D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine has unveiled a series of proposals he says would help create a “truly independent” D.C. Housing Authority board and address some of the problems that have plagued the embattled agency charged with managing some 8,000 units of public housing across the city.

In a 15-page report released Thursday in which he says “urgent action is essential,” Racine recommends that the D.C. Council impose a number of changes to how the authority is overseen and managed in order to help address problems that were highlighted in a scathing federal audit in October. The changes largely revolve around limiting what he says is Mayor Muriel Bowser’s “political influence” over the authority, which he argues now focuses more on “furthering… development goals” than it does in housing low-income residents.

Notably, Racine says the council should curtail Bowser’s power to appoint a majority of the Housing Authority’s 13-member Board of Commissioners. Currently, the mayor appoints six members, and her deputy mayor for planning and economic development has a guaranteed seat, giving her a majority of the board’s vote. “Without guardrails to prevent the mayor from appointing people who will execute the mayor’s agenda, we are left with a board that is nominally independent, but, in most people’s estimation, essentially controlled by the mayor,” says his report.

Racine recommends a number of changes to how the board is constituted. That includes removing the deputy mayor from the board and requiring that all political appointees come from a “pre-qualified group” identified by an advisory group of public housing tenants and their legal advocates. The proposal would also mandate all board members have specific expertise in areas related to public housing, and would strengthen conflict-of-interest provisions to prevent board members from benefiting from contracts or development deals (a former board chair resigned last year after it was revealed he voted to approve a contract for his girlfriend’s design firm). Finally, the proposal would make it harder to remove board members.

“This allows board members to exercise good judgement and oversight without fear of political retaliation,” says the report.

Racine also says the council should raise the qualifications of the Housing Authority’s director (there currently aren’t any) and that the council improve its own oversight, which he says had been lacking under Councilmember Anita Bonds (D-At Large), who chairs the housing committee. “Existing leadership has not proven that it is willing to conduct rigorous oversight,” reads the report.

The report from Racine comes in the closing weeks of his eight-year tenure as attorney general, as he has become more pointed in addressing issues ranging from the ways D.C. falls short in coordinating its efforts to fight gun violence to the challenging state of the city’s public housing, which serves some 50,000 low-income residents. In recent years his office sued the housing authority over failures to address drugs and guns at its properties and for allegedly discriminating against residents with disabilities, and he has called the Housing Authority the city’s biggest slumlord.

Racine’s report also comes as the council is debating a number of proposals to reform the Housing Authority, with a particular emphasis on its board, which was singled out for criticism by the October audit from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Bowser has proposed dissolving the current board and replacing it with a seven-person “stabilization and reform board.” (Her bill would remove the deputy mayor for planning and economic development from the board, as Racine suggests.) Council Chairman Phil Mendelson has amended Bowser’s bill — which critics call a “hostile takeover” — to create a nine-person board, but uneasiness among some of his colleagues derailed a vote planned for earlier this month. He unveiled a series of proposed changes on Thursday, ahead of a planned vote next Tuesday.

At the same time, Councilmembers Elissa Silverman (D-At Large) and Brooke Pinto (D-Ward 2) have introduced a broader bill they say will more comprehensively address the problems at the Housing Authority. In a tweet on Wednesday, Racine criticized Bowser and Mendelson’s bill as “a backroom deal that aims to silence dissent,” and he urged lawmakers to “hold hearings and pass a comprehensive bill,” a reference to Silverman and Pinto’s proposal.

In testimony to the council late last month, Housing Authority director Brenda Donald said the agency was undergoing an “urgent transformation” to address a “multitude of inherited problems,” and pledged that changes would be evident before it has to report to HUD in March on what it has done to correct the problems identified in the audit.