D.C. Council members were shocked to learn last week Mayor Adrian M. Fenty’s administration routed millions of dollars to the D.C. Housing Authority so it could contract with favored companies to renovate select playgrounds and recreation facilities. It’s hard to understand the legislators’ surprise.
Circumventing procurement rules has been standard fare for decades; ask the federal Government Accountability Office. And issuing project management contracts, as the housing agency did with Banneker Ventures LLC and Regan Associates, also isn’t new.
The project manager model gained popularity during the control board’s and Mayor Anthony A. Williams’ tenures. Neil Albert, then the director of the Department of Parks and Recreation, hired Jair Lynch/Alpha and the Temple Group to supervise the renovation of several recreation facilities. Those contracts, skirting procurement laws, were sent through the control board. Further, agreements weren’t competitively bid for each new construction project — the two firms submitted purchase orders against the original management contract.
For years I decried that process. Eventually the city’s inspector general conducted an audit and found DPR paid Lynch and Temple for work that wasn’t done or was done poorly because of insufficient planning. The IG also recommended the city recover nearly $2 million in overpayments.
The Fenty administration and Housing Authority attempted to replicate with Banneker Ventures and Regan Associates the model the IG found problematic.
But even that isn’t surprising.
Albert, the former DPR director who executed and celebrated the Lynch-Temple model, is now city administrator. Prior to becoming CA, he was the deputy mayor for planning and economic development; you can bet the person currently in that job received Albert’s blessing before signing the Housing Authority agreement.
Council Members Kwame Brown, Harry Thomas Jr. and Mary Cheh plan this week to examine the agreement and contracts, which they said shouldn’t have been signed without council approval. They’re right. Attorney General Peter Nickles sent a letter Friday to the housing agency saying its independence doesn’t exempt it from the law requiring all contracts of $1 million or more be approved by the legislative body.
What is surprising about all of this is legislators’ claim they didn’t know anything. Why didn’t they?
Why didn’t Brown, who chairs the committee overseeing the deputy mayor, know that office had signed an agreement with the Housing Authority?
Why didn’t Thomas, who oversees the DPR, know the agency’s capital funds had been transferred to the deputy mayor’s office? Don’t legislators receive monthly financial reports from the city’s independent chief financial officer, Natwar Gandhi?
As chairwoman of committee that oversees procurement, isn’t it Cheh’s responsibility to examine what agencies with independent authority are doing with that freedom?
Oversight of the executive branch and independent agencies is a principal obligation of the legislature. It’s a critical function that protects the government, and thus District residents, from waste, fraud and abuse. If council members aren’t prepared to do what it takes to successfully perform this vital role — regardless of obstacles — they should quit and go home.
Jonetta Rose Barras, hosts of WPFW’s “D.C. Politics with Jonetta,” can be reached at [email protected].
