D.C. Attorney General Peter Nickles has ordered the Fenty administration to submit all contracts that exceed $1 million to the D.C. Council for review, rejecting an attempt to funnel more than a dozen deals through an independent agency.

In a letter Friday to the interim executive director of the D.C. Housing Authority and her general counsel, Nickles said DCHA “must abide” by a legislative opinion issued in 1996 by his predecessor: that no contract in excess of $1 million issued by an executive agency, independent or otherwise, could be approved without legislative consent.