Jonetta Rose Barras: The pot and the skillet
By: Jonetta Rose Barras
Examiner Columnist
November 1, 2009
Do you love a farce? If your answer is yes, then you would have loved the roundtable convened Friday by D.C. Council members Harry Thomas, Kwame Brown, Mary Cheh and Marion Barry to probe how the D.C. Housing Authority awarded contracts to friends of Mayor Adrian M. Fenty.
Some background: Earlier this year, the Department of Parks and Recreation transferred capital funds totaling $86 million to the Office of the Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development. The deputy mayor sent that money to the housing authority. The DCHA selected through competitive bid Banneker Ventures and Regan Associates as project managers to oversee renovation or construction of select recreation facilities. The management team doesn’t do the work; it hires general contractors. City Administrator Neil Albert reported the only contract signed thus far by DCHA was with Banneker Ventures/Regan Associates. The agency has paid out $6.2 million.
The drama surrounding the probe is heightened by the fact that Thomas and Cheh are up for re-election. Brown’s daddy and friends are trying to draft him for mayor, pitting him against Fenty. Barry still thinks he’s mayor.
Not surprisingly, the roundtable was filled with nauseating levels of political posturing. Legislators displayed varying degrees of indignation; accused the administration of circumventing procurement laws; and declared the contracts illegal.
But the council knows this isn’t the first time Fenty has used the housing agency as a conduit. In fact, Mayor Anthony A. Williams’ administration did the same. So what’s the difference? In the past, officials said, contracts of $1 million or more were forwarded to the council as required by law. But this time, DCHA did not send the parks and recreation agreements to the legislature. And, the contractors the agency engaged have personal connections to the mayor.
Truth be told, the council should never have permitted past use of the housing authority. The practice allows taxpayers’ money to be wasted.
DCHA gets a fee for its service. The project manager gets a fee. These payments come off the top before any construction begins. What’s worse, there are employees on the government’s payroll charged with similar duties. At the parks department, the original source for the money in question, there are 11 positions dedicated to capital projects. Despite such waste and duplication, the council didn’t rebuke the practice until the mayor’s friends rolled in.
Another roundtable is scheduled for later this week. No doubt legislators will use this controversy to demonstrate they are standing up to an executive who knows the power of his office, and uses it unapologetically.
Though council members huffed and puffed, there wasn’t any mention of their own contracting scandal — the one involving Barry. The Ward 8 legislator paid his girlfriend through a sole-source contract to present a plan for attacking poverty. Famed lawyer Robert
Bennett is investigating what Barry did and the legislature’s overall use of its procurement authority. A report was to have been issued by now.
That means we have a case of the pot calling the skillet black. It’s hard not to be amused by the entire spectacle.
Jonetta Rose Barras, hosts of WPFW’s “D.C. Politics With Jonetta,” can be reached at Rosebook1@aol.com.
