Continuing problems with the District’s beleaguered summer jobs program are providing plenty of political ammo for Mayor Adrian Fenty’s critics and might become a key theme in the upcoming mayoral campaign.
The Summer Youth Employment Program got off to a rocky start this week when up to 800 kids found out on the opening day of the program that the city hadn’t lined them up jobs, some adult supervisors hadn’t passed a mandatory background check, and there was an investigation started into whether some program participants stole a cell phone from their new place of work.
This comes on the heels of two bad years for the program, and Fenty’s main rival in the upcoming mayoral contest, D.C. Council Chairman Vincent Gray, said the problems go to the “heart” of what’s wrong with the mayor’s leadership style.
“We know that there’s been chronic problems associated with it, so there’s every reason to think that people will be interested in the issue and there will be questions raised about it,” Gray told The Washington Examiner on Tuesday.
Fenty has made expanding the summer jobs program one his goals. The program has grown from 8,000 participants to 22,000 under his administration, and he boasted to WPGC that the District has the biggest summer program in the country and “maybe in the entire world.”
“Have we eliminated all the kinks? No, but … you’re not going to get to a perfect system by just leaving it in the position we found it,” Fenty said. “We’re ramping up, we’re working hard.”
But critics, including at-large Councilman Michael Brown, said Fenty is more focused on numbers than the quality of jobs given. Brown, who heads the committee that oversees the department running the summer jobs program, said he might initiate weekly oversight hearings to keep closer tabs on the program.
The cost of the 2008 summer’s jobs program tripled to more than $50 million after Fenty expanded it to 10 weeks and declined to cap the number of participants. A debacle ensued as the time and attendance system failed, hundreds of nonresident youths were allowed to work, and thousands of employees were paid for work they did not do.
And last year, member’s of the mayor’s Conservation Corps, the default job for thousands of program participants, were accused of littering communities with thousands of door hangers, using drugs on the job and of generally roaming the District without purpose or supervision.
