A 10-month D.C. Council probe into the donation of emergency vehicles to the Dominican Republic found no criminal wrongdoing, but it did conclude that the Fenty administration’s handling of the gift was sloppy, secretive and indifferent to city rules.
The investigation by the council’s judiciary and government operations committees was released Wednesday, 10 months after The Examiner first reported on the unusual contribution of a firetruck and ambulance to Sosua, a town on the northern Dominican coast.
The report claims serious problems with executive branch transparency and the way the government handles surplus property. But no person involved in the donation, notably Fenty friend Sinclair Skinner and development chief David Jannarone, broke any city laws.
“What makes the transaction so incredible is the fact that so much effort — at the highest levels of District government — was expended to facilitate a transfer of surplus personal property without even a hint of potential benefit for the District government,” the report concludes. “Rather, the entire affair was merely the pet project — even if well-intentioned — of a senior District official and a well-connected non-government official.”
The investigation could have been avoided had the council gotten answers from the executive immediately, said Judiciary Committee Chairman Phil Mendelson. But the council’s probe, he said, was repeatedly “frustrated” by the attorney general.
But Council members Jack Evans and Muriel Bowser, citing the report’s “editorializing” and its drubbing of Attorney General Peter Nickles, both voted against it.
“You conclude there was no wrongdoing,” Evans said. “But there’s so much in here that has nothing to do with that other than to say that we’re unhappy with the way people acted.”
Among the conclusions:
» The District’s personal property division has failed to implement reforms and follow its own rules, such as barring the use of private funds to facilitate the donation.
» A brief investigation by Nickles that found no wrongdoing was “compromised” because it was conducted by two people directly involved in the transaction.
» Skinner and Jannarone nearly pulled off another donation, this one to Dajabon, Haiti.
The report aligns with much of what The Examiner has reported.
Skinner, Jannarone, and Deputy Fire Chief Ronald Gill Jr. visited Sosua in early February 2009 for a Super Bowl party and to facilitate the transaction. Gill’s trip was partly funded by D.C. taxpayers.
In late March, an emergency rule was published in the D.C. Register to set up the nonprofit Peaceoholics as an intermediary for the donation. The firetruck and ambulance were shipped but Nickles recalled both shortly after the donation was outed.
Sosua Mayor Vladimir Cespedes paid Skinner more than $11,000 cash expecting an ambulance and firetruck in return. He wanted his money back, he said in July during a visit to D.C.
Nickles said Wednesday that the council inquiry was a “waste of time and a waste of government resources in what became a very political series of actions.” The council should have ditched its investigation and waited for the findings of the Inspector General’s review, he said.
