No matter what happens in the special election on March 25, Ronald O’Donnell wins if he puts the issue offoreclosure reform on the radar of the next person to elected to the state Senate from District 23.
“The county land records are fraudulent,” Highland resident O’Donnell said. “I can’t stand to see another family put out on the street ... when I know it’s a fraudulent foreclosure.”
According to O’Donnell, who teaches real estate workshops for a living, unscrupulous “foreclosure mills” have taken advantage of the large number of foreclosures in recent years and a system that does not allow judges to challenge documents presented during a foreclosure proceeding to take property they’re not entitled to.
“The judge can’t say ‘this is fraudulent,’” said O’Donnell, 63, who has a law degree from Western State University. “They don’t have the discretion to look back at the documents” presented.
If O’Donnell is elected, he’ll introduce a bill called “Jail the Banksters,” which would make filing false property documents a crime.
As one of the two Democrats in the five-candidate race, O’Donnell said he has an edge other candidates don’t have.
“The only one who can do anything (in the Legislature) is a Democrat.That’s why Bill Emmerson resigned.”
Beyond that one issue, O’Donnell would like to see the minimum wage raised beyond the $9 an hour it will increase to on July 1 and $10 in 2016.
And while he doesn’t support a simple amnesty for those who entered the country illegally, O’Donnell would like to see the state and country work to help many of them to become permanent legal residents.
“It’s not going to work to deport them any more than when my great-great-grandfather came from Ireland on a boat,” he said.
He would want them to register with the state and go through criminal background screens.
“If they’re honest, hard-working people, they can stay.”
While he’s in favor of Gov. Jerry Brown’s high-speed rail project, he’d like to see it going through Riverside and San Bernardino County and creating jobs in the Inland Empire.
“I would look at every bill and vote against it if it didn’t send us any money,” he said. “We are not orphans here, and they’ve been treating us like that for years.”
He also scoffed at Gov. Jerry Brown’s pleas to put the budget surplus into a rainy day fund.
“That’s not surplus money: That’s extracted taxes that haven’t been used right,” O’Donnell said. “There’s no surplus when there’s one fourth of men (in the Inland Empire) who can’t find jobs.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Beau covers education for The Sun and the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin. Reach the author atBeau.Yarbrough@inlandnewspapers.com or follow Beau on Twitter: @inlandEd.
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