Council Member Phil Mendelson said Thursday he’s frustrated that Mayor Adrian Fenty’s administration has failed to disclose the names of a coalition of donors who agreed to pay for a consultant’s report published weeks before the school takeover legislation was unveiled.
Mendelson asked Fenty for information regarding who paid for the report and how much it cost at the D.C. Council’s first hearing over the mayor’s takeover bill Jan. 18. Fenty told Mendelson he would receive the information. The Parthenon Group published the 24-page report in December.
Four days after the hearing, Mendelson received a letter from Deputy Mayor for Education Victor Reinoso calling the report an in-kind contribution to Fenty’s transition team, adding that “the donation letter has not been presented to the transition, the administration or any members of its staff.”
Fenty chose Parthenon over three firms that responded to proposal requests for a “best practice review of urban school districts that were either experiencing accelerated reform or were under mayoral control,” Reinoso wrote.
The report declared that “ultimately, mayoral control is required to exercise direct influence over the full range of D.C.’s greatest pain points.”
Mendelson scoffed at Reinoso’s response.
“The unwillingness to be forthcoming will only generate suspicion,” Mendelson said.
Fenty spokeswoman Mafara Hobson said Thursday that the mayor had not yet received the report’s invoice, adding that “a coalition of folks who got together and gave the money together,” paid for it. She said she didn’t recognize any donor names.
“By March we will have a detailed report that includes the in-kind contributions for the report,” Hobson said. “The report hasn’t been paid for as of yet.”
Fenty has pushed for the takeover bill’s quick passage , which a majority of the council has indicated preliminary support for. The council couldpass the bill by April. Fenty will appear in a final hearing on the measure before the council Feb. 27.
But Hobson said the report had no bearing on the bill.
“The council’s not voting on the Parthenon report,” he said. “They’re voting on the bill.”
