By jonetta rose barras Examiner Columnist Whew!
D.C. Council Members Mary Cheh and Phil Mendelson finally released this week results of their probe into the attempt by Mayor Adrian M. Fenty’s administration to donate a firetruck and ambulance to Sosua, a small town in the Dominican Republic. During the last two months, I had become like a child on a long trip: Are we there yet? Is the committee report ready?
The District is suffering investigation-itis. Whenever the mayor frustrates the legislature, it calls for an investigation: The public housing authority signs contracts for recreation facilities; issue subpoenas, swear in witnesses. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee says some teachers fired last year had sex with students, were guilty of corporal punishment or failed to show up for work; the council chairman wants an “inquiry.”
I pine for simple, aggressive oversight.
The firetruck investigation kicked off last April, after The Examiner‘s Michael Neibauer reported the executive’s intentions. Neither Cheh nor Mendelson received prior notice. That insult was sculpted into a full-blown scandal. The inspector general was brought in. Attorney General Peter Nickles instructed executive branch officials not to answer council questions; he conducted his own review, concluding no laws were broken. The council took depositions behind closed doors.
The reports could’ve been peace offerings — except two days before their release, Nickles publicly chastised Mendelson and Cheh for losing recorded depositions of two witnesses.
“They are not supposed to issue the report unless the witnesses are given a chance to review their statements, ” Nickles said. “It’s outrageous.”
Lost testimony aside, residents need closure. They need to know Fenty wasn’t involved in any criminal wrongdoing. The committee found he wasn’t.
Cheh said in the report, however, that “a number of the things we found were disturbing and troublesome.” The personal property division was a “sloppy, irresponsible operation; the executive branch exhibited a pattern of indifference to the rules”; and the attorney general’s review of the matter was inadequate as “it never named the main players,” she said.
“We spent far more time on this than we should have only because of the obstructionism of the attorney general,” Mendelson said.
“I hope at the end of the day, people don’t see this as [just being] about a truck,” Cheh said. Her committee’s report proposes legislation to update the material management manual; require the creation of a computerized system that would encourage the reuse of surplus equipment between agencies; mandate the use of specific Internet sites to secure best value when such equipment is posted for sale; and require greater transparency.
That’s all good. But those weaknesses Cheh discovered in the city’s contracting system and the fixes offered could’ve been found during rigorous, sophisticated oversight.
There are serious problems in the District government that merit investigation. The firetruck donation wasn’t one of them. But the executive’s decision not to cooperate with the legislature and the council’s knee-jerk distrust of Fenty prompted an unnecessary probe, resulting in a waste of taxpayers’ money.
Jonetta Rose Barras, host of WPFW’s “D.C. Politics with Jonetta,” can be reached at [email protected].
