Sacramento councilman’s employee and her family live in the house where he says he lives
A woman who works for Sacramento City Councilman Sean Loloee lives with her family in the Hagginwood home he owns, and one man has been registered to vote there for the past year and a half.
Loloee, who is facing the prospect of a City Council investigation into his residency following a series of stories in The Sacramento Bee, also says he lives in the home.
Sacramento requires that council members live in the districts they represent. The Hagginwood home, which is in Loloee’s district, is the residence where Loloee is registered to vote. His family has owned another house in Granite Bay since 2016.
Karla Montoya, who works for Loloee’s Viva Supermarket business, confirmed in a text message that she and her family live at the Hagginwood house, which is on Nogales Street. She said Loloee is allowing her family to stay there. She declined to say more.
Edwin Montoya, 20, has been registered to vote from Loloee’s Nogales Street residence since October 2020, according to county voter registration records obtained by The Bee.
Loloee through a spokesman declined to comment for this story.
Loloee bought the Nogales Street house and registered to vote there in 2019 just before filing papers to run for council, county records show.
Loloee, who is married and has two children, said in an interview with The Sacramento Bee earlier this month that he has lived there with his family ever since he bought the home, aside from a roughly four-month period when he rented it out at the end of 2021.
Edwin Montoya’s voter registration precedes that four-month window when Loloee said he rented the home by almost a year.
Karla Montoya is general manager for Loloee’s companies, according to a federal lawsuit filed in April.
Edwin Montoya was working as a grocery store clerk at one of Loloee’s grocery stores as of May 2021, according to a court document for a separate criminal charge Edwin Montoya is facing.
A neighbor wrote in another court document that Edwin Montoya was at the home regularly last year.
The statement describes Edwin Montoya working on cars. The property earlier this month had a dozen cars parked on it, including some on the lawn.
“I see him every day with his father leaving for work or arriving from work,” wrote Jorge Joaquin Lopez, a neighbor, in a letter he submitted to the court for the criminal case in May 2021. “I also see him when he’s working on his cars at the house.”
Loloee has not discussed having tenants in recent public statements about his residence.
A man at the house after a City Council meeting earlier this month told The Sacramento Bee that he rents the home and lives there with his son.
KCRA also recorded a man at the residence earlier this month.
Loloee did not mention renting the home or letting others stay there when he spoke to the City Council about his residence on June 21. He spoke with CBS 13 for a story about his residence on June 23 and did not mention having tenants.
Residents of four households on Nogales Street have told The Sacramento Bee they have not seen Loloee there.
“He doesn’t live there,” Juan Del Toro, whose windows have a view of the house’s driveway, said Tuesday. “I’ve lived here 20 years. I’ve never seen him.”
In California, if a city council member does not reside or have a domicile in the district they represent, the council could vote to declare the seat vacant, and the member would be replaced, said Fred Woocher, an election law attorney. A person who votes from a place they don’t live could face criminal charges for perjury and voter fraud, Woocher said. If convicted, the person would lose the council seat.
This story was originally published June 30, 2022 at 5:00 AM.
