D.C. Cleansed Group Home Death Reports

"Any recommendations for changes or improvements to the reports are simply recommendations, and it will be up to Columbus whether to accept or reject the recommendations," said Kathy Sawyer, the mental retardation agency's interim administrator.

The District has agreed to Jones's request that all draft Columbus reports now be sent directly to her.

It was unclear yesterday whether the District will move to discipline whoever made the deletions. Sawyer said she has not initiated any action. Traci Hughes, spokeswoman for the city's attorney general, said that if the employees are still working for the District, steps will be taken to guard against such deletions in the future.

"The District doesn't want employees to be in the habit of providing misleading or wholly inaccurate information," Hughes said.

D.C. Council member Adrian M. Fenty (D-Ward 4), chairman of the Human Services Committee that oversees the mental retardation agency, called on D.C. Inspector General Charles J. Willoughby to investigate the deletions to determine who was responsible.

"It doesn't get any more serious than altering the records of an independent contractor investigating deaths for the city," Fenty said in an interview. "This is willfully keeping information from the court, from the review committee."

A 1999 series in The Washington Post found that none of the 116 deaths in the mental retardation system since 1993 had been investigated. The District subsequently created the fatality review committee and hired the Columbus Organization to investigate deaths and make recommendations aimed at averting future needless fatalities.

In her report, Jones cites deletions that included statements about lost or incomplete case-management records; failure to appoint a legal guardian to make decisions on medical care; questionable medical care or lack of information about health-care problems; and numerous recommendations for ways to address these and other life-threatening problems.

Cathy Costanzo and Sandy Bernstein, who represent plaintiffs in the federal lawsuit and are seeking to have the mental retardation agency placed in court receivership, said critical information never got to the people who could act on it.

"We don't know how many of these reports may have been changed," Costanzo said, noting that the city has declined to give plaintiffs' attorneys copies of the original reports.

"For us, it calls into question the integrity of the process," she said.