Thread by @izalright

THE CORRUPT & INCREDIBLY STUPID WASHINGTON D.C.
MAYOR MURIEL BOWSER.

A thread of corruption and questionable decisions SOURCE - WIKIPEDIA

To raise funds for her campaign she accepted contributions in excess of legal limits, for which she was fined after winning the election.

In 2015, Bowser's allies formed FreshPAC, a political action committee intended to advance her agenda.The initiative was the first PAC in District politics so closely aligned with a sitting mayor and created by a former campaign treasurer.

Thanks to a legislative loophole regulating off-year fundraising, FreshPAC accepted unlimited contributions. Bowser supporters had quickly raised more than $300,000 and had a goal of collecting $1 million by year's end. FreshPAC was chaired by Earle "Chico" Horton III,

a lobbyist for a major corporation that sought Bowser's support.Many of the highest donors participated in a trip to China with the mayor.Following outcry from the Washington Post, members of the D.C. Council, and other stakeholders, FreshPAC was shut down in November 2015.

Bowser said she thought FreshPAC was a good thing but its message was distorted

In 2017, the D.C. Office of Campaign Finance fined Bowser's campaign committee $13,000 for accepting contributions beyond legal maximums during her 2014 mayoral campaign. The excess contributions totaled more than $11,000 from more than a dozen developers and contractors, as well

as from landlord Sanford Capital, whom the Bowser administration had been slow to fine despite being responsible for more than 1,000 housing code violations. Some of the same contributors later contributed to FreshPAC. Bowser's campaign returned the illegal contribution

In 2018, D.C. Council unanimously passed campaign finance legislation that sought to remove the influence of developers and other large donors from politics by publicly financing campaigns.

Bowser was staunchly opposed to the act and said she would not provide financing for implementation of the law.

In May 2019, the D.C. auditor found that the Housing Production Trust Fund, which gives developers funding for affordable housing, had awarded funding to proposals that scored poorly and in one case received the lowest score.The successful but low rated projects were all proposed

by developers who had made contributions to the mayor's campaign.

In 2015, D.C. Public Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson routinely bent or broke school placement rules to give preferential treatment to well-connected parents seeking prized enrollments at particular D.C. public schools. Two senior Bowser appointees were among seven parents who

benefited from Henderson's misuse of authority by being permitted to bypass the competitive DCPS lottery system.Deputy Mayor Courtney Snowden, who makes $196,000 a year, jumped a waitlist of more than 1000 names to enroll her child. In 2018, it was revealed that

Bowser's recently appointed Schools chancellor Antwan Wilson had similarly manipulated the system to transfer Wilson's teenage daughter to a preferred school. Wilson and other staff resigned while Bowser refused a request to testify about Wilson's statement that she was aware of

the placement, calling an inquiry "political circus."By 2018, management of D.C. Public Schools prompted investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the U.S. Department of Education and the D.C. Office of the Inspector General.

In February 2016, Bowser's appointee as medical director of the fire department resigned from her post after one year on the job. Explaining her decision, Jullette Saussy said that she could not be complicit in a failed agency and that its performance was putting Washingtonian's

lives at risk. In response, Bowser's spokesperson said that she was committed to achieving change.

In early 2018, the members of the D.C. Board of Ethics and Government Accountability voted unanimously not to renew the contract of Traci Hughes, head of D.C.'s government transparency entity, the Office of Open Government. Activists said Hughes was being punished for her

enforcement of District regulations on government transparency. In the preceding year, she had faulted at least two public boards controlled by Bowser appointees for failure to comply with the city's Open Meetings Act, and had issued a decision that the board of

United Medical Center, the District's troubled public hospital, had broken that law by secretly discussing and voting to close the facility's nursery and delivery rooms.[103] Hughes said after her dismissal that she had had to resist pressure to ease off in her role of policing

