jonetta rose barras: Management and political dysfunction in DC

The doublespeak by DC elected leaders and the massive level of government mismanagement they have allowed or enabled through professional neglect is breathtaking. Nevertheless, they have deflected responsibility and accountability, blaming historical conditions, federal officials and even each other for their failures — all the while declaring they are dedicated to working hard on behalf of District residents.

I can’t see it. Can you? 

Consider, for example, that the Department of Housing and Community Development (DHCD) announced recently that it had run out of money for the District’s first-time homebuyers’ program, giving no advance warning to hundreds of applicants who may have been in the process of looking at homes to purchase, working with a real estate agent or mortgage lender, or even making an offer on a house or condo. Last year, with much fanfare and gesticulation, Mayor Muriel Bowser established a goal of 20,000 new Black homeowners by 2030 while raising from $80,000 to $202,000 the amount of money available for down payments.

Promises. Promises.

A group of low-income and working-class residents who purchased condominiums on Talbert Street SE in Ward 8 under the Home Purchase Assistance Program (HPAP) in 2018 are still in court fighting the city over the dangerous and shoddy work of the developer, which received DC subsidies. Given what those families, many of them headed by women, have gone through — receiving at most belated and meager assistance from the Bowser administration, the DC Council and the Office of the Attorney General — nothing the DHCD does or doesn’t do could surprise me.

However, news of the funding shortfall for HPAP did shock others, including some legislators. Why didn’t they know, particularly since they had just approved a supplemental budget for this fiscal year 2023 and the full budget for FY 2024?

What kind of questions were they asking in their oversight hearing about the status of programs critical to the city’s overall affordable housing goals? Further, is there no one inside DC government agencies whispering in councilmembers’ ears about what is happening?

Reconnaissance and research are important in any industry.

At-large Councilmember Robert White sent a letter to Bowser, City Administrator Kevin Donohue and DHCD Director Colleen Green on July 6 to express his dissatisfaction with the manner in which the issue was handled. In an email to me, he continued to be disturbed by the turn of events: HPAP is “one of the most-used tools by Black Washingtonians to purchase a home. Given the longstanding discrimination against Black families and individuals who were denied the opportunity to build wealth for their families through homeownership, we have to get this right,” White wrote. 

“I am in close contact with constituents whose dream of homeownership finally felt attainable with HPAP but are now watching that opportunity slip away — both with this announcement and with the residents at Talbert Street who had to evacuate uninhabitable units they bought using HPAP funds,” he continued. “It is devastating and wrong that they are going through this.”

White, who became chair of the Housing Committee in January, gave the mayor until July 14 to provide him information about whether the administration has identified “additional sources of funding, including contingency funds” that would cover costs already incurred by HPAP applicants.

A spokesperson for the city’s chief financial officer told me in response to an email sent earlier this week that DHCD received $47.6 million for HPAP this fiscal year. All of that money has been allocated through agreements or pending contracts, according to the CFO. 

Additionally, the CFO spokesperson indicated that as of July 10, “$415,088,096 is available in the Housing Production Trust Fund (HPTF), of which $9,362,660 is allocated to administrative costs.  

“Of the remaining $405,725,436 in the HPTF, there is $382,701,888 of projects in the pipeline expected to close in FY23 or FY24.”

If my math is correct, that means there are funds available right now in the HPTF that could be used to help stranded homebuyers. Who is ready to act like Willie Sutton?

The mismanagement of HPAP illustrates the high level of dysfunction permeating the DC government that is adversely affecting residents across the city. In 2022, the DC Department of Health returned as much as $15 million to the feds that had been earmarked for a variety of programs and services including home visiting, firearm injury surveillance, and tracking and surveillance of violent deaths, according to documents that appear on the DC Council’s website. Between 2017 and 2021, DC returned over $10 million that was supposed to be used for unhoused residents as first reported by Street Sense Media and The DC Line’s Annemarie Cuccia. 

After eight years, there still isn’t an accurate count of all of the rent-controlled units in the city, hindering significant improvements to the Rental Housing Act of 1985 while thwarting efforts to preserve affordable housing. (The mayor and others may want to trash Ward 3 residents in the Chevy Chase neighborhood for their reluctance to accept the redevelopment of their community center and public library with the added construction of an undetermined amount of low-cost housing, but there is more than enough evidence to doubt the sincerity of the administration’s stated goal of spreading 12,000 new affordable units throughout the city by 2025.)

This is not a rant — although who could blame me if it were?

I am not the only DC resident tired of the unexceptional performance of leaders and managers, some of whom walk away with annual salaries of more than $200,000, not including benefits and other perks.

