Fenty Hanky Panky

Wednesday, December 16, 2009
Northwest Current
Council refuses to ratify contract

■ Parks: Legislators return
project funding to agency

By ELIZABETH WIENER
Current Staff Writer


The D.C. Council yesterday refused to ratify a controversial construction management contract to oversee a dozen stalled park and recreation projects. Council members said the $4.2 million contract with Banneker Ventures is, in the words of Ward 3 member Mary Cheh, “irregular and unlawful — on all levels unacceptable.”

The council then voted to return funding for the individual projects to the embattled Department of Parks and Recreation. Actual construction will be overseen by the Office of Public Education Facilities Management, headed by Allen Lew, who has won wide praise for actually getting numerous facilities renovated or built.

“This is not a perfect solution, but it allows projects to move forward without circumventing the laws of the District of Columbia,” said Ward 5 member Harry Thomas, who chairs the committee on parks and recreation. “We resent having the council put in the position to clean up a mess not of our own making.”

“We have projects with clearly problematic contracts, and on the other hand, communities promised these projects,” said Council Chairman Vincent Gray.

Tuesday’s unanimous vote was the latest step in a saga that began in October, when the council learned that nearly $50 million in parks department funding had been funneled through the city’s economic development office to the D.C. Housing Authority — all without council approval.

The total amount at issue is now close to $100 million. The council is supposed to review all contracts for more than $1 million. Tuesday’s vote rejected a $4.2 million program management contract awarded to Banneker Ventures, which was supposed to oversee individual park projects across the city.

Attorney General Peter Nickles asked the council last Friday to approve the contracts retroactively. Without emergency action, he said, the individual projects would run out of money and be stalled.

They include improvements to Justice Park and the Parkview Recreation Center in Ward 1; parks at 7th and N streets and 10th Street and Massachusetts Avenue in Ward 2; the Guy Mason Recreation Center and Newark Street dog park in Ward 3; Raymond Recreation Center in Ward 4; and five more facilities in the eastern part of the city.

Nickles said emergency action was needed because the council froze the transfer of funds for the projects while it investigated the contracting scandal.

“Abandoning any of the projects would likely result in additional costs due to civil actions and claims from involved parties,” the attorney general wrote. He recommended quick council action “to avoid construction delays, community frustration and costly litigation.”

But the council was not swayed. It takes nine votes to pass emergency legislation, but even normally reliable allies of Mayor Adrian Fenty and his administration would not buy in.

“We cannot move the city forward on the basis of illegal contracts,” said at-large member Michael Brown, a frequent Fenty critic.

The council will also ask Nickles to conduct a “full investigation” of possible illegalities. Cheh said the inquiry could result in the recovery of money already spent and “consequences” for city employees who approved “unlawful actions.”

An oversight hearing last Thursday revealed further irregularities like those that have already eroded the council’s confidence in the handling of capital dollars. The project management contract awarded to Banneker Ventures has caused particular concern.

For example, council members learned that Liberty Engineering and Design, a subcontractor for Banneker, has already received some payments in violation of the original contract. That document says subcontractors can’t be paid until their individual contracts are approved by the housing authority — which hasn’t happened yet.

Housing authority officials testified that Banneker submitted six invoices after its contract was finalized in July, some reflecting work done before the contract was officially signed. Four were paid, according to Deborah Toothman, the housing authority’s chief financial officer.

The total paid so far is $1.9 million, including $387,850 invoiced for Liberty Engineering, owned by Sinclair Skinner, an outspoken friend and fraternity brother of the mayor. Omar Karim, Banneker’s founder, testified that Skinner is also a friend of his, and had
worked as a volunteer for his firm two years ago.

Adrianne Todman, the housing authority’s interim executive director, said she read the Banneker Venture contract this fall, realized that subcontractors like Liberty should not be paid yet, and held up payment of the last two invoices. “Prior to my reading, there was some misinterpretation [of the contract] among my colleagues,” Todman testified.

Skinner was asked to appear at the hearing, but he declined. He will be subpoenaed for another council oversight session Dec. 21.

The council also learned that, on the eve of its latest oversight session, the housing authority board voted to approve an amended contract with Banneker, upping the total cost of projects it would oversee from $50 million to $99 million. Under questioning, officials said the Office of the Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development requested the action.

Todman said parks projects added to the original contract had increased that contract’s scope, and the board needed to approve the increased dollars before the document was presented to the council. “The intent is that the contract that would finally get to the council reflect the full scope,” she testified. “The intent is to be more transparent.”

Again, council members were skeptical. “I was flabbergasted when [economic development officials] recommended they increase it from $50 to $99 million,” said Ward 8 member Marion Barry. “What made you think this was the solution?”

“You’re just giving away the people’s money,” said at-large member Kwame Brown. “Whoever signed this contract should be fired. And in the middle of this, the DCHA board approves a bigger contract?”

Council members also pointed out that some of the projects in the Banneker contract were either not approved by the council — a separate process from approving contacts — or not funded for the current year.

In response to queries from The Current, a spokesperson for the economic development office
acknowledged a “mistake” in plans to upgrade the Chevy Chase Recreation Center and playgrounds on Livingston Street, one of the projects assigned to the housing authority and then to Banneker Ventures.

Spokesperson Sean Madigan said his office had submitted a “reprogramming” request to the council last February to move funding for the project up from 2012 to 2009. “We assumed it had been approved and we proceeded with work. But the reprogramming was actually not approved,” Madigan wrote in an e-mail.

The Banneker contract also includes at least two projects — Parkview in Ward 1 and the N Street park in Ward 2 — that council members said they have not specifically authorized. “Funding was originally made available out of a general improvements line and some members believed we should have submitted for a reprogram, yet we disagree,” Madigan wrote.

Karim, Banneker’s founder, testified under subpoena at the council hearing last week. He said he started the firm five years ago “to change the world, starting in Washington, one neighborhood at a time.” The firm now has nine employees, including staff with engineering, architecture and law degrees.

Karim, also a fraternity brother of the mayor, denied any favoritism in the award of the project management contract. “Possible government missteps” do not involve his firm, he said. “I have nothing to do with any government function,” he testified.


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