District agencies'compliance with the Open Meetings Act and Freedom of Information Act; and that she had been subjected to "personal attacks in an effort to keep [her] from issuing an opinion" relating to Open Meetings Act compliance by the D.C. Commission on Selection and Tenure

of Administrative Law Judges
In 2016, United Medical Center was the sole government-owned hospital in D.C. In March of that year, on the advice of the Director of Health Care Finance, the D.C Council awarded the management of UMC to Veritas, a two-year-old politically connected

firm.The husband of the Veritas CEO was a major donor to the Bowser campaign in 2014, and a longtime health-care executive with experience overseeing troubled hospitals.Veritas however failed to improve the quality of care and its tenure saw several cases of preventable patient

deaths and negligence. By March 2017, the director of D.C.’s Department of Health was warning the UMC board about serious safety lapses in the hospital's obstetrics unit. By August,the Department of Health had shut down the ward due to its failure to meet minimum standards.(cont)

Earlier, in July 2017, the hospital allowed a week to pass between the death of a nursing home patient and notification to his family. In August, another patient died under questionable circumstances. In September,the nurses union voted "no confidence"

in the hospital's leadership and said that unsafe nurse-patient ratios and a lack of proper equipment were unaddressed.Bowser administration officials refused repeated requests to disclose the specific medical lapses and ultimately the Council voted to remove Veritas.

Bowser's approach to resolving the homelessness issue, focusing on homeless families, has been the subject of criticism. During the winter of 2015, the District saw an increase of more than 250 percent over any previous year, in homeless families housed in shelters and overflow

motel rooms, although part of the increase was due to the administration's decision to move families into motel rooms before freezing temperatures would require it do so under the law. In February 2016, Bowser unveiled a plan to provide housing for

homeless families following the closure of District of Columbia General Hospital.Without any community consultation or input,Bowser announced the location of one shelter in each of the District's eight wards and refused to say how the sites were selected. In March 2016,

it was revealed that many of the sites selected were connected to Bowser's contributors.Under Bowser's plan, the monthly cost per unit was $4,500 on average each year for at least the next 20 years.Frustrated by the D.C. Council's efforts to devise its own plan,

Bowser lashed out with expletives at Chairman Phil Mendelson.

In 2018, Bowser nominated Joshua Lopez, former chief campaign aide to both Bowser and ex-Mayor Adrian Fenty, to serve on the board the D.C. Housing Authority, which reviews contracts and sets policy for public housing

Over the objections of certain council members who considered Lopez unqualified for the position, Bowser proceeded with the nomination, which the Council approved by a vote of 10-3. In April 2018, Lopez held a loudspeaker at a rally

while a representative of the Nation of Islam spoke, calling Councilmember Elissa Silverman "a fake jew." Bowser called upon Lopez to apologize but resisted public calls for his resignation.

For a larger storm later in the same season, a report by the D.C. auditor found that the District had spent over $40 million on removal, much of it charged to the District's credit cards.The District incurred tens of thousands of dollars in credit card fees.

In an unprecedented move, JPMorgan Chase shut off the government's line of credit until some of the card balances could be paid. Some of the contractors who benefited most from the snow removal expenses were important Bowser donors, the D.C. auditor found.

In October 2015, Bowser changed her position to support the $6.4-billion merger between two public utilities, Exelon and Pepco. Opponents of the merger decried the lack of transparency in the deal and Bowser's reversal. Community activists raised ethics concerns,

claiming that Bowser was swayed by a $25 million pledge to rename the future MLS Soccer Stadium as Pepco Park. In December 2015, it was revealed that Exelon had paid the chairman of FreshPAC,a political action committee affiliated with Bowser's allies, as a lobbyist.

Conclusion : Is Bowser inept or crooked? If she was the CEO of a private Corp she would be fired and possibly face criminal charges.. and less we forget ...👇🏼

She and Donna Brazille were at the hospital in the wee morning hours the night Seth Rich Died

@SheepKnowMore

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