to hardship also receive a 50%+ decrease in monthly rent?

It is highly doubtful that this occurred. Even if the extremely low rental rates in this 2021 CA contract were set using COVID hardship as justification, the contract spans 2021 to 2027 and could even be extended through 2032, well after the effects of COVID are no longer a significant justification for hardship.

Beyond that, even if a rent reduction was justified, how was this drastic of a reduction calculated? Why was inflation adjustment not included? Answers to these questions are exactly the kind that the CA Board of Directors and the public deserve. These types of contracts and leases should be getting appraised for fair market value, rather than picking some arbitrarily low number.

It was incumbent upon Lakey Boyd as CA President to fulfill her fiduciary duty to CA residents and prove that a valid methodology was used to establish these seemingly low monthly rent rates as the true market value for the CA-owned open space that she leased out to a tenant of the private developer Howard Hughes Corporation. Otherwise, the CA would be at risk of violating IRS Rev. Rul. 72-102, potentially putting the CA’s tax-exempt status as a 501(c)(4) non-profit service corporation in serious jeopardy.”

Comical, breathtaking, shocking, are just a few words I’d use to describe the conflicts of interest. Many of them rely on the benevolence of Howard Hughes Corporation for their survival.

But there wasn’t an active lease because that business closed. Covid changed many things, including real estate and the restaurant industry.

I can’t believe I wasted my time reading this nonsense. It’s about the patio adjacent to the now shuttered Clyde’s & Soundry.

Howard Hughes literally funded candidates to the tune of at least a hundred thousand dollars with a campaign platform rooted in culture war.

Sadly, a cult of personality was invented around Lakey, so some DO care about her personally!

But even for those who just cared about her professional performance, how could folks properly evaluate that without these facts? Without these facts, people had a much more positive idea of Lakey’s performance than was due, and so many viewed the CA Board pushing her out as irresponsible, rather than responsible. Many people may vote in April based on that faulty logic. That, to me, is why this story was still important to get out there

Any comments with respect to some of the points in the piece? Such as:

For example, why did Lakey Boyd give a 65% reduction in rent to a corporate entity at the expense of CA home-owner dollars?

Or Why is Howard Hughes Corporation another corporate entity getting a 50% reduction in rent?

The Board was moving to fire her, and people like you wrote biased blog pieces to intimidate them into not doing that (I assume you’re Michael Gollibersuch). The only conspiracy theories came from you and the buddy-of-rapists Jeremy Dommu’s blog https://www.parentsformeganslaw.org/wrestlers-accused-of-hogtying-and-sodomy-cops-say-boys-took-hazing-riutals-too-far/