Dallas Mayor Tom Leppert mum on housing agency as it shifts direction
So far, the "other shoe" hasn't dropped at the Dallas Housing Authority since the agency's executive director quit under pressure.
When Ann Lott abruptly resigned exactly three months ago today, she opened the door for Dallas Mayor Tom Leppert to leave his mark on an agency riddled with poor accounting practices and infighting with the five-member board.
Some outside critics called for the mayor to clean house, and it was widely believed that he would do just that.
He hasn't. Not yet, anyway.
Instead, the mayor has been relatively mum on the subject, never broaching the topic without a prompt.
That is not to say Mr. Leppert doesn't have a hand in how things are unfolding at the agency. He's bent a few ears.
"I continue to watch it awfully close," Mr. Leppert said yesterday, declining to show his hand. "That's as far as I want to go."
This summer, the mayor met one on one with board members, including three whose terms expired earlier this year. In those meetings, he made it clear he wants a board that can, as one member put it, "read a financial spread sheet and interpret federal audits."
But the mayor hasn't replaced or reappointed any of the board members. Is he being cautiously circumspect ? or just taking his own sweet time?
Truth is, with other political fires igniting ? such as the mayor's controversial support of a city-financed convention center hotel and the city's public school system facing a financial crisis ? Mr. Leppert seems to have pushed the housing agency to the back burner.
For good reason. Ms. Lott's unexpected departure defused tension that had been building at the agency since an effort to oust her failed under former Mayor Laura Miller's watch two years ago.
"Things don't seem to be falling apart," said Chris Heinbaugh, the mayor's chief of staff. So "the urgency" to make abrupt changes wasn't there.
Still, Mr. Heinbaugh said, the mayor has made it clear that "there are some changes he wants."
I suspect he'll make that clearer soon.
If not, he's about to miss the boat. In less than a month, the five-member board is poised to pick Ms. Lott's successor.
"We're moving right along," said board chairwoman Betty Culbreath, a holdover from Ms. Miller's administration. "We're doing just fine."
Indeed, the board has whittled a list of CEO candidates down to three national and two local prospects, a list that includes interim director Troy Broussard.
"We hope to choose a candidate by the second week in November," said Ms. Culbreath.
Slowly but surely, the agency is shifting directions. In 2006, for example, the housing authority dropped plans to sell its Little Mexico Village public housing project in Oak Lawn because Ms. Lott objected, saying the agency should hang on to such valuable assets.
That was a major source of friction between Ms. Lott and the board's ex-chairman, Guy Brignon, who resigned in January 2007 after an attempt to oust Ms. Lott for sloppy bookkeeping backfired.
Now, with Ms. Culbreath in the saddle and Ms. Lott out of the way, the agency is instituting new financial controls. It's also more willing than ever to put all options on the table, including the potential sale of Little Mexico Village.
"This board wants to leverage that property and will maximize its value," Ms. Culbreath said in a recent post to her online blog.
It's fair to say that the board isn't inclined to hire a new director who's going to butt heads with them on that issue.
Ms. Culbreath said she hadn't talked to Mr. Leppert at length about the housing agency "since I got my interview" more than two months ago ? not even about the search for a new director.
"He doesn't get involved in all that," she said of the ongoing search. "All he said was that he wanted someone with a strong financial background. That's all he said."
Mr. Leppert summed up his involvement this way: "I've made it clear what needs to be done, and I think we're moving in that direction."
###
