D.C.’s attorney general interceded to keep a friend and fraternity brother of Mayor Adrian Fenty off a list of those banned from doing business with the city, the Washington Examiner has learned.
Contracting officials drafted a letter that would have barred Sinclair Skinner from city contracts, but Attorney General Peter Nickles, a longtime friend and confidant of the mayor, ordered the letter rewritten to delay the action until Skinner could respond.
“That’s what we call due process,” Nickles said. “The first draft of the letter wasn’t adequate.”
Skinner is a central figure in an ongoing contracts scandal. His firm received hundreds of thousands of dollars in no-bid contracts to remodel parks and playgrounds. He has admitted that his firm did little actual work on the contracts but denied any wrongdoing.
Last fall, Skinner skipped a public hearing on the contracting scandal. Councilman Harry Thomas, D-Ward 5, asked city contracting chief David Gragan to have Skinner put on the city’s “excluded parties list.” In mid-March, a letter was ready to go out.
City law requires businesses and their owners to be given a chance to respond to debarment allegations, but Nickles has never intervened in a debarment before, a source said.
Nickles said Tuesday that he wasn’t sure the city had ever banned a business before. The contracting office’s Web site shows five people and seven companies on the excluded parties list.
But Nickles denied that there was anything special in his attention to detail in the Skinner matter.
“I don’t intervene unless I see something that’s not in comportment with regulations,” he said.
Skinner could still wind up on the banned contractor list.
His lawyer, A. Scott Bolden, is arguing that Skinner’s angry April testimony complied with the council’s request for information.
“Once he appeared, that cured any defect,” Bolden said.
Skinner is still facing court sanction for refusing to answer questions about other business relationships with Omar Karim, another Fenty friend and fraternity brother who gave the parks contracts to Skinner’s firm.
Thomas said he was frustrated that Skinner was able “to string along” for six months between his initial no-show and his final appearance and remain off the debarred list.
“He should have been debarred for the months of time he didn’t show,” Thomas said.
