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Deputy Mayor Valerie Santos, courtesy EOM
Two key administration officials failed to show at the council's hearing today – the third so far – on the $82 million in parks and rec contracts that were funneled through the D.C. Housing Authority without council approval. The no-shows, as D.C. Wire notes, make this two weeks in a row that administration officials have failed to appear, leading to subpoenas being issued. Just last week, Interim Director of the Department of Parks and Rec Ximena Hartsock was the absentee witness; today Hartsock finally testified, but David Jannarone and Jacquelyn Glover, both of whom work with Deputy Mayor for Economic Development and Planning Valerie Santos, failed to appear.
Santos, who did testify today, was asked twice by Council member Harry Thomas (D-Ward 5) to find out where Jannarone and Glover where. Santos claimed that Glover was not returning calls and that Jannarone had the day off. When pressed about the timing of Jannarone's vacation, Santos admitted that she couldn't exactly remember signing the paperwork allowing him the time away from work.
And so the hearings shall continue.
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More picture of Deputy Mayor Valerie Santos, please. Somebody get her a job modeling for American Apparel.
Or at least some pictures of her feet.
Developer? I don't even know her!
She should run for her boss' job. I'd vote for her, with or without the feet pictures. I'd certainly have a good time watching her "poll the electorate."
I think you mean the "electorate polling her" ... you sexist pig.
Either way, wouldn't mind being on her "exploratory committee."
I'm going to subject you to a "DPR Hearing" one of these days, Martin.
I wish someone would have informed me we have a hot deputy mayor.
Anyhoo....
I can't decide whether these people are willfully non-compliant or just plain dumb. I'm in the same quandary with Fenty, too.
Anyhoo....
I can't decide whether these people are willfully non-compliant or just plain dumb. I'm in the same quandary with Fenty, too.
My money says willfully non-compliant because HTJr is a municipal employees union tool and the hearing is a set up.
I'm with Downtown Rez on this one. The Councils main goal is to preserve the shifty status quo at DPR, in an effort to make sure none of their unqualified, surly workers lose their "jobs" - and by "jobs" I mean cllecting a paycheck, not actually doing any work.
This Council lost all credibility with it's unbelievable pre-cvl rights era style racist and sexist grilling of Hartsock.
Hmmmm. I'm not sure about this. While I think you may be right about Thomas, I don't know that everyone in the council is simply looking to protect bad workers at DPR.
At the end of the day, there still is the matter of $82 million in contracts that were funneled through the Housing Authority without council approval, with much of the money ending up with contractors with links to Fenty. That's definitely worth investigating.
I think the no-show witnesses are being willfully non-compliant because they realize how hot an issue this could be and how easily their jobs might be in danger.
Who from the council attended the committee hearing? Thomas chairs that committee and was there. And though neither Barry (the guy who bloated DPR in the first place) nor Cheh (who hates Nickels) sits on the parks and rec committee, both of them were there.
So you have two pro-government bloat council members, and one anti-Nickles council member.
Anyone else there? What about Catania, Kwame Brown, Phil Mendelson, and Yvette Alexander?
All I'm suggesting is that there is investigating contracts which the administration says must stand, and then there is using this as a vehicle for accomplishing other goals.
Oh, for sure. And I agree that the folks there don't represent the city's best interests. Then again, Cheh probably doesn't have much of a dog in the DPR fight. I doubt many of her constituents work in the city bureaucracy, especially in such a lowly agency.
There's bound to be additional politics in this, but I don't know of anyone on the council who has been willing to stand with Fenty on this one. And he basically set himself up for this. Did he really expect that $82 million in contracts would go unnoticed?
Did he really expect that $82 million in contracts would go unnoticed?
Considering his penchant for acting like a privileged moron, no, this does not suprise me one bit. I fully expect him to be suprised when his multi-million dollar lobbying campaign to get the American Society for Transient Suffocation to have their convention in the National Cathedral goes horribly awry. Peter Nickles will then announce that there's nothing in the Council bylaws explicitly prohibiting the gathering of hobo stranglers in a public house of worship. The Mayor will then mysteriously disappear for the weekend, only to emerge from Rock Creek Park bloody, out of breath, with his lycra in tatters, and handcuffed to a partially dismembered trunk of a man in his late forties. When questioned, the Mayor will become irate and wonder aloud why he isn't being asked about all he's done to raise school test scores one-tenth-of-one-percent.
Let it go, Indiana
We named the dog Indiana.