D.C. Council member Mary M. Cheh (D-Ward 3) is known for her keen interest in identifying fraudulent activity in city government. Cheh has now raised the possibility that the District government has been “defrauded” in the awarding of a contract for food services at homeless shelters run by The Community Partnership (TCP) for the Prevention of Homelessness.
This week, Cheh sent a letter to D.C. Attorney General Karl A. Racine asking him to consider conducting an investigation into the contract. City Paper first reported on the food service brouhaha last month.
TCP runs the city’s homeless programs under a long-standing multimillion-dollar contract with the D.C. Department of Human Services. In her letter, Cheh asserted that until last year, a local nonprofit, D.C. Central Kitchen, has provided food services to 10 shelters overseen by TCP. In 2017, she said, TCP issued a request for proposals to provide food services at the 10 shelters, and received responses from two bidders — D.C. Central Kitchen and Henry’s Soul Cafe.
TCP awarded the bulk of the contract to Henry’s, Cheh said, even though D.C. Central Kitchen’s bid was “substantially less than Henry’s.” She noted that “Henry’s currently charges 50% more per supper meal ($5.18) than DC Central Kitchen ($3.20).”
“It is unclear,” Cheh wrote, “why a longtime vendor would lose a contract to a vendor that charges significantly more for services.”
Cheh cited two additional issues that sparked her concern.
One was a “suspect” relationship between the work the two food vendors did compared with the money each was paid. D.C. Central Kitchen, she said, had provided more than a million meals in a year for about $2 million. Under the current contract, she continued, Henry’s was getting more than $7 million a year — and she calculated that “the most they could have been providing was 600,000 meals.”
Cheh also raised questions about Henry’s ownership and registration as a Certified Business Enterprise (CBE). The designation means the business is headquartered in the District and can receive preference in government procurement opportunities.
Henry has a registered address on Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue in Southeast D.C., she said. The owner of that address, Cheh observed, is a corporation that also owns a nearby property that “was the subject of a DC Auditor report regarding potentially fraudulent CBE registrations.” In tax documents, she said, TCP gives Henry’s address as Oxon Hill, Md.
Underscoring her concerns, Cheh introduced legislation this week that would, among other things, strip oversight of food services contracts from TCP and, instead, transfer that responsibility to the Department of Human Services. She contends that the current approach to delivering shelter meals via TCP is “poorly managed” and “has hindered oversight and led to ineffectual use of taxpayer dollars.”
It is too early to tell whether Cheh is making a wild accusation or is on to something. Has she discovered an illegal or improper activity in the District government, or is she leading an ill-informed wild-goose chase? It has happened before.
In 2017, Cheh steered her D.C. Council Transportation and the Environment committee into a high-profile investigation of alleged corruption in the city’s contracting process, which was supposed to have led to contracts being given to a top campaign contributor to Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) and other local politicians. Despite hours of testimony, and a review of thousands of pages of documents, Cheh could not convince her committee colleagues to agree on a report summarizing her investigation’s findings. Nor did she produce solid evidence establishing wrongdoing.
Asked for comments regarding Cheh’s allegations and proposed legislation, D.C. Department of Human Services Director Laura Zeilinger said via email that DHS was reviewing Cheh’s bill and would work with the council on specific concerns about food services in shelters.
Zeilinger also noted that quality of food in shelters has been a major problem, with complaints about poor food quality and missed deliveries. She cited a 2015 Interagency Council on Homeless working group undertaking that found food service shortcomings a “recurring theme.”
In 2016, she said, “DHS re-competed its shelter services contract and included specific food and nutritional standards in that contract, directly as a result of the feedback received in the shelter conditions work group.” TCP, she said, “won that contract” and has sole responsibility for selecting vendors that meet those standards through a competitive process.
Under that vendor-procurement process, Henry’s Soul Cafe, though the highest bidder, was evidently awarded a larger share of the food service delivery business.
A. Scott Bolden, an attorney for Henry’s, sent me a statement Friday saying the company “categorically denies the import and accuracy of the numbers used for costs and fees” in Cheh’s letter. He said it was “disappointing” that she would “irresponsibly” call for an investigation. “Notwithstanding, we welcome a fair review,” he continued, and promised that Henry’s would soon provide comparable figures and evidence to demonstrate its “strong performance.”
Is Cheh on target or not?
A question that needs answering.
Attorney General Racine?
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