Housing chief ordered to review staff hirings

The Metropolitan Housing Alliance's executive director is expected to provide an "extensive" report on his staffing decisions to the Little Rock Board of Directors by the end of next week, City Manager Bruce Moore said.

The request came last week from Ward 3 Director Stacy Hurst after a constituent emailed her about housing Executive Director Rodney Forte's reluctance to speak about his hiring decisions for a Sept. 8 Arkansas Democrat-Gazette article.

The article reported that in June, Forte revived an almost decade-old deputy executive director position with a nearly $92,000 salary even as 13 lower-level positions, many of which deal directly with tenants, remained vacant after layoffs and people leaving the agency.

Moore said this week that he told Forte to prepare "a pretty extensive review of what happened and how the agency is handling the maintenance issues." Moore expects to receive that report from Forte by Friday and will review it before forwarding it to city board members, he said.

Forte declined to speak to the newspaper for the Sept. 8 article and has not responded to numerous follow-up requests for comment. Housing Board of Commissioners Chairman Kenyon Lowe, who did briefly speak to a reporter after the agency's August meeting for the article, has not returned several phone calls or emails seeking additional comment in recent weeks.

Lowe sent an email to city directors Sept. 10 denouncing the article and Hurst's request. The Democrat-Gazette obtained a copy of Lowe's email through an Arkansas Freedom of Information Act request.

"The process used in vetting out the needs of the organization was done as a team with input from staff, the Board of Commissioners and resident input, also. Quit playing politics and let us get down to the business of addressing gentrification and the housing needs of the City of Little Rock," Lowe wrote.

Hurst said she asked for the report on the housing agency because of a concerned constituent. It wasn't political, she said.

Housing Commissioner Brad Walker said the housing board wanted to hire a second-in-command even before it hired Forte in 2012. At that time, Forte asked to be allowed to pick his own right-hand man. Forte hired Dana Arnette this year with a $91,998 salary. Her furloughed salary is $82,800.

Walker was the only one of the five housing commissioners to return phone calls this week. He said he hasn't met Arnette yet, but that the deputy executive director position was needed so Forte could focus on coordination and direction of the agency and the deputy could help implement that vision.

Ward 2 City Director Ken Richardson, who serves as liaison between the housing board and the city, confirmed that the housing board discussed hiring a deputy director long before Forte was hired. He added that not all commissioners at the time agreed the position was needed and the issue caused division among the board. The board's makeup has since changed.

"The part I'm having trouble grasping and getting my hands around is the fact that we have these necessary layoffs and cuts due to budget restraints and we are adding administrative positions," Richardson said.

Patricia Campbell, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development spokesman for the region, said staffing is an internal issue and the federal agency doesn't have staffing recommendations for housing authorities.

Four full-time maintenance positions, a part-time maintenance job and two assistant manager positions were eliminated from the Metropolitan Housing Alliance's budget last year. The agency employs 11 foremen, mechanics or laborers, according to a list of employees provided to the newspaper. It also has six housing managers or assistant managers who take care of four complexes. The agency is responsible for 902 public housing units.

In comparison, the North Little Rock Housing Authority has 13 maintenance workers. It employs 16 managers or assistant managers at eight complexes. The North Little Rock agency serves 1,023 public housing units and does not have a deputy director.

When Walker was asked if the Little Rock agency should have hired back some of the mechanics and assistant managers laid off before adding another executive, he said that to his understanding the elimination of those positions hasn't negatively impacted residents.

"That information is sort of out of context with the service and quality of service being made to our tenants. It's not measured by the number of workers, it's measured by the performance to our tenants," Walker said.

The housing authority's budget document states that the administration resorted to pay cuts, layoffs and reduction in tenant services to cope with federal funding cuts and noted that "elimination of services affects the public housing residents, mainly children, elderly and disabled."

For 2014, the agency budgeted an operating subsidy cut of 14 percent in the public housing program. The strategy to deal with the lower funding was to limit hiring and "strategically reduce non-routine maintenance," among other measures, the budget said.

At last month's housing board meeting, Forte told commissioners that residents haven't told him they've been affected by the fewer mechanics or by not having an assistant manager assigned to each housing complex.

Richardson said he doesn't understand how someone could conclude that tenants haven't been affected by the cuts, adding it's "common sense."

"The cognitive dissonance for me is for a conclusion to be drawn that it's not going to have an impact when you reduce these positions that are necessary for the agency to carry out its functions," Richardson said.

Metro on 09/20/2014

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