DC government incompetence is untethered to any specific agency or issue, however. Three people were killed on Rock Creek Parkway when someone whose driver’s license should have been suspended slammed into their car; the Department of Motor Vehicles is now — after the fact — reviewing 15 years of records involving court-ordered license suspensions that may have slipped through the cracks. 

OK, maybe this is a rant! 

If the DC government were a private company, residents could file a consumer protection complaint with the Office of the Attorney General (OAG), which is supposed to act to ensure the goods are delivered as promised or people get their money back.

Raise your hand if you want your refund for services not delivered.

Despite White’s attention to the HPAP debacle, the council is part of the government malaise. Hundreds of DC Public Schools contracts that should have been submitted to and reviewed by the legislature were not; it was a violation of procurement laws that somehow escaped Chair Phil Mendelson, who has oversight of public education. Why didn’t he know what was happening at an agency under his legislative purview for more than four years? That’s not to say the administrators and managers who didn’t follow proper procedures aren’t at fault, but the system of checks and balances failed as well. 

Earlier this week, the council unanimously approved legislation to have the Office of the Inspector General spend up to $450,000 of public money chiefly to obtain and supervise an independent review of the completed sexual harassment investigation of former Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development John Falcicchio. The Mayor’s Office of Legal Counsel conducted the investigation this spring; the victim’s major allegations have already been substantiated. The MOLC’s investigation into a second government employee’s complaints against Falcicchio is expected to conclude soon. The council also wants the independent review to examine workplace issues deemed outside the scope of the MOLC’s inquiry; Bowser previously asked for the OIG to examine some of those same matters in a management review.

Legislators seemed to hint that they didn’t trust the work of the MOLC. They are the ones who agreed to responsibilities and authority of the enhanced office in 2013. Eyeing mayoral reelection, Vincent Gray, a former council chair, wanted to break the powers that would be given to the city’s first elected independent attorney general. 

Equally troubling is the fact that switching the sexual harassment investigation to the OIG deflects attention from dysfunction in the Office of Human Rights, which actually has responsibility for enforcing local and federal discrimination laws in the government and in the private sector. During the Committee of Public Works and Operations performance oversight hearing conducted by Ward 1 Councilmember Brianne Nadeau in February, officials at OHR repeatedly indicated that the agency had failed to file various reports required by law. Last week, an OHR spokesperson suggested to me that it had not even begun to develop a tracking system of sexual harassment claims mandated under a 2022 law — notwithstanding a looming submission deadline that is now less than six months away.

Adding insult to injury, the council has had the audacity to take umbrage when citizens blame them for their inertia, ineptitude or plain old incompetence. On Tuesday during the debate over the emergency crime legislation — a combination of proposals submitted by Bowser and Ward 2’s Brooke Pinto, chair of the Committee on the Judiciary and Public Safety — Mendelson argued that the crime problem in the city was not created by the council. Maybe not completely, but certainly partially since it has at times reduced funding for the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) while also approving policies that some view as anti-police.

“We are not the implementer,” Mendelson said, noting that the mayor along with the U.S. Attorney’s Office and the MPD are responsible for public safety in the city. He also offered that cases are not being closed and prosecuted in sufficient numbers.

But the council has, in some ways, enabled executive branch mismanagement while also creating anarchy in the streets through its failure to consider the long-term impact of its approved policies and its failure to conduct aggressive oversight that would ensure laws are being implemented with fidelity. 

For example, during a press briefing earlier this week, Mendelson blamed “illicit marijuana establishments” as the reason for some of the crime, decrying the fact that Congress has prevented the city from establishing a retail system for recreational drug sales.

A reporter asked Mendelson why the city wasn’t arresting scofflaws. “My understanding is when the police move in, the U.S. attorney won’t prosecute,” he replied. 

Does that mean the city shouldn’t enforce its laws? Cannot the four-term chair of the council appeal to the White House or the U.S. Justice Department?

During that same session Mendelson told the story of dialing 911 three times after witnessing a major traffic collision. Each time he was placed on hold. A reporter asked whether he spoke later with the director of the Office of Unified Communications, which has responsibility for that system. Mendelson replied, “No, my bad.”

What?! 

Honestly, it’s almost a relief that these folks are going on summer recess. At least residents will have a break from the shucking and jiving and strategic camouflaging deployed as exemplification of DC leaders’ dedication to public service.

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jonetta rose barras is an author and freelance journalist, covering national and local issues including politics, childhood trauma, public education, economic development and urban public policies. She can be reached at thebarrasreport@gmail.com.