Your Government In Action

by hilzoy

From the Washington Post:

"After Philadelphia's housing director refused a demand by President Bush's housing secretary to transfer a piece of city property to a business friend, two top political appointees at the department exchanged e-mails discussing the pain they could cause the Philadelphia director.

"Would you like me to make his life less happy? If so, how?" Orlando J. Cabrera, then-assistant secretary at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, wrote about Philadelphia housing director Carl R. Greene.

"Take away all of his Federal dollars?" responded Kim Kendrick, an assistant secretary who oversaw accessible housing. She typed symbols for a smiley-face, ":-D," at the end of her January 2007 note.

Cabrera wrote back a few minutes later: "Let me look into that possibility." (...)

On the date these e-mails were sent, HUD notified the housing authority that it had been found in violation of rules requiring that 5 percent of housing be accessible to disabled residents. The department later argued that because the authority refused to acknowledge it was in violation and to agree to a specific remedy, it was in violation of a broader agreement that put $50 million in federal funding in jeopardy."

Bush's housing secretary is Alphonso Jackson. You might recall him as the one who "told a Dallas audience (...) that he personally canceled a minority businessman's contract award in response to negative comments about President Bush." He later denied this (canceling a contract on the basis of someone's political views is against the law), but HUD's Inspector General found that he had advised senior staff to consider political affiliations in awarding contracts. However, his denial got him into deeper trouble (read: a federal investigation): he told Congress that he "never touched contracts", but that turned out to be untrue. Now a grand jury is looking into things like this:

"Behind the scenes, Jackson has helped to arrange lucrative contract work running into the hundreds of thousands of dollars for friends and associates who went to work at HUD-controlled housing authorities in New Orleans and the Virgin Islands, according to people familiar with his actions. Indeed, one of Jackson's good friends, Atlanta lawyer Michael Hollis, appears to have been paid approximately $1 million for managing the troubled Virgin Islands Housing Authority. Before landing at the authority, some sources said, Hollis had no experience in running a public housing agency."

Today's scandal, however, is a different one altogether. (I mean, why should Alphonso Jackson be content with only one serious scandal when he can have several?) Here's the backstory:

"The dispute between Jackson and the Philadelphia Housing Authority revolves around a city-led revitalization of the once-blighted Martin Luther King Jr. housing project in South Philadelphia. In 1999, Universal Community Homes, a nonprofit urban-development company founded by Gamble, and a for-profit developer, Pennrose Properties, won the first of a series of contracts from the city to develop 236 affordable, below-market units and provide key marketing and counseling services to incoming residents.

As an incentive, the builders were to get a key parcel of land where they would develop 19 homes to be sold at full market rates. But the partnership finished only 80 of the 236 units they contracted to build, because Pennrose pulled out of the project early on. Pennrose President Mark Dambly said the decision was mutually agreed upon by the builders and the housing authority.

The authority stepped in to help finish building affordable homes and rental units with Universal. But Universal failed to deliver any of the services it had promised, Greene said. The authority concluded that, as a result, it was not obligated to give Universal the vacant land where it planned to build market-rate homes.

Greene said Gamble told him in a 2006 meeting that Gamble didn't have to worry about defaulting on the King project, because he had important friends and Jackson was one of them. HUD officials said Gamble socialized often with Jackson. (...)

The regional HUD director, Guy Ciarrocchi, who served as Bush's 2004 state reelection director, confirmed in an interview that he called Greene at Jackson's request, asking what could be done to transfer the property. He said he relayed Greene's view of the situation -- that Universal didn't deserve the property -- to Jackson's deputy at headquarters and never heard another word about it.

In December 2006, then-Philadelphia Mayor John Street called Greene to say he'd gotten an "animated" call from Jackson, Greene said in the interview. Jackson insisted that the housing authority turn over the property to Gamble, the affidavit states. Greene reiterated to Street that he wouldn't do it because of Universal's delinquencies."

Meanwhile, back at the ranch:

"At the same time, HUD was reviewing whether the Philadelphia authority had made an adequate number of housing units accessible to people with disabilities. The law required that 5 percent of units be accessible, and the city argued it had 6 percent. But HUD inspectors concluded that the city had less than 5 percent and had violated the rules.

With support from a national expert on the subject, Greene and his staff argued that HUD's calculations were mistaken and sought a meeting to resolve the disagreement. But HUD officials declined to meet with the authority, saying in a letter included in the court filings that such negotiations would be "premature."

In the following months, Jackson's deputies, including Blom and Kim Kendrick, assistant secretary for fair housing, repeatedly threatened in calls and in writing to find the Philadelphia authority in violation of both federal accessibility law and HUD's redevelopment grant for the King project, according to their letters and the lawsuit. They said the authority was in default on the King project unless it transferred the vacant land to Gamble."

Until the emails described in the Post's most recent story surfaced, we only had the Philadelphia Housing Authority's word that HUD's stripping them of money was connected to their failure to turn over the land to Jackson's friend. But emails saying ""Would you like me to make his life less happy? If so, how?" and "Take away all of his Federal dollars?" certainly look damning to me.

One of a President's jobs is to make the bureaucracies he controls functional, or at the very least, to prevent them from being used for this kind of vendetta. It's hard to assess how well a President is doing at this unless some scandal like this one breaks. During Bush's presidency, we have had all kinds of evidence that this administration generally cares less about government agencies actually doing their jobs than about rewarding their friends and persecuting their enemies. This was one of the things that bothered me most about the US Attorney scandal: the complete disregard for the professionalism of the Department of Justice, and the apparent willingness to turn it into an arm of the Republican National Committee. Same thing here.

I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for George W. Bush to fire Alphonso Jackson, though it seems clear to me that in a decent administration, he would have been gone a long time ago.

As always, this sort of thing has consequences for a lot of people who had nothing to do with any of it, who were just trying to live their lives and had no idea that they were about to be penalized for a fight they had no part of:

"The authority recently told a federal judge in Philadelphia that HUD's "capricious" decision would cost the authority $50 million, raise rents for most of its 84,000 low-income tenants and force the layoffs of 250 people. The judge agreed to temporarily stay HUD's finding of a violation."

This time, a court stepped in. But I have no idea how many similar perversions of justice have affected unsuspecting people, many of whom pay taxes, and all of whom deserve better from their government.

Comments

[publius]

this story is amazing - i feel like people aren't seeing how crazy it is b/c it's got a lot of administrative details, but this is pretty much government abuse and retaliation of the worst kinds. Where's Grover when you need him?

[Hartmut]

Grover probably works on a press release that states that this is another proof of government inefficiency and evil. And this is in a Republican (and therefore good) administration. Just imagine what would happen, should the Demonrats take over and throw decency and fiscal responsibility overboard. Btw, it is all Clintons's fault anyway.

[Bill Sherlock]

Forget about the politicization and cronyism. What we have here is a prime example of the failure of the unitary executive. This goes right to the top under the neocon view of the presidency. I guess if Jackson wanted to torture someone to get the land it might be of interest at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

[The Modesto Kid]

The picture of Kendrick and Cabrera sitting at their monitors chatting about their corruption is just sickening.

[Dan S.]

"Where's Grover when you need him?

here?

[Steve]

Hopefully, Shaun Donovan will clean out of HUD what should have been cleaned out in 2008.