Looks like Adam McFadden’s tenure heading the Rochester Housing Authority may be a brief one, at least as its interim chief.
Yesterday, the regional office of the Housing and Urban Development Department sent RHA board members a letter (see below) telling them to terminate RHA’s contract with McFadden. Because McFadden is a member of City Council, there is a conflict of interest, the HUD office said, violating HUD policy and regulations in the contract between HUD and local public housing authorities.
The RHA receives millions of dollars every year from HUD through its annual contract.
McFadden, a supporter of Rochester Mayor Lovely Warren, was appointed the authority’s interim director in October, when the RHA board abruptly fired four-year veteran Alex Castro.
When news of that controversial appointment broke — and brought a stern reprimand of the board by Warren — McFadden said that he wouldn’t seek the job permanently.
There has been speculation, though, that at the end of its search process, the board might offer it to him anyway, and that he might accept that offer. And McFadden turned down Warren’s request that he resign as interim director. And since his installation, McFadden has unveiled ambitious plans for the RHA that seem to go well beyond the scope of someone who doesn’t plan to be around long.
McFadden, who wants to continue serving on City Council, has said that he would recuse himself when Council dealt with RHA issues, and earlier this week the city’s Board of Ethics determined that there is no conflict with McFadden’s appointment. But the Board of Ethics deals with issues related to Rochester’s city government; HUD’s policies and regulations are a different matter.
This article appears in Dec 10-16, 2014.
These are not mutually exclusive statements:
1. Lovely Warren and Adam McFadden have faced an onslaught of clearly unfair, racist, and hateful commentary on online forums such as Facebook as well as in more traditional media. Some journalists like Rachel Barnhart (Lady Lonsberry) have promoted this, as in her Facebook page, which has become a rallying point for racist haters. This hatred and racism is damaging to our community. Complaints that are mostly allowable for white politicians (arrogance, cronyism, poor communications) are judged more harshly for Warren. These racists care little about the community and more about destroying Warren.
2. Warren has had an abysmal and divisive first year in office that has been made worse by her abrasive personal style. She has damaged our community and has alienated White and Latino allies in the community instead of finding ways to work with them to help our vulnerable families and children. Her arrogance and inexperience is made worse by her refusal to listen to contrary views. She often appears to be obviously less than honest with the citizens of Rochester. The African-American political leadership is stymied about how to proceed.
And thirdly, because this is important, I realize how challenging these discussions are: In the last line of my post above I use the word “stymie.” After it was too late to edit this post, I realized that some may think this refers to the beloved character Stymie from the Little Rascals/Our Gang series, and consider it be offensive. If anyone is indeed offended by that, I do heartily apologize and I share your frustration. Though after doing some online research, I have found that some critics consider the character of Stymie to be groundbreaking, as he appeared as an equal child among many. And the role was indeed groundbreaking for African-American professional actors. Geez, I am often stymied about how to break these terrible communications barriers that restrict our efforts to simply reach out to each other as human beings, in our pain and confusion so that we can do our best to help all of our children–the entire gang–to learn how to play well together.
Disagree with your first point, as far as calling Rachel B. “Lady Lonsberry”. If you’ve listened to or read both of them, you would know that they are quite different politically. Bob is certainly far right and quite conservative (and I’m sure he’d agree with that analysis), while Rachel I would put as somewhat but not too much left of center. What they do hold in common is that they both genuinely love the city of Rochester and its neighborhoods (yes, Bob really does) and want what’s best for the city. Beyond that, there are extremely few similarities between them.
Larry,
I take great exception to the accusation I promote racist commentary on my Facebook page. No other journalist in Rochester has posted more about inequality in Rochester. (Speaking of RHA, check out the Section 8 story I did recently about landlords refusing to accept vouchers from poor people.)
I cannot control how people react to my work. Most of the discussions on my page contain very intelligent viewpoints.
While it is true there are critics of Warren and McFadden who are racist, and these people pounce on every misstep, the stories we have done on these two individuals have been fair and accurate. I fear you are slaying the messenger, and blaming journalists for posting stories that prompt harsh and even unfair criticism. But the stories needed to be done. As you point out, they haven’t been very successful in not providing critics any fodder.
Please check out my Facebook: facebook.com/Rochester.Rachel. I encourage others who read Larry’s comments to judge for yourself if I engage in promoting hatred in our community.
I’m not convinced that there is a conflict of interest. RHA Director and City Councilman both involve serving Rochester’s citizens. I can’t think of an example where one organization would benefit at the expense of the other. These positions are complementary.
In addition, I didn’t think that people needed to compete for an interim position. Isn’t the idea to get someone quickly?
We need more accountants in leadership positions. It’s important not to waste money.
I think Larry has a point about Barnhart’s reporting. On Twitter, she has no producer/editor drawing the line between news and commentary. Her formula is this: pick the most salacious bits of a story, tweet and re-tweet to whip up her 20K followers, including some of the most racist in town; Blog to keep the story going and then go on tv to report on the outrage that she ginned up. When someone objects, paint herself as the martyr and patron saint of journalists and squeeze another day out of the story, adding Twitter followers every step of the way.
It makes for a good social media strategy, but it doesn’t make for good public debate of the issues. Media should also be accountable.
Rachel Barnhart: It is your Facebook page with your name on it. Take responsibility for it and be a responsible citizen. You are not just the messenger, you are the host. Stop hiding behind some very narrow ethical view that you can use to justify promoting racism in our community.
That’s enough, folks. This stream has deteriorated into personal insults. You all know better. That’s not the purpose of our comments section.
This is something I have not experienced in 16 years of reporting: Being called a racist because of racist comments some people post on my Facebook and Twitter pages. News organizations across the country, including this one, are struggling with online decorum.
I believe I’m being singled out because I have a lot of followers. That means I have a louder voice. I often challenge the establishment and that makes some people uncomfortable. But much of my reporting isn’t substantially different from what every other reporter is reporting.
This notion that because I have a lot of followers, everything I do is a calculated effort to get more followers, is ridiculous. I have a following because I’m not afraid to challenge power, I do good work and I provide relevant and timely information throughout the day. I’m also not afraid to engage and be a human being.
I will end this post the way I ended the last one: you cannot find anything I’ve tweeted, Facebooked or reported that is designed to promote hatred in our community. I think you’ll find much that does the opposite.
I totally agree with Rachel’s last post. I’ve read many of her Facebook posts, and there is absolutely no way anything can be even remotely construed as “promoting racism”.