“Kleptocracy.” That’s the word a high-ranking District official used to describe the government. There’s tangible proof that the official’s assessment, however harsh, is more accurate than not. D.C. Council Chairman Kwame Brown snatched taxpayers’ money to style and profile in “fully loaded” sport utility vehicles that may still cost District residents more than $17,000 even though the vehicles have been returned. Mayor Vincent Gray’s staff and campaign transition committee paid themselves exorbitant salaries — then hired their children. The chairman said he didn’t realize the cost of the vehicles. Gray initially said the children of his cronies were qualified and commended those young people for wanting to dedicate themselves to public service.
“There is a culture of excuses in this city,” said the District official. “Excuses are like a narcotic. They are addictive and rob you of your dignity.”
In the recent scandals, excuses have obfuscated and deliberately misled: Consider the revelation by the Washington Post’s Colbert King on Saturday that Gray confessed he didn’t even know that the children of his staffers had been hired.
Who’s in charge? How can you not know that your staffers are hiring their children?
As for those over-the-top executive salaries, Judy Banks, the mayor’s interim human resources director, told Mary Cheh, the head of the council’s Committee on Government Operations and the Environment, that “the mayor all along intended to submit legislation that would authorize the beyond-the-range compensation.”
Is it time for a Tunisia?
Short of such a revolution, District residents should bury Brown and Gray with expressions of dissatisfaction. Gray’s strategy of applying for approval retroactively was an invention, created after the media caught the administration breaking the law.
When the last administration made a similar move, in service to District residents desperate for renovated recreation centers, then-council Chairman Gray and his colleagues went ballistic. He created an investigative committee and appointed a special counsel. Then, Gray rode accusations of corruption by the incumbent all the way to the sixth-floor mayoral suite in the John. A. Wilson Building.
District citizens may also want to encourage Cheh to take swift action on her committee’s recently released report on personnel practices, which is expected to be discussed in a meeting later this week. The report recommended the mayor and city administrator educate staffers about nepotism and seek the resignation of employees hired in violation of the rules. It also advised the executive to re-examine its pre-employment screening process. The latter is under way, and children of Gray’s political appointees already have begun resigning.
The report also said Gray should reduce salaries of executive managers that exceed the legal cap or seek council authorization. That choice shouldn’t be his. The council should order the executive to reduce the salaries, sending an early signal it won’t play the retroactive game.
That action also would indicate the legislature intends to enforce the law — even when its members and friends are involved. More important, it would begin the process of restoring the public’s trust, which has been eroded severely — if not completely destroyed.
Jonetta Rose Barras’ column appears on Monday and Wednesday. She can be reached at [email protected].
