Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz says the county is suing mortgage lenders Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
This lawsuit charges the Federal National Mortgage Association known as Fannie Mae and the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation known as Freddie Mac for not paying state and county taxes on the value of property which is sold.
County Executive Poloncarz said there are thousands and thousands of property transfers where the two quasi-federal private companies didn't pay.
Poloncarz had to pay on a recent home purchase. He said it's difficult to tell how many transfers there were and how much money is involved because that would require checking every single property transfer for years.
Poloncarz said the lawsuit is the right thing to do.
"For a long time many governmental leaders thought that if you filed suit, you wouldn't recover. It didn't make sense to do so. But now that there is some legal precedent saying otherwise, I felt it was the time to do it. And, if we are able to recover the lost revenue that we could have acquired over the years, it would be a large amount and it certainly is right to do," said Poloncarz.
Poloncarz said the county is still studying another way of not paying the taxes by transferring property through what's called MERS, in which millions of dollars in taxes were evaded.
