Looking at the way the DC city government spends money is a lot like what it must be like to be a woman married to Tom Cruise: No one wants to address the main issue, the status quo is really bad for morale, and getting a straight (as it were) answer is like squeezing blood from a Thetan. Nevertheless, the WaPo is doing a heroic job of scrutinizing the district's worst practices, in a series looking at the mischief that no-bid contracts do in a city government straining to recover from decades of shameless cronyism. Today's entry is a close-up study of the strange career of Archie Prioleau, who since 1998, when he emerged out of personal bankruptcy proceedings, sopped up some $5.4 million in city money for ambitious sounding education projects--e.g., a business-minded retooling of the curriculum and facilities of McKinley High School, and a job placement program for would-be teen IT workers called Links to Learn. The latter concern was "training" a scant 3 pupils when an inspector looked in on it in 2004 (two of whom who left after "a break"). And even with city largess in the mid-7-figures at his fingertips Prioleau was unable to keep paying storage facility bills when he moved the operation from a rent-free site in the Southwest DC to a walkup in Adams Morgan. Some $195,000 in school equipment was auctioned off for less than $9,000 in delinquent storage fees. Our favorite detail, though: Prioleau appears to have siphoned a sweet $213,000 off in subsidiary fees to a second nonprofit he also founded. Read; weep:
Posting, on the Other Hand: Not So Lucrative
Posting, on the Other Hand: Not So Lucrative
Posting, on the Other Hand: Not So Lucrative
Looking at the way the DC city government spends money is a lot like what it must be like to be a woman married to Tom Cruise: No one wants to address the main issue, the status quo is really bad for morale, and getting a straight (as it were) answer is like squeezing blood from a Thetan. Nevertheless, the WaPo is doing a heroic job of scrutinizing the district's worst practices, in a series looking at the mischief that no-bid contracts do in a city government straining to recover from decades of shameless cronyism. Today's entry is a close-up study of the strange career of Archie Prioleau, who since 1998, when he emerged out of personal bankruptcy proceedings, sopped up some $5.4 million in city money for ambitious sounding education projects--e.g., a business-minded retooling of the curriculum and facilities of McKinley High School, and a job placement program for would-be teen IT workers called Links to Learn. The latter concern was "training" a scant 3 pupils when an inspector looked in on it in 2004 (two of whom who left after "a break"). And even with city largess in the mid-7-figures at his fingertips Prioleau was unable to keep paying storage facility bills when he moved the operation from a rent-free site in the Southwest DC to a walkup in Adams Morgan. Some $195,000 in school equipment was auctioned off for less than $9,000 in delinquent storage fees. Our favorite detail, though: Prioleau appears to have siphoned a sweet $213,000 off in subsidiary fees to a second nonprofit he also founded. Read; weep: