Firetruck donation to Dominican town will get independent review
By: Michael Neibauer
Examiner Staff Writer
April 3, 2009
The D.C. inspector general is digging into the mysterious donation of a firetruck and ambulance to a beach town in the Dominican Republic, while the city’s attorney general claims all rules were followed to the letter in this “humanitarian gesture.”
Inspector general spokesman Austin Anderson said last week that the gift to Sosua on the north Dominican coast is “under review,” though he declined to elaborate.
The donation was “legal and totally proper” and “in the service of important and legitimate public purposes,” Attorney General Peter Nickles said Friday in a three-page statement, issued after a week of Examiner reporting on the matter.
“There was no attempt to hide this disposition,” Nickles said. “The transaction was facilitated through formal rule making which was publicly noticed in the District register. All District rules and procedures appear to have been followed.”
But a pair of D.C. Council members were skeptical and called for an “immediate investigation” by Inspector General Charles Willoughby. Council members Phil Mendelson and Mary Cheh said Friday that the Attorney General’s Office was likely involved in the process of writing the emergency rule that allowed the vehicles’ donation and therefore “there will be an appearance that Mr. Nickles’ investigation will not be at arm’s length.”
Mendelson has called the donation “mind-boggling” and a “burgeoning” scandal made worse by an apparent cover-up.
“If all rules and regulations were followed,” Cheh said, “we need new rules and regulations.”
The vehicles were titled to the nonprofit Peaceoholics, who routed them to Sosua in late March. They made it as far south as Miami before being ordered turned around — they were returned to D.C. on Wednesday. It is a “shame that this humanitarian gesture was not able to be timely completed,” Nickles said.
Local nonprofits, including the Peaceoholics, have taken at-risk D.C. youth to the Dominican Republic for years for “sports-based and cross-cultural activities,” Nickles said. Sosua’s mayor requested help to replace the town’s antiquated firetruck during a visit to D.C. in 2007.
Deputy D.C. Fire Chief Ronald Gill Jr. traveled to Sosua for six days in late January — and charged the trip to taxpayers — “to confirm their need and assess their infrastructure and capabilities.” Unnamed officials from other agencies joined him, Assistant Fire Chief Alfred Jeffery told the council last week. Fire Chief Dennis Rubin said he was “clueless” about the whole thing.
