It’s not often that I agree with Marion Barry. But a few things the former mayor and current council member said at Thursday’s hearing into Vince Gray’s cozy hiring practices rang true.
At issue was the way Mayor Gray’s political appointees installed friends and family into sweet jobs in the D.C. government. The poor guy at the witness table happened to be Brandon Webb, a young man who got ground up in the city’s burgeoning nepotism scandal.
As the details poured out about how Vince Gray’s former personnel chief, Judy Banks, plugged Webb into a job in the fire department — then unhired him — Barry took to the microphone.
“Judy Banks was acting on behalf of Vince Gray,” Barry said. “I just want to get that straight.”
What makes Barry so sure?
“That’s the way I did it for 16 years when I was mayor,” he said.
In fingering Gray, Marion Barry did us two favors.
First, he cut through the chaff that Gray’s people are spreading to shield the mayor from any blame in the hiring game. They threw Banks and short-lived Chief of Staff Gerri Mason Hall under the bus. We have yet to hear Gray apologize or take full responsibility.
Second, Barry allows us to hold Gray to the standard he set during the mayoral campaign, when he harangued Adrian Fenty for cronyism and corruption. Might Gray not be guilty of the same, or worse?
Brandon Webb’s testimony was revealing. He’s a 29-year-old family man. Born and raised in Texas, he has a graduate degree in business. He’s interned for the Dallas Cowboys, worked in banking, was an executive with Grand Canyon University in Phoenix, where he and his wife were raising two children.
In December, Vince Gray hired his mother, Rochelle Webb, to run the troubled employment services agency. Her son expressed an interest in coming to the capital.
“People still view Washington, D.C., as a place they want to get to,” Brandon Webb told me after he testified. “It had always been my goal.”
On Monday, Jan. 10, Rochelle Webb emailed Banks and pitched Brandon for a job. A day later, he had a $65,000-a-year job assisting the fire chief, no interview or minimal vetting required. Can you say wired?
Let’s review two versions of how Webb got hired. Banks testified Fire Chief Kenneth Ellerbe asked for him; Ellerbe testified that Banks sent him her way. “One of you is not telling the truth,” Councilman David Catania said.
When reports surfaced that many of Gray’s top political appointees had hired their kids, Banks called Ellerbe. This time she told him Brandon Webb had to go. He had done a great job in Ellerbe’s community contact shop. No matter. He was forced out because “the mayor could not take another political hit,” as he was told.
Gray canned Webb’s mother, too, for reasons he has yet to explain. Suffice it to say Gray has tons of explaining to do, to his supporters and to Brandon Webb, who’s now jobless.
Harry Jaffe’s column appears on Tuesday and Friday. He can be contacted at [email protected].
