A fire truck is rather hard to misplace. So when one went missing in late January, it should have been pretty obvious – even to District of Columbia government officials who subscribe to the “See No Evil” school of management when people are carting public property out the door.
Last week, The Washington Examiner’s Michael Neibauer was the first to report that a “surplus” D.C. fire truck and ambulance were handed over to former drug dealer Ronald Moten, often described as a “close associate” of Mayor Adrian Fenty. Moten runs Peaceaholics, a group that gets millions of tax dollars to help at-risk D.C. youth.
Somebody apparently just handed the keys over to Moten, who was in the process of shipping the emergency equipment to Sosua, a beach town in the Dominican Republic, when the news broke and the shipment was abruptly recalled. The “donation” is now the subject of an investigation by the District Council.
Turns out the somebodys were two of the mayor’s attorneys, acting counsel Chip Richardson and special counsel Thorn Pozen, who apparently called the Office of Contracting and Procurement and arranged to use Moten – who later claimed the equipment was “worthless” – as an intermediary. But the 1998 fire truck had only 55,000 miles on it, not the over 195,000 originally claimed by the Fire Department, and both vehicles had an estimated value of $340,000.
How does Moten know what a fire truck is worth, anyway? And if it were really worthless, why would D.C. give it to somebody else?
Deputy Fire Chief Ronald Gill, Jr. cited “fire truck donation” to justify his six-day trip to Sosua from January 29 through February 4 on the taxpayers’ dime – authorized through a supposedly “emergency” rule published two months after the fact. Former procurement officer Sinclair Skinner also went to Sosua prior to the donation. So why was Moten involved at all?
The most troubling aspect of this strange affair is the response by Attorney General Peter Nickles, who called the determination by Council members Phil Mendelson and Mary Cheh to get to the bottom of it “a misallocation of resources” – a pretty interesting choice of words when you’re talking about giving city property away to the mayor’s pal.
But Nickles, who found nothing wrong with this bizarre scenario, could not be more wrong.
During the Marion “I don’t pay taxes, but you have to” Barry administration, public corruption was so rampant that people were caught backing up trucks to school loading docks and literally stealing food from hungry children. Principals used after-school activity money to go on vacations, and so many palms were greased at City Hall, the entire city slid into bankruptcy. Those days were supposed to be gone forever.
As if D.C. taxpayers needed another reminder after recent arrests in the city’s Tax and Technology offices, the fire truck episode shows that the culture of theft is still alive and well at the highest levels of government, including the mayor’s own attorneys.
And for the city’s top law enforcement officer to “shut down the accountability process,” as Mendelson has accused Nickles of doing when he blocked officials from testifying before the Council, is disturbing at best. If D.C. officials can’t account for something as big and expensive as a fire truck, what else are they hiding?
Barbara F. Hollingsworth is The Washington Examiner’s local opinion editor.
