Questionable Bowser board nominee goes unvetted
Words By Jeffrey Anderson/Photograph By Andy DelGiudice
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Mayor Muriel Bowser nominated her most recent political appointee to the Green Finance Authority Board (“Green Board”) based on the candidate’s bona fides in affordable housing and community development.
Yet Monica Ray, executive director of Congress Heights Community Training and Development Corp. (“CHCTDC”), a 501(c)(3) economic development organization operating out of a single family residence in Ward 8, is not a true friend of affordable housing.
And as a number of city officials already know—or used to know—her minority business contracting practices have been suspect for years.
They just don’t seem to want to hold her accountable.
Financing renewable energy initiatives is crucial to the future of climate control, and Bowser is promoting D.C. as a leading edge city.
Among the Green Board’s powers is to manage the Green Finance Authority, authorize its bond issuance and use of proceeds, and approve financial and property transactions with public and private sources.
Nominees to such boards—at least in theory—are supposed to be vetted for experience and integrity, given their fiduciary duty to the public.
Besides positioning herself in the middle of one of the District’s tawdriest real estate debacles in years, however, city auditors found that Ray, a dependable ally of the Mayor, has misapplied a zoning variance by housing numerous small businesses that also appear to be operating on the blurry edges of the city’s program for small, local and disadvantaged businesses seeking government contracting preferences.
Ray’s selection speaks not only to Bowser’s judgment, but to her appreciation of loyalty over character in what, despite the advent of public campaign financing, continues to be a pay-to-play town.
In addition to campaigning for Bowser and Bowser’s mentor, former Mayor Adrian Fenty, Ray has volunteered on campaigns for former Ward 8 Council Member LaRuby May, whom she served as treasurer, and former Ward 8 Council Member Marion Barry.
Along with their respective companies, Ray and her longtime associate–real estate manager, community developer and Ward 8 fixture Phinis Jones—have contributed close to $100,000 to political campaigns over the years, according to a District Dig review of campaign finance records.
Much of that money has gone to Bowser, friends of Bowser, or candidates backed by Bowser, records show.
Sometimes, according to those records, the contributions from those entities—and from small businesses registered at Ray’s headquarters—are bundled on the same day for the same candidate.
Not surprisingly, Ray has been rewarded handsomely, with millions of dollars in city contracts, purchase orders and grants across the bureaucratic spectrum.
But it is her central role in the Congress Heights Metro Station development project—and the city officials who allowed her to advance it—that is the most recent and troubling concern that clouds her nomination.
That, and the fact that Bowser nominated her in the first place.
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When Bowser signed the “District of Columbia Green Finance Authority Establishment Act in 2018,” she touted D.C. as the first city in the country to establish a Green Bank “to expand renewable energy, lower energy costs, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and create green jobs.”
The goal will be to attract private capital to close funding gaps for renewable energy programs through loans, leases and other financing services.
The Green Board is tasked with managing the Green Finance Authority and has the ability to enter into both public and private agreements.
It is made up of 11 members, including four non-voting members (or their designees): the Director of the Department of Energy and Environment, the Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development, the Executive Director of the Office of Public-Private Partnerships, and the Chief Financial Officer.
In her submission to the Mayor’s Office of Talent and Appointments, Ray described herself with a lengthy, jargon-heavy list of skills and qualifications:
“Well versed in revitalizing strategies…for rapidly growing communities;
“Skilled in economic analysis and implementation strategies, processes and technologies for communities to…compete in the global marketplace;
“Adept at working with multiple political subdivisions…to support organizational objectives;
“Strong background in…cross departmental project management, information technology utilization, human resources development and public speaking;
“Additional expertise in fiscal and operational management…workforce development…business/program development…fund-raising/proposal writing…real estate…construction management.”
Ray described CHCTDC, which Jones founded in 1988, and where she has been executive director since 1997, as committed to serving residents in an economically depressed community through educational, vocational, job readiness, and job placement programming.
Voting members of the Green Board must be approved by the Council for their experience in financial institutions operating in the District; financial, project development, or legal expertise in various green industries; or experience in affordable housing or community development.
