My Reaction to The Rouse Project's Email Newsletter
Hiruy Hadgu
Exactly one month ago, I wrote a series of blogs that detailed a set of deals facilitated by county government officials and special interests. These deals successfully misappropriated millions in public dollars for private gain. The reader my find the three-part series here, here, and here.
The subject of the report is a dark money group called “The Rouse Project”. In an email newsletter to Columbia residents, this group has finally responded to the blogs. Unfortunately, it has failed to answer any of the questions raised here.
The following is my response to the newsletter:
First, it is an honor to be named alongside former County Executive and Delegate Liz Bobo, a trailblazer in Howard County and a symbol of community stewardship, who continues to inform people through engaging reflections about her community and family.
Second, if you are a person of color running for office in Howard County or were “unsuccessful”in your run, beware. The Rouse Project, a dark-money group, with a stated objective of “increasing diversity”, will employ cheap ad-hominem attacks using your “unsuccessful” run to distract from its steering committee’s lack of transparency on past and future dealings.
Third, to those unfamiliar with the term “NIMBY” it stands for “not in my back yard”, a pejorative term employed by developers to discredit those who advocate for critical infrastructure such as schools. Does this mean that those who advocate for unmitigated growth don’t care about the quality of our schools? Perhaps it is consciousness of guilt that a dark-money group formed to “increase diversity” uses such a developer industry specific term?
Fourth, people who are concerned about affordable housing should know that in 2013, the leader of this dark-money group, former County Executive Ulman signed into law a bill that allowed developers to reduce the number of affordable housing required at various projects. Here a blog post on Howard County’s affordable housing deficit. In 2016, Howard Hughes Corporation (HHC) received a very generous density bonus in exchange for 1,000 affordable units. As of August 2019, the current CEO said only 24 were brought online. All evidence points to HHC as this dark-money group’s funder.
Lastly, the leaders of this dark-money group that appears to be inspired by the anti-democratic Citizen’s United decision have yet to answer any questions from the community. While the questions are posted here, some of those questions are reproduced below:
Who got the ball rolling? Who recruited them?
Who came up with the seed money?
Who hired the law firm and PR agency? Who gave the PR agency its directions?
What took place in the initial meetings? Was there an agenda? Who attended? Were minutes taken? If minutes were taken, will they be published?
What's with the LLC status? Was the structure chosen to hide the organization's true purpose? Who are the officers of the LLC?
How will the members of this steering committee ensure their efforts will not lead to what happened in 2013, when public funds were redirected for private gain?
What does success look like to them? Is it based on the number of people of color being elected?
How many people of color? One, two, three? Are these members expected to vote a certain way once elected? Will they receive undue influence?
What did former County Executive Ulman do when he learned that Mr. McCall paid himself nearly $1.03 million out of the $6.4 million in county dollars that was appropriated to the Inner Arbor Trust?