Charges Called Racially Motivated : Capital Mayor, Drive for Statehood Harmed by Mounting Scandals

At a time when Congress is once again considering legislation to make most of the District of Columbia into New Columbia, the 51st state, the district’s government is staggering under a barrage of scandals involving everything from fraud, bribery and extortion to cocaine use, philandering and faulty snow removal.

The resulting turmoil has sullied the image of the nation’s capital, enmeshed its nationally known black leader--Mayor Marion S. Barry Jr.--in sensational sex and drug allegations and raised prickly questions about the quality of government in Washington only 14 years after it received federal permission to manage itself as a city.

Race Issue Surfaces

The racial overtones in the scandal are particularly sensitive. The nation’s 15th largest city is 70% black, and some community leaders have charged that the federal investigations creating the tumult--launched by a Republican U.S. attorney against a black-dominated power structure--are racially motivated.

At the vortex of the scandal is Barry, 51, a former civil rights leader and the son of Mississippi sharecroppers, who came to Washington in 1965 to help bring home rule to a city then run by the President and Congress.

After becoming the city’s second mayor, Barry easily won reelection to a third term last November and held firm control in an economically expanding region. He rode the wave of a massive downtown building boom and polls that showed high voter satisfaction with the services his administration was delivering.

It was enough to overcome concern over the fact that 10 of his aides--including his top lieutenant and best friend--had been convicted on corruption charges, 11 more had been ousted for alleged misconduct and Barry himself was under investigation for expense account irregularities.

Statehood Drive Periled

But since the election, new scandals have erupted, threatening to force Barry from office and damage D.C.’s drive for statehood, which was always problematic at best.

Barely a week has gone by without the addition of more fuel to the furor.

A record snowfall for the decade came while the mayor was enjoying the sun and the Super Bowl in California, and the streets went uncleared; the city’s emergency ambulance service failed repeatedly to respond to life-or-death calls, and Barry--whose wife once received expensive clothes from a city contractor--had to acknowledge having visited a part-time model in her apartment, after the young woman’s landlord complained.

Then, another top aide pleaded guilty to defrauding the D.C. government and an FBI undercover operation produced allegations of extortion and kickbacks in city contracting.

Most damaging, though, were the latest allegations.

Cocaine Use Alleged

A federal grand jury reportedly began collecting evidence that Barry had used cocaine and maintained a sexual relationship with a convicted drug dealer. The woman, a former city employee, allegedly was paid $20,000 to $25,000 to withhold the information from a federal grand jury that investigated Barry in 1984.

According to sources cited by WUSA-TV and the Washington Post, the woman, Karen K. Johnson, and her brother made those charges before the current grand jury last week.

Barry has acknowledged a “personal relationship” with Johnson but denied buying cocaine from her, and he has said that he knows nothing about any hush money, which was allegedly paid by two of his friends who have received millions of dollars in minority contracts from the city.

Accusing prosecutors of trying to “run me out of office,” Barry has filed suit to block alleged leaks to the press from federal investigators--information that U.S. Atty. Joseph DiGenova has insisted must be coming from other sources.

He has vowed to improve the city services that have drawn criticism, but sometimes his responses have tended only to make matters worse. Addressing the ambulance service failures, he ignited a new blaze by complaining that poor people were using ambulances as a taxi service even while they drove “big, long cars” to sporting events.

Touring a city-sponsored facility for the homeless, he told a mother of 14 who sought better accommodations: “Why don’t you stop having all these babies?”

Was ‘Being Facetious’

Later, Barry said that he was “being rather facetious” with the ambulance remark and “maybe I shouldn’t have been.”

Barry has insisted that he will be vindicated on all fronts, but his supporters are clearly worried. And suspicious.

If the mayor were convicted of a felony, or resigned, he would be automatically replaced by the chairman of the D.C. Council, David A. Clarke, who is white.

Ronald W. Walters, a political science professor at Howard University here, said that he thinks the white Establishment may want to return to pre-home rule days, when there was no affirmative action contracting program to benefit black-owned firms.

“There is a possibility that power would revert back to the status quo ante because of manipulation by law enforcement and the press, the major institutions arrayed against the mayor,” Walters said.

In the same vein, Geraldine Brooks, a black supporter of Barry, said there is a perception that whites are seeking to take power from the blacks. “They’re picking on Barry because he’s black. If you’re talking about scandal, talk about (the late Chicago Mayor Richard J.) Daley or (New York Mayor Edward I.) Koch.”

Denies Racial Motivation

On the other hand, Rep. Julian C. Dixon (D-Los Angeles) said: “I don’t see anything racially motivated. I see no evidence that diGenova thinks he does not have a case.” Dixon, who is black, heads a House Appropriations subcommittee that oversees a huge federal subsidy of D.C. operations, which is $425 million this year.

In any event, the scandals come at an awkward time for advocates of a D.C. statehood bill scheduled to be voted on by the House Sept. 17.

Nevertheless, Walter E. Fauntroy, the non-voting representative in Congress from the District of Columbia, predicted that his bill will pass the House and that the scandals will merely give opponents an opportunity to make public statements concealing their true objections.

Those objections are that the District of Columbia is “too urban, too liberal, too Democratic and too black,” he said.

Several disinterested analysts agreed with Fauntroy. However, they said that the bill, which likely would give both the Senate and the House two more voting Democrats, faced such “practical” roadblocks as a Republican filibuster in the Senate and a probable veto by President Reagan. Also, legal challenges would be likely because the Constitution designates the district as a special federal enclave.

Short on Key Personnel

For Barry, statehood is a distant concern. His most immediate problem is running a city government that is increasingly short on key personnel.

“It’s jump ship time,” a politically connected businessman predicted last week shortly before the city’s top tax official resigned unexpectedly to take a university post.

For more than a year, Barry has been unable to fill another key vacancy--deputy mayor for finance--previously occupied by Alphonse Hill, who went to prison last week after pleading guilty to defrauding the city government by steering at least $260,000 in auditing contracts to a friend’s firm.

Another former deputy mayor, Ivanhoe Donaldson, whose close friendship with Barry goes back to their civil rights days at the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, is serving a seven-year prison term for stealing close to $200,000 from the city.

Other convictions--for bribery, theft, fraud and embezzlement--and forced resignations, not to mention new investigations, have hit every part of the government, producing high turnover and strained morale.

Many fear that important goals are suffering as the turmoil worsens.

Advanced Minority Goals

Barry is credited with great success in advancing minority hiring and minority business participation beyond the level of tokenism. Now, that process is at the center of the controversy.

He “wanted to showcase black talent and really make the city work. He was very conscious of Congress looking over his shoulder,” said Howard Gillette Jr., an urbanologist at George Washington University here.

While scandals involving minority contractors have plagued other cities, such as Chicago, Philadelphia and New York, Gillette said, the problem was bigger here because “there was more of a gap” to close between shares of business going to white- and black-owned firms.

Moreover, he added, Barry was “overly tolerant” of mismanagement and wrongdoing.