Bowser found that Ray checked the latter two boxes.
On November 6, the Mayor sent the Council the “Green Finance Authority Board Monica Ray Confirmation Resolution of 2020” and requested the Council’s “earliest consideration.” Her term would expire in 2023.
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Bowser’s nomination of Ray is in their mutual interests: The Mayor can count on Ray’s vote, and Ray is savvy about the way D.C. works when it comes to property and government contracts.
You just don’t always know what she’s up to until she tells you.
In 2017, Ray sued the city to get control of blighted property in Congress Heights that was slated for affordable youth housing, when in fact she had been trying for years to acquire it for what has turned into a disastrous mixed-use project, her lawsuit states.
She did not disclose that lawsuit in the biographical questionnaire she supplied to the D.C. Council’s Committee on Transportation and the Environment (“Committee”), either.
Nor did she provide requested information about her political contributions, instead telling the Committee that she “will send an update to the committee, consolidating information.”
When asked by the Committee, chaired by Ward 3 Council Member Mary Cheh, what qualified her for the Green Board appointment, Ray replied on her questionnaire, “I believe that my financial background, non-profit experience, and most importantly my experience working in marginalized communities are my strongest asset [sic] and form the foundation of qualification.”
Observers of the Congress Heights Metro development fiasco, however, know that well-connected developer and Bowser insider Geoffrey Griffis has bigger plans for the property that Ray acquired from the city in 2019, at the corner of Alabama Avenue and 13th Street, S.E.
Ray’s claims in the lawsuit over 3200 13th Street, S.E.—aka Square 5914/Lot 0007, aka “Lot 7”—indicate she is more invested in seeing Griffis realize his upscale vision for that piece of property and the lots adjacent to it, than she is in providing affordable housing in the “marginalized” community she serves.
Just two months ago, an in-depth investigation by The Dig showed that CHCTDC, under the very noses of city officials across multiple departments, engaged in a convoluted and at times misleading campaign to acquire Lot 7 for the benefit of a limited liability company that Griffis, of the firm CityPartners, had set up in 2011 with his then-partner A. Carter Nowell, of the defunct property management firm Sanford Capital.
Ray alleged that in 2012, CHCTDC entered into a real estate contract to purchase Lot 7 from Kelvin Elmore and Zed Smith, a pair of community developers who had defaulted on a $920,000 loan from the Department of Housing and Community Development (“DHCD”), funded by a Community Development Block Grant.
The grant came with a 40-year affordable housing covenant that stipulated the 12 units in the apartment building on Lot 7 must remain “100% affordable to extremely low-income foster adolescents and young adults who are wards of the District of Columbia with incomes at 30% or less than the Area Median Income.”
Area Median Income, or “AMI,” is a statistical baseline determined by the Department of Housing and Urban Development. For Lot 7, such an arrangement was what housing advocates and officials would call “deeply affordable” housing.
But in 2013, Griffis and Nowell set up a limited liability company that included Lot 7—which they did not own—among the adjacent lots in an application to the Zoning Commission for a mixed-use, Planned Unit Development (“PUD”).
PUD’s, by definition, are intended to be of higher quality than “matter-of-right development,” and to confer public benefits to surrounding communities.
While the application included a modest provision for below market-rate housing, the 236,000 square feet of office space, 8,650 square feet of retail, and a 200-unit apartment building didn’t come anywhere close to Lot 7’s original covenant.
What’s more, the application was silent on the affordable housing covenant DHCD had placed on Lot 7—and the loan default, and the applicants’ lack of ownership. (PUD approval does not require ownership of all the properties involved, though D.C. law requires applicants to follow through with plans that have been approved.)
In a footnote to the introduction, it merely represented to the Zoning Commission that “The Applicant is authorized to process this application on behalf of all of the Subject Property Owners.”
Ray was determined to be one of those owners, at one point putting her signature on various agreements and addendums on behalf of three different entities that might be able to assert a claim or right to purchase Lot 7.
