Mayor Adrian Fenty has sacked a veteran employee of his $300,000 per year youth council after leading members of the group complained that they were being used as propaganda by the mayor, The Examiner has learned.
Janice Ferebee was fired as director of the D.C. Youth Advisory Council and replaced by Sean Gough.
“They didn’t really tell us anything,” said Connell Wise, 18, the council’s parliamentarian. “They said they wanted to go in a new direction. I’m not really sure what direction we’re going in.”
The council was formed under Fenty’s predecessor, Anthony A. Williams. Though funded through the mayor’s office, it was supposed to be an independent organization that gave young Washingtonians a voice in District affairs.
The group had foundered and hadn’t had a quorum for years, but when it was revived under Fenty and Ferebee, critics complained that it was being used as a propaganda arm of the Fenty administration.
Council members complained publicly that they couldn’t spend their own money and instead of organizing youth events and testifying on legislation that affected the city’s youth, they were handing out T-shirts at Fenty’s public events.
The youth said they were embarrassed after D.C. Council Member Yvette Alexander, D-Ward 7, introduced a bill that would create a youth council — without knowing that such a council was already supposed to exist.
Sources familiar with the mayor’s office said that the mayor and his aides were outraged at being publicly challenged and cracked down further on the council’s activities.
“We were supposed to go on the radio,” said Council Chairman Howard Brown. “The executive office said, ‘No, you guys will have to chill out.’ ”
Fenty spokeswoman Carrie Brooks declined to discuss Ferebee’s removal, saying that it was a personnel matter.
Brown said he’s disappointed in Ferebee’s removal.
“Here was a director who was doing a good job and she disappears,” he said. “Itkind of sucks to see it fall apart and nobody cares.”
