After less than six months of Mayor Vincent Gray’s first term, evidence that his administration has gone off the rails abounds. What’s worse, the mayor seems alarmingly unconcerned with correcting his course. More than 800 emails were recently released to a D.C. Council committee investigating the scandal by which Sulaimon Brown was hired after running a mayoral campaign whose only point was to attack Gray’s chief rival, former Mayor Adrian Fenty. The emails show political hacks running the show, staffing the new administration not with the best and brightest, but with the personal friends of top Gray staffers, and even with their children. The correspondence involved several top figures, including former Gray chief of staff Gerri Mason Hall, former interim human resources director Judy Banks, and Gray campaign/transition manager Lorraine Greene, who offered Brown his $110,000 a year job.
There is scant evidence that the mayor really understands how damaging these early violations of law and professional standards have been. Meeting with a group of core campaign supporters last week, Gray felt compelled to ask for their forgiveness for being “sidelined,” as if this was the full extent of the problem. He failed to outline plans to correct the still-growing public perception that getting a job or a contract from the Gray administration depends entirely on which insider you know.
As council chairman, Gray attacked former Mayor Fenty for allegedly steering city park contracts to his fraternity brothers. A year-long investigation cleared Fenty of any misconduct. But now that he is mayor, Gray is not doing enough to dispel the notion that he would allow his own administration to engage in the sort of cronyism that he previously condemned. This should be a high priority for a mayor who has proposed $300 million in spending increases. City residents need to know that their tax dollars are not winding up in the pockets of the mayor’s cronies, or their children.
These scandals are really about the lack of fair and open access to information on hiring and contracting, and sadly the lack of transparency continues. City residents have yet to hear their mayor clearly and unequivocally promise that the District government will be run openly and fairly from now on. By missing yet another opportunity to tell his closest supporters — and the public — that he’s learned his lesson, and that there will be no more cronyism, nepotism or secrecy on his watch, Gray has demonstrated once again that he and his administration are not ready for prime time.