Purchasing Lot 7 required DHCD approval for Ray’s organization to assume the defaulted mortgage. In April 2014, seemingly unaware the property was included in the PUD, housing officials agreed to sell it to CHCTDC, and to reduce the mortgage to $180,000.
But on July 29, 2014, the housing officials informed Ray that the delinquent owners of Lot 7 had decided not to sell Lot 7, according to her lawsuit.
CHCTDC went to court that September to force the sale of Lot 7 under the 2012 agreement. Ray amended the lawsuit in 2017 to include the city as a defendant, after she (and Jones) learned DHCD had scuttled the deal.
Ray, in the amended lawsuit, stated that CHCTDC had relied upon the approval of city officials and had invested “time and money” to be able to purchase Lot 7 and negotiate for it to be included in the PUD.
The amended lawsuit made only a vague reference to affordable housing, suggesting that officials had become indifferent to the covenant.
Which, in hindsight, clearly was the case: By the time Ray went to court, DHCD, with full knowledge that she was claiming purchasing rights to the property, had re-acquired Lot 7 for $175,000 through a transaction called a “deed in lieu of foreclosure” that allowed for an exception to the affordable housing covenant.
In 2018, DHCD settled Ray’s lawsuit by agreeing to sell Lot 7 to CHCTDC for $180,000—netting $5,000 on a property that ended up costing the city $920,000 on a defaulted loan, in addition to more than $70,000 in back taxes and tens of thousands more in lien debt.
DHCD Director Polly Donaldson—and the Office of the Attorney General, which represented the agency—were good to Ray: She closed on the sale in 2019 with a 3-year, deferred, zero-interest loan, according to city officials.
Instead of deeply affordable housing for “foster wards and adolescent youth,” just 51% of Lot 7’s units would be reserved for “households qualifying at the 80% AMI level,” stated the Settlement Agreement and Release.
Better yet—for Ray—CHCTDC would not have to rent to “extremely low income” adolescents. In fact, it was not required to rent to adolescents at all.
“The parties agree that occupancy of the property shall not be restricted to foster adolescents and young adults who are wards of the District of Columbia,” the agreement stated.
Today, Lot 7 is assessed at $513,060, and is a crucial piece of the puzzle for Griffis (should he prevail in a lawsuit challenging his acquisition of the adjacent parcels).
Regardless of what happens, Ray is sitting pretty.
If the project goes forward, Griffis will have to meet her price. (That will include $150,000 over 15 years under a Community Benefits Agreement she negotiated for a “working capital fund for small contractors.”)
If it doesn’t, she now owns prime real estate—at the city’s expense.
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Ray has her finger in many other pies, but her record as a minority business maven leaves something to be desired.
Publicly available documents related to her various enterprises often contain inconsistent if not conflicting information, typos, and other inaccuracies.
Ray’s for-profit alter-ego is Capitol Services Management Inc. (“CSMI”)—also founded by Jones—where she served as Chief Operating Officer for many years and now serves as “Consulting Chief Operating Advisor.” (She informed the Committee of a “beneficial interest” in the company. Jones, in turn, serves as Vice Chair of her CHCTDC board.)
CSMI, according to its website, is a D.C. government Certified Business Entity (“CBE”) that specializes in real estate, asset and property management.
CBE’s are certified by the Department of Small and Local Business Development (“DSLBD”) to receive preference points in government procurement contracts.
Although Ray’s non-profit is not a CBE, Ray herself excels in navigating the program.
In 2013, reporting for The Washington Times, Luke Rosiak and I wrote a two-part investigative series based on public database searches that showed 3215 Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue, S.E. (“3215 MLK”)—a 3,250 square foot bungalow that Ray owns through the Monica Tahlisha Ray Living Trust—served as a haven for CBEs that appeared to be based outside the District, while receiving $3.5 million in D.C. government contracts over the course of three years.
Campaign finance records at the time showed five non-CBEs at that address had given $24,500 in coordinated political contributions since 2005.
On one day in March 2008, for example, we reported that eight entities associated with Jones and Ray gave 12 donations to the same two Council members; Ray’s for-profit CBE, also located at 3215 MLK had given $5,100 to local politicians since 2006.
