Colorado County Public Trustees Sold Out Public In Drafting, Promoting Changes In State F'closure Law Kiboshing Right To Challenge Banksters' Standing

In Denver, Colorado, The Denver Post reports:

• Michael and Ann Rudnick wanted to know that Bank of America was really entitled to foreclose on their Denver home. After all, the couple had borrowed $265,000 from New Century Mortgage in late 2006, yet it was Bank of America foreclosing three years later.



• "They simply wanted to know how Bank of America came to have their mortgage, but they couldn't find out during the foreclosure," said Steven Brunette, the couple's Colorado Springs attorney who's taken up their cause.



• The Rudnicks learned that the Legislature years earlier had basically removed a consumer's right to challenge a lender's standing to foreclose on a house.



• The changes happened in 2002 and 2006 in paragraphs buried deep inside dense pieces of legislation designed to shore up Colorado's foreclosure laws. The changes meant banks no longer had to provide original documents at a foreclosure, just affidavits from lawyers saying the bank owned the notes and got them legally.



• Interviews and documents reveal that the changes to foreclosure due process in Colorado were drafted and promoted by county public trustees, who serve as administrators of the foreclosure process in Colorado and are supposed to hold as a key objective the protection of the public.



• Such a failure of oversight prompted one housing official to question the competence of the trustees and the foreclosure process they oversee, a system that's unique in the country.

For more, see Colorado public trustees pushed to make it easier to foreclose on homes.