D.C. officials ‘ineffectively managed’ Eastern Market, audit finds

By Bill Myers
Examiner Staff Writer 10/6/08

D.C. officials have “ineffectively managed” the city’s historic Eastern Market, exposing the public’s money to “a total lack of financial and management accountability,” a new audit has found.

City council auditor Deborah Nichols reviewed five years of deals at the market and found that city authorities and executives at Eastern Market Ventures, the private nonprofit company asked to run the grand old farm stand, routinely broke rules and laws on contracting and financial management. Conditions may have worsened after the August, 2007 fire that decimated the market, Nichols found.

Mayor Adrian Fenty promised to get the market rebuilt better than ever after the fire. Millions flowed in from public and private donations but Nichols’ audit raises the possibility the money was misspent. She blasts Eastern Market Ventures for handing out hundreds of thousands of dollars for work without city approval and for violating its own agreements by withholding nearly $1.2 million in revenue that was supposed to go into the city’s coffers.

“The auditor found that the [city’s] ineffective oversight and failure to establish a credible system of accountability allowed EMV to operate according to its own interests and dictates,” Nichols wrote in the report, made public Friday.

Officials in Tony Williams’ and Fenty’s administration have been “inattentive, ineffective and indifferent to the quality of the market manager’s performance and conditions at the market,” Nichols found.

The Eastern Market is one of the oldest publicly run farmers’ markets in the country. It is on the National Register of Historic Places.
Robin Even Jasper, Fenty’s top property management official, responded to Nichols’ audit by blaming her predecessors.

She said the city’s property management agency “under my leadership of the last nine months, has progressed in reviewing practices at Eastern Market,” although she acknowledged there was “still much room for improvement.”

Bryan Cook, an executive at Eastern Market Ventures, told Nichols that his company was doing the best it could but was hamstrung by city officials and their conflicting directives.

Earlier this year, an independent report of the market blasted management for being out-of-touch with what was happening at the market. It suggested putting an office on-site so that there would be greater control over how the market ran.

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