When Luke and I visited, we observed a wall of cubbies in the front room–12 boxes that an employee said companies could rent for $600 per box per month to receive their mail. (Ray insisted the companies all had legitimate offices, but declined to let us see them.)
The story quoted then-Mayor Vince Gray as saying D.C had come to allow CBEs to “game the system,” and called for reform.
Yet in 2016, The Dig published an investigation by freelance journalist Bill Myers, who uncovered a “labyrinth of private companies and nonprofit groups,” that were connected to the Ward 8 Council member at the time, LaRuby May, “most of which rely on public funding.”
Though May sought to downplay her relationship with Ray and Jones, the two were “linked to more than three-dozen businesses in the District, most of them competing for public contracts under the city’s minority set-aside rules.”
Soon thereafter, Ward 8 Councilmember Trayon White defeated her, and in 2017 wrote to D.C. Auditor Kathy
Patterson and asked her to conduct a review of Ward 8 contracts, particularly those for community engagement services held by entities located at 3215 MLK, “to determine whether required procurement procedures have been followed.”
While Patterson’s team did not find clear evidence of violation of procurement rules, she identified:
“Inconsistencies in rental information provided by businesses using Ray’s address”;
“The appearance of deliberate avoidance of Council review of contracts”;
“The appearance of use of the property [that is] not consistent with the zoning variance.”
In all, auditors found that more than 30 companies were using 3215 MLK as a registered business address at the time.
“Anomalies in the commercial lease agreements…as well as the sheer number of companies that appear to be using 3215 MLK as their address, suggest that some or all of these businesses may not have been operating out of that location during the relevant time periods,” Patterson’s report to White, dated November 28, 2017, said.
She also found discrepancies in the rent charged to various tenants under commercial leases, and the rent those tenants reported in their tax returns.
Patterson’s review extended to Jones’s regulatory filings, which revealed a confusing maze of inconsistent information provided to the Department of Regulatory Affairs, the IRS, and the Department of Employment Services, according to her report.
For instance, Jones used 3215 MLK as a business address for basic licensing purposes and tax returns, but a different address for his quarterly wage reports to the city and his application for a time extension to the IRS, the report stated.
And although Jones’s company and five other companies with commercial lease agreements listed 3215 MLK as their address in their CBE documentation, most did not include a specific suite number, despite a lease provision that says, “Tenant shall use said premises actively and continuously for the full term hereof as office space.”
Other anomalies Patterson found included unsigned leases, mathematical errors and incorrect dates on commercial leases, according to the report, while Ray and Jones listed themselves interchangeably as owners of each other’s companies for landlord-tenant purposes.
She also found a number of intermingled arrangements.
LaRuby May was using 3215 MLK as a business address for her business consultancy, 7L Group Inc., and a property Jones owns as a business address for her law firm, The May Firm PLLC.
At the same time, Monica Ray’s balance sheet showed May as an investor in her for-profit CBE, Designed Services Inc., and Designed Services Inc. as a short term lender to Jones.
Ray signed the company’s commercial lease at 3215 MLK as both landlord and tenant.
Patterson’s review made it virtually impossible to tell where one business entity began, and another ended. Her review of Ray’s contracts did nothing to inspire confidence, either–in Ray or city officials.
Patterson found that four companies tied to Ray (and Jones) had city contracts that were valued at either $900,000 or $950,000, which is just below the required threshold for Council review.
In other instances, procurements were awarded not as multi-year contracts, which also requires Council review, but as base year contracts with four, one-year options, which do not require Council review.
“This raises a concern that the contract amounts were set just below $1 million and not awarded as multi-year contracts so that they did not require…the scrutiny a Council review might engender.”
Those companies included Jones’s CSMI, and Ray’s Designed Services, and a third company that lists its address at a location owned by Jones, all of which had similar purchasing system contracts that did not require that scrutiny, the Patterson report stated.
“This means entities that appear to have connections with each other held $950,000 contracts to provide from among a broad range of consulting services, District-wide, for successive and/or overlapping periods for most of the time between November 2013 and November 2017.”
