The D.C. attorney general’s office this week said it concluded that Mayor Muriel E. Bowser’s choice to chair the board overseeing the city’s public housing agency is ineligible to serve because of her failure to pay taxes.

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       In a nonbinding opinion written in response to a query from a D.C. Council member, Deputy Attorney General Brian Flowers on Monday cited a city statute that prohibits appointees to the Housing Authority Board of Commissioners from owing “any past due taxes.”

       A Housing Authority spokesman has asserted that Dionne Bussey-Reeder, whom Bowser (D) appointed after her previous appointee resigned over a contracting scandal, remains qualified because she is enrolled in a payment plan to repay more than $15,000 in taxes, a delinquency The Washington Post reported last month.

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       But Flowers, in his opinion, wrote that the statute “is silent” about whether commissioners “who owe past due taxes but who have agreed to payment plans are eligible to serve.”

       Bowser’s new chair of D.C. public housing board did not pay $15,000 in taxes, records show

       Bussey-Reeder, asked about the opinion Tuesday, texted that she had made a “full disclosure” about her “tax issue” during her confirmation process.

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       “I was under the impression that a payment plan addressed any concerns,” she wrote.

       Tony Robinson, a Housing Authority spokesman, in an email wrote that the attorney general’s office (OAG) had “opined on a narrow question without the specifics” of the situation. Robinson added that the Housing Authority “will be providing further details for additional analyses by OAG.”

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       Council member Elissa Silverman (I-At Large), who serves on the council’s housing committee, said she sought the OAG’s opinion to “clarify” whether Bussey-Reeder is eligible to remain on the board.

       “The concern is about the operations of the board,” Silverman said. “We don’t want to have ineligible commissioners casting votes.”

       Bussey-Reeder, executive director of the Far Southeast Family Strengthening Collaborative, a social services nonprofit organization, was nominated by Bowser to serve on the Housing Authority board last year. In 2018, Bowser endorsed Bussey-Reeder in her unsuccessful campaign to unseat Silverman on the council.

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       The mayor appointed her chair in October when Neil Albert, another Bowser appointee, resigned after it was disclosed he had authorized contracts for a design firm owned by his companion, Paola Moya. After Albert’s departure, federal prosecutors issued a criminal subpoena to the Housing Authority for documents relating to Albert, Moya and her firm, Moya Design Partners.

       D.C. Housing Authority scrambles to extend terms of three board members

       The Post reported last month that the D.C. government in 2020 had placed a lien on any property Bussey-Reeder owns or will own because she failed to pay taxes in multiple years.

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       The amount of debt on the Feb. 24, 2020, lien is $15,275, although that figure is likely to have grown because of interest charges.

       During Bussey-Reeder’s confirmation hearing in February, D.C. Council member Anita Bonds (D-At Large), who chairs the council’s housing committee, asked her about her views on public housing.

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       But Bonds did not seek answers to standard questions she has asked other nominees, including whether Bussey-Reeder owed any money to the government.

       Bonds, in an interview, said she was aware of Bussey-Reeder’s tax debt at the time because the nominee had declared it in a sworn questionnaire she had submitted to the council member’s office.

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       Bussey-Reeder also wrote that she was on a payment plan, according to a copy of the questionnaire that Bonds gave The Post.

       Bonds said she had been assured by Bowser’s staff that the existence of Bussey-Reeder’s payment plan made her eligible for the board. As a result, the council member said, she did not ask Bussey-Reeder about her debt during the public hearing.

       “I saw no need to embarrass her,” Bonds said.

       A Bowser spokesman, when asked about Bonds’s account, said that Bussey-Reeder had provided information about her tax status to council members before they voted to confirm her nomination.

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       The uncertainty over Bussey-Reeder came as the Housing Authority asked the council to approve emergency legislation extending the terms of three resident commissioners whose seats expired Oct.？1 because the agency failed to hold elections.

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       The resident commissioners include Antonio Taliaferro, who was the subject of a Housing Authority investigation into allegations that he had verbally abused and harassed agency staff.

       In his response to Silverman, who had also asked if the terms of resident commissioners could be extended, Flowers wrote that they could serve “until the next election’s results arrive, so long as the member remains a public housing resident.”

       Bonds, who proposed the legislation, cited Flowers’s opinion when she proposed amending the bill to require only that the Housing Authority hold elections by March？31, 2022.

       The measure passed 11-1.