Cross-post from WAMU
by Julie Patel and Patrick Maden
No. 3 in the series: Deals for Developers, Cash for Campaigns
Construction on the Marriott Marquis Convention Center Hotel on June 6, 2012. (Flickr photo by thisisbossi)
Seven years ago, during D.C.’s real estate boom, the District asked developers to submit proposals to build on public land in the Southwest waterfront area.
Dozens of developers lined up for a shot, forming 17 development teams in early 2006. They could potentially score the land and receive other subsidies but they’d have to provide affordable housing and meet other criteria.
That’s why controversy emerged when the winning team later wanted to relax affordable housing requirements.
What most people didn’t know is that months before the city’s economic development committee approved scaling back the affordable housing, five of the companies on the development team made nine campaign contributions, on the same day, to the chairman of the committee, then-Council Member Kwame Brown. The council approved the plan shortly after the committee vote.
A WAMU investigation found a dozen developers donated the most the year their subsidy was approved. In addition, the investigation identified ten cases in which campaign contributions were recorded as being made on the same day, to a single candidate, by three or more developers working jointly on subsidized projects. In some cases, the subsidies were proposed or approved around the same time.
Two of the 110 projects examined that received the largest subsidies — the Wharf and the convention center hotel — are among those with developers contributing on the same day and around the time legislation was proposed or approved.
“The timing of a contribution is important,” said Sheila Krumholz, with the Center for Responsive Politics. “There have been times when contributions have come in right around a vote, before a vote. That might be a kind of carrot. There might also be an element of reward if a vote is taken that favors a special interest or donor.”
The investigation also found 133 groups donated more than $2.5 million in campaign cash and received $1.7 billion in subsidies over the past decade
“Trust is undermined if money is being exchanged with patterns like the ones [WAMU has] discovered. It gives rise to reasonable suspicions,” said Dennis Thompson, a political philosophy professor at Harvard and director of the university’s Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics. “Is the subsidy going to the right person?”
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