Eventually, Patterson hit the wall, as tax documentation germane to her review was not made available, among other limitations:
“It would be possible to research how much was paid out on each of these contracts and for what specific services by researching individual purchase orders but given the limitations of the District’s financial system that would be a very time-consuming undertaking and one that we did not attempt.”
Patterson concluded her review by noting that Ray’s use of 3215 MLK for business purposes originally was made possible by a property variance issued by the Board of Zoning Appeals (“BZA”).
That variance, issued in 1987, was approved based on a representation that the property would house one office, for a construction company, with two employees and minimal client visits.
“More than 30 businesses currently list 3215 MLK as their address. Therefore, it appears that in the recent past, the property has been used in a manner inconsistent with the zoning variance previously granted by the BZA.”
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A review of city contracts databases shows that Ray continues to feed at the public trough.
According to contracts and purchase orders listed on the city’s Office of Contracts and Procurement website, CHCTDC’s haul includes:
Seventy-one (71) contracts awarded to CHCTDC from 2012 through 2020, including 40 DSLBD contracts totaling $3,925,022, and 12 contracts with DHCD totaling $3,053,857;
Seven contracts with the Office of the State Superintendent for Education totaling $348,280;
Three contracts totaling $330,000 with the Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development;
Two contracts with the Office of Pacific Asian Islander Affairs totaling $75,000;
Two contracts with the Executive Office of the Mayor totaling $55,000;
Two contracts with the Department of Corrections totaling $18,000;
One contract with the Department of Human Services for $93,520; and,
One contract with the Office of Planning for $20,000;
In addition, in the last three fiscal years, according to the Uniform Economic Development Budget Reports compiled by the Office of the Chief Financial Officer, CHCTDC also has received city grants totaling $1,716,284 for small business technical assistance services, Commercial Clean Team services and a revitalization program called DC Main Streets.
That does not include a 2019 grant of $270,000 for the Mayor’s New Communities Initiative, an under-performing program meant to revitalize public housing and redevelop neighborhoods into mixed-income communities.
Last year alone, CHCTDC was awarded more than $4 million in city grants, contracts and purchase orders, according to city records.
Designed Services has done well for itself, too, being awarded a pair of $950,000 set-aside procurements contracts to run from November 2016 through November 2018 under a program to establish a citywide schedule for task and delivery orders; and two $10,000 contracts from the Deputy Mayor for Greater Economic Opportunity in 2018 for events management services for “Art All Night” and “Summer Movie Series.”
In all, Ray’s two companies have netted well over $10 million in city contracts, grant and purchase orders.
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Bowser is notorious for making political appointments that meet with criticism over real or perceived conflicts of interest and cronyism.
Sometimes, a few Council members challenge them from the dais, to little avail.
Once in a while, the Council will send a nominee back. Even in those rare instances, the members frame it as a matter of optics.
But the Green Board, while vested with a great deal of responsibility over fiscal matters, is still relatively low-profile; confirmation hearings are conducted remotely for the time being, so there is even less appetite than usual for rigorous questioning.
Ray stood a good chance of flying below the radar.
Council Member Cheh, more so than others on the Council, can be an effective interrogator when she spots something that gives her pause.
But this time, she and her colleagues were impressed by the package Ray had put together.
Ray first testified before Cheh’s Committee on December 8. The Committee’s report to the Council’s General Counsel in preparation for her confirmation hearing sounded as if Ray had written it herself.
“The Committee finds that Ms. Ray has extensive experience…With her experience in operational, workforce and program development management, and community and public relations, fund-raising, and real estate development, Ray juggles numerous other positions and responsibilities.”
Ray’s responsibilities are nothing if not “numerous.”
In addition to running her own for-profit company, a non-profit corporation and a home for CBEs, and serving as an adviser for Jones’s for-profit enterprise, she’s on the boards of the D.C. Black Chamber of Commerce, Anacostia Coordinating Council, and Congress Heights Partnership; she is Board Chair (and Acting CEO) of the Community College Preparatory Academy; and she is
Board Co-Chair of Cedar Tree Academy, an elementary charter school.
