HCD Sued For Voucher Regulations

A complaint has been filed in the Superior Court of California seeking "declaratory and injunctive relief" against the State of California and the Housing and Community Development Department over the recent adoption of regulations related to the Enterprise Zone program. The complaint states, among other things that:

Since the beginning of its administration of this program, HCD has displayed a consistent and disturbing pattern of behavior with respect to (1) its treatment of California employers, the overwhelming majority of whom are small businesses - where such employers are considered enemies - not constituents, and (2) the law itself, which HCD deems a convenience that can be cited when supportive and disregard when not.

The suit is being brought by a California company, Cyntron Payroll Solutions, LLC, and is being represented by attorneys Brain C. Leighton and Marty Dakessian. The following are images of the first pages of the suit:
Click the pictures for larger images.

Marty Dakessian represented the Deluxe Corporation in its much publicized Enterprise Zone voucher related appeal to the Board of Equalization. In that case the BOE ruled against Mr. Dakessian's assertion that the Franchise Tax Board has no legal authority to examine the supporting documentation "behind" a voucher.

This new case generally cites complaints against the procedure used to adopt the regulations (that 45 day public comment periods should have been offered rather than 15 day periods, for example) as well as several specific claims that provisions in the regulations contradict statute.

Who is Cyntron Payroll Solutions? HCD has noted that they never received any comments from Cyntron during any of the public comment periods. Cyntron's website displays an address of 234 E. Colorado, Pasadena, CA. This is the same address as displayed on the contact page of Enterprise Zone consulting firm The California Credits Group, Inc. (CCG). A Los Angeles Times article published last year about the Deluxe case (Halper, Evan. "State Tax Break Benefits Companies, Not Workers." Los Angeles Times. 31 Jan. 2006, Main News, Section A, pg. 1.) stated that CCG was the tax credit consulting firm that "secured the disputed tax breaks for Deluxe..." In addition, another website appears to link the two, CCG-Pay.com. Business license filings also list the same principal for each company.

The following links provide images of the web pages discussed: The Cyntron Payroll Solutions home page, Cyntron's contact page, the CCG-Pay home page, the CCG-Pay contact page, and the CCG contact page.