Stonewall Jackson
The HUD secretary gives Congress the silent treatment.
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HOUSING AND Urban Development Secretary Alphonso Jackson is the subject of four (yes, four) investigations into allegations that he used his position to reward those who were friends and punish those who weren't. Yet, when he appeared at two Senate oversight committee hearings this month, Mr. Jackson refused to answer questions about the matters. He used the convenient clam-up excuse that he could not comment because of ongoing investigations. That's a tried-and-true legal and political strategy. But it's troubling that the head of a taxpayer-funded federal agency would employ it to dodge legitimate questions from Congress.
Mr. Jackson wouldn't answer questions about the serious allegations leveled against him by Carl R. Greene, the head of the Philadelphia Housing Authority (PHA). Mr. Greene alleges that because he resisted attempts to force him to hand over a $2 million parcel of land to a friend of Mr. Jackson's, the secretary is retaliating against the PHA by threatening to withhold federal funds. HUD denies this, but the surfacing of an e-mail exchange between HUD employees in which that possibility was bandied about -- supposedly in jest -- doesn't help its defense.
Nor would Mr. Jackson respond to questions -- in writing or orally -- about his alleged role in helping to award lucrative contracts to friends through housing authorities in New Orleans and the Virgin Islands or about senior HUD staff members telling the department's inspector general that Mr. Jackson had directed them to take into account political affiliation when awarding contracts. It was an April 2006 speech by Mr. Jackson in Dallas, in which he bragged that he had fired a contractor who had criticized President Bush, that turned him into flypaper for investigations by a federal grand jury, the FBI, the Justice Department and HUD's inspector general.
Branding Mr. Jackson as distracted and incompetent, Sens. Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.) and Patty Murray (D-Wash.) last Friday called on President Bush to fire him. The response from the White House was quick: No. The president's loyalty is a boon for Mr. Jackson, but the allegations and questions dogging the secretary are many and alarming. It is long past time he offered some straight answers.
