Twice this week D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty said he bore full responsibility for the total collapse of the Summer Youth Employment Program. At the same time, he forced the resignation of Summer Spencer, director of the Department of Employment Services, and promised additional “management decisions” in the wake of the meltdown.
“In this case, as has been the case in previous administration failures, the mayor is faithful to the old naval tradition that, when there is a disaster at sea, the captain designates a subordinate to go down with his ship,” Gary Imhoff, co-founder of D.C. Watch, wrote in Thursday’s edition of his watchdog organization’s online newsletter, The Mail.
The 2008 version of the jobs program could cost the city upward of $50 million, about $25 million more than was budgeted. Millions of dollars have been paid to thousands of individuals who likely didn’t deserve a penny.
“The mayor is ultimately accountable,” Fenty said Friday. “To quote Harry Truman, ‘The buck stops here.’”
But what are the consequences if the mayor is, as he has said, “personally at fault”?
“I don’t editorialize,” he said. “That’s your job.”
Friday was the fourth payday of the summer. Fenty announced that 16,259 participants in the summer jobs program were paid for the maximum allowable hours, down from more than 21,000 two weeks earlier. Another 1,712 people were paid 50 percent of maximum hours. And 3,207 individuals were determined ineligible, removed from the system and not paid at all.
The participant purge, which followed what Fenty described as an “enormous amount of scrubbing,” reduced payroll from $8 million two weeks ago to $6 million. It will take another two weeks before participants are paid only for the hours they worked, further cutting costs.
Enrollment in the program exploded this year after Fenty ordered that all interested D.C. residents between the ages of 14 and 21 must be allowed to participate. But DOES, an internal review found, was totally overwhelmed. Contracts were finalized late. A new time and attendance system was untested. Spencer’s team failed to ask for help, while Fenty’s staff failed to ask the tough questions.
“What began as a sound policy decision,” the review concluded, “fell victim to poorly managed execution.”
The D.C. inspector general will be asked to decide whether criminal charges are deserved. Kevin Donahue, who heads up Fenty’s accountability team, said there is a “high degree of confidence there was knowing fraud among the people we removed today.”
Five supposed participants were older than 50. Another 27 are suspected of submitting duplicate Social Security numbers, which earned them multiple city-issued debit cards every two weeks.
