Weeks after its chairman resigned because of a contracting scandal, the D.C. Housing Authority is scrambling to extend the terms of three members of its Board of Commissioners whose seats expired Oct. 1, after the agency failed to hold elections.
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D.C. Council member Anita Bonds (D-At Large) plans to propose emergency legislation Tuesday that would allow the three commissioners — each a public-housing resident — to remain on the board until March, when tenants would vote on candidates.
At its meeting last month, the board considered but stopped short of voting on a resolution to extend the terms after commissioners questioned whether such an action was within the board’s authority.
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The board plays a key role in reviewing and voting on complex contracts of $250,000 or more for an agency that manages 65 properties and serves 50,000 low-income Washingtonians and voucher holders. By federal law, the board is required to have at least one commissioner who resides in public housing.
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Because of the coronavirus pandemic, the agency postponed the election of the resident commissioners for a year, believing it had the legal authority to extend their terms. But the housing authority’s interim counsel, Andrea Powell, “researched and determined that DC law does not allow holdover terms for the resident commissioners,” Tony Robinson, a Housing Authority spokesman, wrote in an email.
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At the moment, the board’s three resident commissioners are “inactive until the emergency legislation passes,” Robinson wrote. However, he added that the 13-member board has enough active commissioners for a quorum.
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Bonds said lawmakers can extend the terms of the resident commissioners because it was the council that created the board in its present version in 1999. “We think we have the authority,” she said.
Council member Elissa Silverman (I-At Large), a member of the council’s housing committee, questioned whether the council has the legal authority to extend the terms of the board’s elected representatives.
“It’s like saying, ‘Let’s extend the council members’ terms,’” Silverman said. “If they’re elected positions, I don’t think we should determine whether they can hold over or not.”
The resident commissioners are Kenneth Council, Aquarius Vann-Ghasri and Antonio Taliaferro.
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In September, Taliaferro was the subject of a Housing Authority investigation into allegations that he had verbally abused and harassed agency staff, according to a confidential report compiled by Venable LLP, a law firm retained by the agency.
The Venable lawyers, after interviews with seven witnesses, concluded that there were “sufficient grounds” for the board to “initiate disciplinary procedures” against Taliaferro, according to a copy of the law firm’s report reviewed by The Washington Post. In a Sept. 30 letter to Taliaferro, Powell wrote that the board was considering disciplinary action.
Taliaferro could not be reached for comment Monday.
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Silverman also said that the allegation against Taliaferro “raises serious concerns. I cannot vote to extend his term.”
Brenda Donald, the Housing Authority’s executive director, sent an email to council members at 6:59 p.m. Monday, imploring them to vote in favor of the emergency legislation to ensure that public-housing tenants “are not disenfranchised.” Without naming any board member, Donald wrote that council members should not view the legislation as a chance to judge “who public housing residents elected 3 years ago.”
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“It is offensive to the residents we all serve to disenfranchise them because a handful of you believe that one or more of the elected commissioners are not adequate,” she wrote.
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The uncertainty over the board’s membership comes six weeks after the abrupt departure of chairman Neil Albert, an appointee of Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D). Albert resigned in October after it was disclosed that he had authorized contracts for a design firm owned by his companion, Paola Moya.
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The U.S. attorney’s office subsequently issued the Housing Authority a criminal subpoena, seeking documents relating to Albert and his partner’s firm, Moya Design Partners. The investigation is the latest blow for an agency that, in recent months, has contended with the departure of its former executive director, a more than $2 billion maintenance backlog and a failure to meet federal deadlines for repairing asbestos hazards.
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Bowser still must fill Albert’s vacancy, but meanwhile she has nominated Ronnie T. Harris as a replacement for Franselene St. Jean-Clarke, a commissioner who departed more than a year ago after the completion of her term in a seat reserved for a housing voucher recipient.
After Albert’s resignation, Bowser chose as chair Dionne Bussey-Reeder, an ally whom the mayor had nominated for the board last year. After she became chair, The Post last month reported that Bussey-Reeder had not paid $15,275 in taxes and penalties across multiple years.
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The board’s bylaws prohibit commissioners from owing taxes to D.C. Nevertheless, the Housing Authority has decided that Bussey-Reeder remains qualified to serve on the board because she is enrolled in a payment plan to repay the debt, according to Robinson.
David Umansky, a spokesman for the Office of the Chief Financial Officer, has said agency policy prohibits him from confirming the existence of a payment plan or any details about how much debt has been paid down.