When it comes to urban politics, there’s bound to be a scandal here or there. They’re usually pretty predictable, though — corruption, influence-peddling, never paying your taxes even though you’re an elected official, traveling to far-off destinations on foreign money and acting like it’s not something the public should know, etc. But no one seems to have expected the quasi-scandal that’s now gripping the Wilson Building, involving a firetruck and a Dominican beach resort.

The story started last week when the Examiner’s intrepid city reporter Michael Neibauer filed a story detailing the donation of a D.C. firetruck and ambulance valued at $340,000 to Sosúa, a small resort town in the Dominican Republic. The donation was to be channeled through the local anti-youth-violence organization Peaceaholics.

Pretty much no one could explain who organized the donation or why it was being made through Peaceaholics, but Council member Mary Cheh (D-Ward 3) led the charge in demanding explanations. In a follow-up article, Neibauer explained that Cheh wanted to know why the Office of Contracting and Procurement, which is in charge of auctioning off old city equipment, had signed off on an emergency order in late March granting Peaceaholics the right to donate the firetruck and ambulance.

WUSA-TV reporter Dave Statter delved into the story further, discovering an article in a Sosúa paper detailing a trip of District officials to the town to officially hand over the firetruck and ambulance, which would be shipped over a month later—meaning the donation already happened some time ago. And now today, the Examiner says that the firetruck and ambulance have been ordered back by AG Peter Nickles and that a more thorough investigation of the unexplained donation is to be launched.

Compared to the multi-million dollar swindles uncovered at the D.C. Office of Tax and Revenue and the Office of the Chief Technology Officer, an ambulance donation sure seems like small potatoes. But it doesn’t help our faith in our elected officials that no one can accurately explain who was responsible for the donation, why it was channeled through an outside organization (no matter how noble their mission) and why the destination was a beach resort in the Caribbean. And while Mayor Adrian Fenty can’t be expected to know about every detail of the massive bureaucracy under his control, this is but one more scandal that has slowly started cracking the veneer of the young go-getter problem-solver that was elected in 2006.