Top members of the Adrian Fenty administration violated District regulations when they developed plans to donate a used D.C.-owned fire truck to a Dominican Republic city, a D.C. inspector general investigation has concluded. The plan to donate a used fire truck to the city of Sosua was scuttled by then-Attorney General Peter Nickles after it was revealed in The Washington Examiner, the report said. The truck was already on its way to the city when The Examiner reported the donation and Nickles ordered the vehicle be returned. But the violations of city regulations had already occurred. The D.C. Council was kept out of the process, even though its approval for a rule change allowing the donation was required, the report said.
“The lack of proper oversight allowed private parties … inappropriately to influence the activities of District government employees,” the inspector general wrote. “This further resulted in a waste of District government resources.”
The inspector general did not cite any legal violations and said in the report the U.S. Attorney’s office declined to prosecute anyone.
The idea for donating the truck was first proposed in October 2007 by William Walker of Faith Productions Inc., a nonprofit that sometimes sends low-income D.C. youth to the Dominican Republic for a boxing tournament. The report, says Walker, identified as “Nonprofit 2 founder” offered the mayor of Sosua help with his depleted fire fighting vehicles in exchange for the mayor’s assistance with a boxing tournament. A month later, Sosua’s mayor came to D.C. and met with David Jannarone, a top Fenty development aide, who said he would help with the truck donation.
But the ball didn’t really start rolling until December 2007, when Jannarone and Fenty fraternity brother Sinclair Skinner went to Sosua for a bachelor party, the report said. At the party, Skinner met Sosua’s mayor. When they returned stateside, Jannarone began to inquire about excess fire department property. Once it was found, Skinner helped arrange to transport the scrap truck the District found by having the District donate the truck to the nonprofit Peaceoholics and traveling to Sosua to pick up the $10,000 cash payment that Sosua made to cover transportation costs, the report says.
It was only after the fire truck was on its way out the door that top city officials looked into the donation’s legality. City attorneys eventually drew up emergency legal interpretations finding it permissable, which the inspector general says was improper.
“It concerns me that high-ranking members of the former administration knowingly violated District rules,” at-large Councilman Phil Mendelson said in a statement Monday.
