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How Low Can We Go?
Lloyd Jordan, nominated to serve as Director of DCRA
Dorothy Brizill
July 29, 1998

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Lloyd Jordan’s résumé	Jordan’s testimony, July 29, 1998
Control Board statement approving nomination	DCWatch press release on nomination

For many years, the DC Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs has been among the worst managed of DC government agencies. Businesses and consumers alike have complained about its incompetence and the contemptuous treatment that it gives to those who are unfortunate enough to have to deal with it.

Three years of Control Board management have done nothing to improve matters at DCRA. Now, Mayor Barry has appointed a new director of DCRA who shows every sign that he will continue DCRA’s history of incompetence, mismanagement, favoritism, and corruption. Camille Cates Barnett, the Chief Management Officer appointed by the Control Board, also wants to claim credit for this incredibly bad appointment; and Harold Brazil, Chairman of the Council Committee on Consumer and Regulatory Affairs, has already signaled that he is unconcerned and unworried about the appointee’s long history of scandals, and wants to rush approval of the appointment through the Council.

Lloyd J. Jordan was formerly the Chief of Staff and Chief Administrative Officer for St. Louis, Missouri. While in St. Louis, he compiled the following public record:

Jordan was the highest-paid city employee, at $90,454 a year. When a St. Louis City alderman complained in 1993 that it was wasteful for the city to provide him with the free use of a Mercury Grand Marquis when he was earning that high a salary, Jordan replied, “If Mr. Shrewsbury worries about people having cars around the clock, he ought to know that I work around the clock. I’ve been averaging 14- to 16-hour days and put on about 400 miles a week.”
Jordan ran both of St. Louis Mayor Freeman Bosley, Jr.’s, mayoral campaigns, the one Bosley won in 1993 and the one he lost in 1997. Prior to Bosley’s winning office, he worked in Jordan’s law office.
In 1995, while serving as Chief of Staff, Jordan headed a group of businessmen who negotiated to buy 24 supermarkets from Schnuck Markets, Inc., that the grocery chain was forced to sell in an agreement with the Federal Trade Commission when it bought out another grocery chain. At the same time that he was negotiating with Schnucks as a private businessman to buy the supermarkets, the St. Louis city government was also negotiating an agreement with them to develop a new grocery store in north St. Louis.
In 1996, when a St. Louis City alderman criticized Jordan’s bid to buy the Schnucks stores as a conflict of interest, Jordan moved to quash criticism by suing the alderman for $22 million dollars, claiming that the alderman’s criticism embarrassed him, and damaged his reputation as an attorney and employee of the City of St. Louis. The lawsuit is still pending.
Mayor Bosley solicited private funds to supplement the Mayor’s contingency fund, which also got $30,000 a year in public funds. He refused to disclose the list of donors or their amount, and Jordan claimed that the Mayor reported the private donations to the fund as his private income, and paid personal income taxes on it — until it was revealed that Mayor Bosley didn’t disclose the donations on his personal financial disclosure reports, either.
Mayor Bosley and Jordan promoted Charles Bussey, a former law partner of Jordan’s and employer of Bosley, as the developer of large projects in St. Louis, including redeveloping an apartment building owned by HUD and demolishing a large historic downtown office building to build a parking garage. Both projects ran into trouble with HUD because Bussey had previously been convicted of felony tax evasion and lying on a HUD housing-subsidy application, and had served three years in prison on the charges. For other projects, Bussey’s company received over $1 million in federal funding channeled through the city, even though Bussey was suspended twice from doing business with HUD, had not paid a $93,000 judgment in federal district court, and never repaid a $1.5 million loan to buy another apartment building.
When Jordan left office in St. Louis in 1996, he said that his stint with the mayor was a community service, and that he could make much more money in the private sector. “From Day One, I’ve said I’m only on loan. I’m only here to do a community service and then I’d be gone,” Jordan said.
After he resigned from public office, Jordan ran Bosley’s second mayoral campaign, in which Bosley’s major opponent was Clarence Harmon, former St. Louis chief of police. While running the campaign, Jordan also served as the first vice president of the St. Louis chapter of the NAACP. Just four days prior to Harmon’s announcement of his candidacy, the NAACP released a report claiming that he had mistreated black police officers.
HUD required a commercial building to evict the Bosley campaign office because the building’s owners diverted money that should have been used to pay off a defaulted HUD loan to renovate the space, and then charged the campaign rent at lower than the market price. The building’s owner’s claimed HUD was discriminating, and demonstrated carrying Bosley for Mayor campaign signs. They were later suspended from doing business with HUD.
The 1997 campaign that Jordan ran for Bosley against Harmon was one of the most racially divisive in St. Louis’s history, even though both candidates were black. Bosley’s father, himself an alderman, called Harmon a “rented Negro”; other Bosley supporters called Harmon the “white man’s candidate” and a “race traitor” for running against Bosley, and criticized him for being married to a white woman. Congressman William Clay, a Bosley supporter, said, “You cannot tell me this is not a racial confrontation. White politicians are afraid. They are cowards — afraid to support [an incumbent] who has the basic interests of black citizens at heart.” The campaign ran an ad that claimed that one of Harmon’s sons, also a police officer, was convicted of sexual assault, yet later received a promotion — Mayor Bosley later had to apologize and admit that the ad was “inaccurate” to settle a libel suit by Harmon’s son.
Even though Mayor Bosley was the incumbent and raised three times the campaign funds that Harmon did, he lost the race.
In December 1996, Jordan repaid the city of St. Louis $5,792 for telephone calls that he made on his cellular telephone. Jordan refused to make the telephone bills public, even though they had been paid by the city, and claimed that he paid the whole bill because, “I don’t have time for the pettiness of going through the records to see whether the calls were business-related. So, I reimbursed the city for both business and personal calls. It’s my contribution to the city, and I would hope that people generally understand that we do an awful lot for the city and get nothing in return. I lost money just taking the job with the city.”

Mr. Jordan’s appointment as director of the Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs, after it is rubber-stamped by the City Council, will go to the Control Board for its final approval. After that, we’ll all be at his mercy.

Footnote: On July 30, City Council Chair Linda Cropp withdrew the resolution approving Jordan’s nomination from Council consideration because the votes weren’t there to pass it. Councilmembers Harold Brazil, Harrry Thomas, Sr., and Kathy Patterson spoke in favor of the nomination; Councilmembers David Catania, Sharon Ambrose, Carol Schwartz, and Frank Smith spoke against it. Since the Council action is only advisory, the nomination still went to the Control Board, which approved it unanimously at August 7.

For background on any of the points in this article, see the archives of the St. Louis Post Dispatch, on-line at http://www.stlnet.com .

How Low Can We Go? Lloyd Jordan, nominated to serve as Director of DCRA Dorothy Brizill July 29, 1998

How Low Can We Go?
Lloyd Jordan, nominated to serve as Director of DCRA
Dorothy Brizill
July 29, 1998