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A former employee of local trash company JLT Trucking claims that his old boss, Jerome L. Taylor, took an envelope full of cash into a meeting with the then-head of contracting and procurement for the D.C. Housing Authority while his bid on a $4.5 million contract to handle the agency’s trash collection was pending.
In a sworn affidavit submitted to DCHA’s internal Office of Audit and Compliance, the former employee, who identifies himself as one of Taylor’s “right-hand men,” says that he and a co-worker waited in Taylor’s Chevy Silverado pickup in the summer of 2019 while Taylor went into a restaurant with a “letter-sized envelope filled with a large amount of cash.”
“I am not certain how much money was in the envelope, but there were a large number of bills,” says the former employee, who requested anonymity out of fear for his safety.
The affidavit, dated June 26, 2023, says Taylor walked out of La Casina restaurant near Eastern Market with Lorry Bonds, who led DCHA’s contracting and procurement office at the time, and two other people. Former DCHA Executive Director Brenda Donald promoted Bonds to general counsel in 2022.
The former employee says in the affidavit that he watched Bonds hand Taylor a “large manilla envelope,” though he does not specify what was inside. When Taylor returned to the truck, “he no longer had the envelope with the cash in it,” according to the affidavit. The former employee did not see Taylor hand the cash to Bonds.
“He got into the truck and suggested we all go out for a drink,” the former employee says in the affidavit. “While we were having a drink Mr. Taylor talked about the DCHA contract and said that JLT would be ordering new bins to use in the DCHA contract.”
DCHA procurement policy prohibits employees from sharing confidential information with bidders and from soliciting or accepting “any gift, gratuity, favor, entertainment, loan, or any other thing of monetary value as an inducement or intended inducement, in the procurement of goods and services.”
Federal regulations also bar government officials from sharing non-public information about a solicitation with bidders or prospective bidders, according to Cy Alba, an attorney with Piliero Mazza, who specializes in government contracting.
Following the meeting at La Casita, “sometime in approximately June or July 2019,” JLT Trucking received a delivery of new, red dumpsters, the former employee says in the affidavit. “It was during this time that Jerome Taylor told me the red bins were also for the DCHA contract.” The former employee says in the affidavit he saw Bonds meet with Taylor for a second time at JLT’s facilities after the new dumpsters had been delivered.
The housing authority’s board of commissioners approved JLT Trucking’s five-year, $4.5 million trash collection contract on July 10, 2019, according to a resolution on the agency’s website. JLT Trucking was notified on July 18 and was presented with the contract on Aug. 13, 2019. Their work did not start until Oct. 1. (The former employee’s affidavit contains a discrepancy, saying the contract was awarded in October 2019, but that was when JLT Trucking started working on the contract, not when it was signed.)
Reached by phone, Taylor asked City Paper to send him questions via email but has not responded. He did not return a follow-up phone call.
In an emailed statement, DCHA says the agency “takes very seriously all allegations of misconduct, and we have robust internal and external processes for reviewing such matters. We have initiated a review of this matter with the support of outside counsel and will not be able to comment further while said review is underway. However, based on the information we have at this point, DCHA followed all procedures relating to this contract. We will disclose the results of the review.”
The award has caused some bad blood among local trash collectors.
Freddie Winston, CEO of F&L Construction Inc., handled DCHA’s trash collection starting in 2016 by virtue of a contract with the D.C. Department of General Services. Winston says it took about six to eight weeks after his initial order to receive new dumpsters for the DCHA job.
In July of 2018, Winston says he met with Donald, Bonds, and other DCHA officials regarding their concerns that some of his drivers neglected to collect the trash at some of the agency’s properties, leading to rodent problems. In a letter documenting the meeting, Winston pushed back on that assertion and suggested the agency clean the “grease buildup from food” in the trash compactors and trash rooms.
“The buildup causes a strong odor that attracts rodents that feed on the food deposits,” Winston wrote, and provided a referral to a pest extermination company. He continued: “The trash rooms in some buildings have holes in the walls and ceilings that should be patched and repaired because this provides an opening for rodents to enter. Additionally, the doors should be outfitted with sweeps to eliminate access.”
Winston also said his drivers sometimes come across discarded hazardous materials that they are not allowed to haul away, such as oil and car parts. In his letter, Winston said he had instructed his drivers not to leave a building without removing the trash, even if a vehicle is illegally blocking the dumpster.
