A taxing problem for House candidate

I wrote about Andrew Lockwood's long history of suing and being sued last July, when he was running for a seat on the New London City Council.

He lost.

And after that, as far as I was concerned, his ongoing disputes with creditors and his financial setbacks were his own business, since he was no longer running for public office.

In December, though, Lockwood tossed his hat into the ring again, this time announcing he plans to seek the 39th District seat of the state House of Representatives, as a Republican.

The chairman of the Republican Town Committee gave him a thumbs-up at the time, saying he's welcome in the race. The party is scheduled to pick its nominee in May.

But elsewhere around town, a lot of eyebrows went up with Lockwood's announcement, given his record of contentious litigation involving unpaid medical bills, soured real estate deals and foreclosure.

I will concentrate here just on the candidate's unpaid taxes, those still overdue as of last week, not the ones that municipalities already collected by going to court.

According to the New London tax collector's office, AR Lockwood LLC owes $1,893.98 for the business it owns at 14 Colman Street, the Millennium Inn, formerly the Colman Lodge.

This is part of an ongoing dispute in which Lockwood claims the money was actually owed by the former owner of the motel.

Lockwood owes the city $1,479.28 for the residential property he owns next door to the motel, at 20 Colman St. Those came due in January.

And he owes the city $100.97 in motor vehicle taxes for a 1995 BMW.

Perhaps this is the same BMW, with a flat tire, I saw parked in front of the Millennium Inn last week, when I was trying to find Lockwood to comment about his taxes.

The inn appears to be closed, despite a neon "Open" sign lit in the front window.

There is a curtain pulled across the window of the office, which is filled with pieces of old furniture piled on top of one another. A health certificate posted in the window has a December 2009 expiration date, and no one answered the phone or the doorbell for two days.

There were no cars in the parking lot either, except for the BMW. I left a note for Lockwood with someone at his house next door, but I never heard from him.

By far the largest overdue tax bill that New London has tried to collect from Lockwood is for Magnum Motors, a now-defunct car dealership that he used to own, through another LLC, on Truman Street.

According to the tax collector's office, more than $30,000 in unpaid taxes is still owed by Magnum Motors. All efforts to collect it have failed, say some people familiar with the bill.

The Town of Groton, meanwhile, has been pursuing Lockwood since 1999 for unpaid taxes on property he owns on Winding Hollow Road.

The town, which now claims it is owed a total of $17,200, filed a collection lawsuit in Superior Court in 2006. That is pending.

Lockwood, who has a 2004 law degree from the Massachusetts School of Law, has failed the Connecticut bar exam three times, most recently last summer. He has represented himself, though, in some of the proceedings in Groton's lawsuit.

In a motion he filed in 2007, he asked for the lawsuit to be dismissed because he was served with the papers at a commercial property, not at his "place of abode." The motion was denied.

I can understand why someone in the real estate business - Lockwood is also a Realtor - might be having trouble keeping ahead of bills in a real estate recession. In that, I'm sure he's not alone.

But if he doesn't know that paying your taxes on time should be the price of admission to run for public office, hopefully New London Republicans will soon help make that more clear.

This is the opinion of David Collins.