Deadbeat

Laura Richardson hasn't paid her mortgage bills. She also hasn't paid her car bills, and she used a city-owned vehicle for months without authorization.

In October 2005, her 1999 four-door 740iL BMW had an odd vibration in the front, so she took it to Signal Hill Foreign Auto Service, according to Leo Labreche, the shop owner.

Mechanics there fixed the car and replaced some worn parts, but when Richardson picked up her vehicle, she said she didn't have the money to pay the $735 bill, Labreche said. Because Richardson was a council member, Labreche let her take the car, assuming that she was good for the money, he said.

"She had picked the car up and was going to come back and pay the bill, and she never did," Labreche said.

Labreche said he spent months leaving messages on Richardson's cell phone voice mail, then he got a collection agency involved, but still the bill went unpaid.

"I couldn't get through to her, and then when the collection agency couldn't do anything, I thought, `There's nothing I'm going to be able to do,"' Labreche said.

A month later, she apparently wrecked the front of the car, rendering it undrivable. She then abandoned the car at another auto-body shop.

The Press-Telegram then reports that one day after Richardson abandoned her wrecked BMW, she checked out a city-owned Toyota Prius "for her council business."

She returned the car - 30,000 miles later - after she had left the council.

This story has gotten the attention of the nonpartisan ethics watchdog CREW, who released a statement claiming that Richardson was a "deadbeat congresswoman." Hard to argue with that. And it looks like she's pulling strings to get the Sacramento house back and kick out the new owner.

Real estate investor James York bought Richardson's house in an upper middle-class neighborhood on May 7 for $388,000. He recorded the deed May 19. His crew has painted it, laid tile and landscaped the house, he said.

York said the lender, Washington Mutual, had contacted him to buy back the house and that he gave the bank a price. He said the next thing he knew, the lender filed a letter of rescission of the foreclosure sale June 2 with Sacramento County and asked him for the keys.

"They took the property back, and they didn't even send back the money," York said.

The investor says he plans to file a lawsuit by the end of the week against Washington Mutual and Richardson.

"It's clear what's happening is Ms. Richardson is abusing her political power and using it for her own political needs," he said. "You don't have to be smart to understand what's happening."

I've only gotten to know Sen. Jenny Oropeza after the special election (where Richardson beat her by waging a nasty, divisive campaign), but she's an excellent legislator, and I think her bad vote on the gaming compacts pales in comparison to the embarrassment of Richardson representing Democrats in California.