HAGÅTÑA (The Guam Daily Post) — Attorneys for Delegate Michael San Nicolas and his father were scheduled Monday afternoon to resume their attempt to dismiss a lawsuit brought against them by the Guam Housing and Urban Renewal Authority.
The case was unsealed and allowed to proceed in July of last year, and stems from allegations that the island’s current U.S. congressman and his father, Miguel San Nicolas, made false claims when they were landlords for tenants under the federally funded Section 8 housing program.
While the Office of the Attorney General has declined to intervene, GHURA has sued both men in the Superior Court of Guam, seeking financial awards that include the recouping of payments made to them when they were not eligible to be in the program due to conflict of interest rules.
Defense attorneys for the father and son have called the legal dispute “clearly frivolous,” and requested an accounting of GHURA’s attorney fees so they can seek a return of that amount to the local government.
The housing agency alleges that Delegate San Nicolas, when he was a local senator with legislative oversight of GHURA, continued to be a landlord for the Section 8 program even though his role posed a conflict of interest.
The leases under the Section 8 program began years before he was elected to the Guam Legislature, but continued after he was sworn into office in January 2013. From then through April 2017, the delegate is said to have received just over $54,000 from Section 8 tenants.
Miguel San Nicolas, as an immediate family member of the congressman, also allegedly had a disqualifying conflict of interest, reportedly earning more than $76,000 under a Section 8 housing contract from October 2013 until the end of October 2017.
That year, then-Sen. Michael San Nicolas stated he would sever ties with his tenants to avoid conflicts of interest. He also said he was not notified of the conflict until February 2017. GHURA management at the time accused him of failing to end his conflict of interest over the years, which Michael San Nicolas called “materially false.”
Delegate San Nicolas, who is seeking the Democratic Party’s gubernatorial nomination, is also facing an ongoing ethics investigation by the U.S. House of Representatives. The most recent official statement on the matter was issued May 20, 2021, when the House Committee on Ethics disclosed it voted unanimously to continue its inquiry into a number of allegations against the delegate.
According to a previously confidential document made public last year, the committee already reported there is “substantial reason to believe” that Guam’s congressman failed to provide or disclosed false information to the federal government, accepted cash contributions in excess of legal limits and spent campaign funds on personal uses.
He is anticipated to leave Congress at the end of the year, choosing to run for governor, with Sabrina Salas Matanane as his running mate.
The delegate’s Democrat predecessor, Madeleine Bordallo, was facing an ethics investigation of her own during what ended up being her final term as the island’s only elected federal official. Her inquiry was not completed by the time she left office in 2017 — leaving questions unanswered about whether allegations she improperly received free lodging and meals and misused government funds on trips to Guam were true.
Michael San Nicolas
