Loveship on the rocks
Scooped! The Harrisburg Forward blog beat me to the punch with its examination of mayoral candidate Linda Thompson's 501(c)3 non-profit community aid organization, Loveship, Inc., located at 2308 N. Fifth Street in Harrisburg. The HQ is in the heart of one of Harrisburg's worst neighborhoods, although Thompson herself lives well above the street violence she rightly rails against, on the sixth floor of the Towne House Apartments, a nice highrise at 6th & Boas streets near the Capitol Complex.
I've linked to Harrisburg Forward's article above. Suffice it say, Thompson told the Patriot-News with great fanfare in 2007 that Loveship was going to restore a house at 2308 N. Jefferson St., a four-minute walk from the Loveship headquarters, and move in a poor family. The photo posted by the blog doesn't suggest that much of anything has been done to fix up the house in the past two years. Makes you wonder about her other promises, doesn't it?
Thompson makes $20,000 a year as a member of Harrisburg City Council, according to city spokesman Matt Coulter, and doesn't get a bump for being council president. For most years since 2000, she lists her council job and Loveship as her only sources of income on her financial disclosure form filed with the city clerk. In her 2008 filing, but none of the others, she reveals that she collects $10,000 annual rent from Loveship for use of the house at 2320 N. Fifth Street, a house she paid $1 for in 1998 (Thompson says on her website it was her childhood home and her parents gave her the house). The house is assessed at $54,360 on the Dauphin County website, and annual county taxes are $393.09. She paid her 2009 taxes late, incurring a penalty. Her 2008 county taxes remain unpaid, according to the website.
Non-profits are required to file an IRS Form 990 in lieu of a regular income tax return. Unlike income tax returns, 990s are public documents. You can ask any non-profit to see their 990 and they have to show it to you. It is basically a profit-and-loss form for non-profits, showing income and expenditures but not always in any great detail. A friend found Loveship's 990 forms for 2005, 2006, and 2007 on Guidestar.org, a financial disclosure website.
In 2005, she reported Loveship revenues of $32,528 (no sources were identified) and claimed $31,683 was spent on "program services," described by her on the form as "Provide training in employment, counseling, housing and economic development to help less fortunate individuals become self-sufficient." Of that, $12,560 went for "occupancy," or rental payments to herself or utility costs. In 2006, she reported $24,466 in revenues and just over $23,500 in "program services," of which a much lower $8,900 went for "occupancy." But in 2007, it was back up to $14,740.
Thompson's financial disclosure statements to the city reveal she also has a $23,000 car loan, an $11,000 student loan from PHEAA--she graduated from Howard University in Washington, D.C., in 1985, a university spokeswoman confirmed, and took a loan of unspecified size at zero percent from Loveship in 2008. Whether that loan was for her campaign isn't disclosed.
On annual income of about $30,000, how does Thom;pson afford what she describes as her "suite" at Towne House, where a studio apartment rents for $580 a month? Is there a source of income she has not disclosed?
There are rumors that Thompson benefits from the huge settlement won by her brother, Steven Crawford, when he was freed from prison many years after being wrongfully convicted of murder in Dauphin County in 1970. See p. 38 of Jet magazine here for the story, and a photograph of Thompson and her brother.
If so, she hasn't included income from this on her financial disclosure statements.
She also hasn't filed an annual report for Loveship with the state Corporation Bureau since 2001. I'm still waiting to hear from the Department of State whether that violates any law or regulation.
Do we really want her as mayor of Harrisburg?