Ray also stated that she is a licensed Real Estate Salesperson, Special Police Officer, Security Guard (in Maryland) and Private Detective (in Maryland).
When Ray went back before the Committee on December 10, it was all smiles and compliments.
In a videotape of the hearing, Cheh does not appear to be informed of Ray’s role in the Congress Heights affordable housing debacle, her dubious grasp of the CBE program, or her coziness with Bowser.
After exchanging pleasantries about both being grandmothers, Cheh pronounced Ray to be “stellar.”
Ray was a “perfect candidate” to become a voting member of the Green Board through July 9, 2023, Cheh said, citing “eminent suitability” for the position.
“I see no issue with this nomination going forward. It’s just a matter of getting it done.”
With lame duck Ward 4 Member Brandon Todd recusing himself, Cheh and Ward 3 Member Brooke Pinto voted to confirm the nomination.
After Ward 5 Member Kenyan McDuffie—who chairs the Council committee with oversight of the program that regulates CBEs—joined the meeting, Cheh made a motion so that he too could vote on the measure. It passed 3-0. (McDuffie did not respond to The Dig‘s inquiries.)
It was a stunning moment, particularly inasmuch as Cheh had flagged Ray (and Jones and 3215 MLK) just last year.
On March 22, 2019, she wrote to Attorney General Karl Racine and asked him to consider investigating a potential incidence of fraud that appeared tied to 3215 MLK.
Cheh was concerned that a Request for Proposal for a food services contract at homeless shelters run by The Community Partnership had led to an award to a vendor, Henry’s Soul Cafe, that had been charging substantially more for meals than its competitor, DC Central Kitchen.
DC Central Kitchen also had substantially underbid Henry’s Soul Cafe, which had been providing less meals for more money, Cheh wrote to Racine.
“While many facts remain unknown, it seems worth investigating what Henry’s was providing the District before 2018 and why they received so much more money than the vendor that was providing the majority of the District’s shelter meal services.”
Turns out, Henry’s Soul Cafe—which in tax documents listed an Oxon Hill address—is registered to do business at a property that “is owned by a corporation that owns a nearby property, and that property was the subject of a DC Auditor report (enclosed) regarding potentially fraudulent CBE registrations,” Cheh informed the Attorney General.
The property Cheh was referring to was 3215 MLK, and the report she had enclosed in her letter to Racine was Patterson’s 2017 audit.
“I am not entirely sure what to do with this information, but my concern remains that the District government may have been defrauded, perhaps in multiple respects. I believe what we do know is sufficiently troubling to warrant further inquiry, and I hope that your office will consider conducting an investigation.”
It is unclear whether Racine’s office ever looked into the matter. The office declined to comment.
According to Patterson, there was “zero follow up that I know of” to the report she did at White’s request. White did not return a call.
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It’s hard to imagine that Bowser or her vetting staff were unaware of the concerns surrounding Monica Ray when they sent her nomination to the Council for a board overseeing D.C.’s flagship renewable energy authority—a body that will be operating the city’s first Green Bank.
But then again, something suddenly happened to interrupt the glide path of the Mayor’s nominee.
On a recent Tuesday, at the Council’s Legislative breakfast, Cheh informed her colleagues that she had changed her mind and was not ready to move Ray’s nomination to the full Council, citing “information that has come to light” that caused concern.
“Once information in the public domain came to my attention the only responsible thing to do was to pull back and look into it further,” Cheh told The Dig, choosing not to specify the information, its source, or the specific concern.
She later indicated that she would not be moving Ray’s nomination forward.
Reached at her office the following day, Ray was busy stuffing holiday gift bags for members of her community.
Ray said that she was unaware that Cheh had held back her nomination. “I had not heard that,” she said. “That’s news to me.” She declined to comment further.
Steve Walker, Director of the Mayor’s Office of Talent and Appointments, which vetted Ray for the position, did not return any of a number of calls.
And now, Bowser has to find herself another nominee.
