D.C. Council opens own probe into donations to Caribbean
By: Bill Myers
Examiner Staff Writer
April 10, 2009
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Two D.C. Council members have opened a formal investigation into the city’s donation of rescue vehicles to a Caribbean beach town.
Mary Cheh, D-Ward 3, and Phil Mendelson, D-at large, gave themselves subpoena power to open a joint investigation into the aborted gift of a used firetruck and ambulance to the Dominican Republic resort town of Sosua.
“I just want to know what happened,” Cheh told The Examiner. “But my larger objective is, if there’s some screwy way that we’re dealing with surplus property, I want to fix it.”
Earlier this month, The Examiner reported that Mayor Adrian Fenty’s administration signed an emergency rule giving the nonprofit group Peaceoholics the authority to receive and handle surplus property. It emerged that the Peaceoholics had taken possession of the firetruck and ambulance and had them shipped to Sosua.
D.C.’s inspector general is now investigating.
“The public deserves an explanation,” Mendelson said in a news release announcing the council investigation.
After the donation became public, Fenty’s team ordered the firetruck and ambulance returned to the city. His attorney general, Peter Nickles, issued a report declaring that there was nothing untoward in the donation.
On Thursday, Nickles called Cheh and Mendelson’s pursuit “a misallocation of resources.”
“I think they ought to spend their time on matters that are of greater importance to the city,” he said.
In years previous, the council had rarely voted to use its subpoena power. There are five open council investigations pending, all invoking subpoena power.
Earlier this week, a procurement lawyer testified that longtime aides to Fenty, including city General Counsel Chip Richardson, had lobbied to get the vehicles sent to the Caribbean. The Fenty administration then instructed officials not to testify further.
bmyers@dcexaminer.com