“F&L is committed to providing the type of service that the Housing Authority and the residents it serves can be proud of,” Winston wrote. “I look forward to meeting with you and your team at your earliest convenience.”
Winston tells City Paper that he never received a response to his letter, nor did he receive a “cure letter” from DCHA that would have established a plan to address problems the agency had identified.
Then, in April of 2019, DCHA decided to stop contracting through DGS for trash services and bring the contract in-house. The move drew bids from F&L Construction, JLT Trucking, and a third company. DCHA ultimately selected Taylor’s company. But Winston did not go down without a fight. He has filed multiple protests with the D.C. Contract Appeals Board.
After the first protest, DCHA agreed to cancel the contract with JLT Trucking, re-evaluate the bids, and re-issue the contract. JLT Trucking won again. And Winston protested again.
The CAB sustained Winston’s second protest and found several instances where DCHA’s contracting officer, Cheryl Moore, did not give F&L a fair shake. In an opinion dated Sept. 14, 2020, the CAB notes that Moore awarded F&L 21 fewer points than the panel of technical experts who evaluated the bids, but she did not provide adequate explanations for doing so.
“Based upon the contracting officers’ failure to explain why she disregarded the technical scores of the panel in downgrading F&L’s technical proposal in this substantial way, we find her technical evaluation to be unreasonable and improper,” the opinion says.
The CAB ordered DCHA to terminate the contract with JLT Trucking, re-evaluate the bids, and re-issue the contract.
In August 2021, DCHA again awarded the five-year contract to JLT Trucking; that agreement remains in place today. The following month, Winston sent a letter to former Director Donald saying that as a result of the agency’s decision to terminate the contract in 2019, and subsequently award it to his competitor, he was left holding the bag for a bank loan he used to purchase equipment for the job. He estimated his losses at about $2.6 million.
Winston says now that he only learned of the former JLT Trucking employee’s testimony earlier this year, so the information was not available when he was protesting the contract awards. He says he provided the information to DCHA’s internal auditor, and he believes the affidavit is compelling evidence that he was defrauded out of the multi-million contract.
“I still want them to make me whole,” he says. “I was bamboozled out of this contract.”
DCHA has had its fair share of contracting issues over the years. Revelations in the past two years alone include:
In October 2021, former board Chair Neil Albert abruptly resigned after reports about his approval of millions in housing authority contracts for his girlfriend. The U.S. Attorney’s Office opened an investigation into the matter, and Albert was hit with a $15,000 ethics fine from the Board of Ethics and Government Accountability. Albert has not been charged with a crime.
In October 2022, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development issued a scathing audit that detailed the agency’s failures across just about every one of its functions, including contracting and procurement. The audit found multiple contracts that violated local and federal rules, including those awarded without competition, and multiple contracts awarded for a single procurement.
In November 2022, DCHA’s own internal auditor found issues across three contracts signed under Bonds’ watch, including one where DCHA apparently overpaid a vendor by about $2 million and another that was issued without a competitive procurement. (Bonds led DCHA’s contracting and procurement office from 2011 until 2022, according to her LinkedIn profile.) The board of commissioners ordered Donald to put Bonds on administrative leave after they were briefed on the auditor’s findings. But Donald quickly reversed that action. She defended Bonds and said the board had no authority over such actions against employees.
And in March, At-Large Councilmember Robert White held a press conference on the steps of the Wilson Building where he recalled some of these issues and hinted at other “complaints of serious criminal behavior” that he had received from a whistleblower and forwarded to law enforcement. He declined to provide more details at the time, but said that he asked the Office of the Inspector General to open an investigation to any theft and contract steering at DCHA.
This week, White confirms that he forwarded “allegations about contracting malfeasance to the OIG,” but declined to elaborate in order to protect the whistleblower. A spokesperson for the OIG says the agency cannot discuss or comment on ongoing investigations.
Donald served as DCHA’s executive director beginning in August 2021 on a two year contract. But she opted out two months early. Her final day in charge of the agency was July 31, though she took time off for the final week of her tenure, according to a July 21 email to her executive staff. As one of her final acts as DCHA director, Donald left Bonds in charge of the agency, according to the email.
“Thank you for all your hard work and commitment to our mission,” Donald wrote to DCHA staff July 21, her last day working for the agency. “We have accomplished a lot in the last two years! I am very proud of this team and am grateful to have been able to lead such a fine group. I will send an all staff email this afternoon to thank the larger DCHA family and introduce [Interim Executive Director] Dorian [Jenkins]. Peace out!”
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