For four years, Mayor Adrian Fenty was in a rush. He wanted to get things done and get them done fast. As he himself noted during his re-election campaign, that often had many in the community feeling left out. In the end, it was likely the reason his re-election bid failed.
His rushing was also what landed him in hot water over a city contract to a company owned by a fraternity brother.
Throughout the campaign, Fenty was hounded by charges of cronyism. The charge centered on the D.C. Council-ordered investigation being conducted by attorney Robert Trout into a $87 million parks and recreation contract given to a company run by a Fenty fraternity brother. The contract had been routed through the independent housing authority, which immediately raised the D.C. Council’s eyebrows and eventually helped lead to the investigation that hounded the mayor through the summer.
The Trout report was released Monday and exonerated Fenty. It concluded that it was Fenty’s rush to get work done on certain park projects that caused him to move the contract through the independent housing authority and out of the council’s reach.
“The Fenty administration identified the renovation of parks and community centers as an important priority, and the Mayor’s office and [department of parks and recreation] officials were frustrated by the backlog of stalled projects,” the report’s executive summary says. “Speed was considered to be imperative, and it was generally understood that DPR was ill-prepared to deliver it.”
So Fenty set himself up for a battle with the D.C. Council and with the city’s voters because, as the report says, “the combination of expedition, inattention and inertia left the city vulnerable to complaints that there had been at least an appearance of impropriety.”
