What's $25 million between friends? A point of pride, says the mayor of Baltimore, Kurt L. Schmoke, hoping to put the matter of city housing troubles to rest. A job well done, says the commissioner of housing, Daniel P. Henson, looking to stare down anyone who says otherwise.
Then there's the president of the Baltimore City Council, Mary Pat Clarke, who looks at her morning newspaper and sees it another way: corruption and incompetence, she says, reading of Housing Authority money and mishaps and reaching for all available expressions of outrage.
The ammunition is spread before her: a three-part series in this newspaper documenting $25.6 million worth of no-bid contracts awarded by City Hall, much of it going to friends of Schmoke or Henson, lots of the costs inflated, some of the work not done, plenty of it done poorly, some of the work not monitored, some of it handed to inexperienced minority-owned firms while other, experienced minority-owned firms were overlooked, and the federal government now demanding $725,759 repayment of bogus costs.
"A tremendous success," says the mayor.
"Tremendously successful," says the housing commissioner, "in context."
"The tip of the iceberg," says the City Council president. "This is no 'let's put it in context.' My question is, where is the federal investigation? It's not that they're moving too slowly" -- the FBI and the U.S. attorney's office in Baltimore are currently investigating -- "it's that they're too lowly. This goes to the mayor and Henson. This is corruption combined with incompetence. In both men."
"She said that?" says Henson. "Miss Mary Pat said that?"
And more. Among other things, the housing story carries political baggage in a year in which Clarke challenges Schmoke's bid for a third mayoral term. But that's only part of Henson's meaning when he asks for "context."
Two years ago, when the mayor asked Henson to take over a beleaguered Housing Authority, the city had thousands of families desperate for subsidized housing.
"Lexington Terrace was literally crumbling," Henson says. "People were refusing to pay their rent. The Housing Authority had $20 million in federal money to spend, and wasn't spending it. HUD was threatening to take it all back.
"Mary Pat made a big deal, she slept out one night at Lexington Terrace. So what? I had people marching on me. We had a danger to life and property. Given the same situation today, I'd do it again."
This troubles federal auditors, who reviewed a small part of the program and found big money blown on contractors' inflated costs. More than $6 million went to people with connections to Schmoke and Henson, including some start-up firms with little or no experience.
Some of this, Henson attributes to the desperation of the moment. The important thing was to get people into safe environments. As for money going to close friends, Henson says:
"I don't know what 'close' means. To say I don't know these people would be lying. I've lived here for 50 years, I've been a developer. I know every contractor in town. What's wrong with that? Isn't that what people do?"
Turn to people they know? Yes, of course, that's what people do. It's the way the game is played -- up to a point, says Clarke.
"You don't award family and friends no-bid contracts prior to them ever doing this kind of work," she says. "That is corrupt. Not only that, but the work was inept. It's disgraceful to let people live in these conditions. Costs were inflated and the work wasn't done at all. What's corruption, if not that?
"It runs counter to every principle of fair government contracting. And there were minority contractors who'd done previous work for the city, and they were shut out. Guys who struggled for years and were denied an opportunity, even though they had a history with the agency, and they were hungry for work.
"Corrupt and incompetent, a deadly combination," Clarke says.
After more than a dozen phone calls to the mayor's office this week, Schmoke said through a spokesman, "If that's what she says, let me see it in black and white."
"If we're so bad," says Henson, "how come the Maryland Minority Contractors Association gave the mayor and me an award Sunday night?"