...Well, it's about darn time....oh the irony of catching a government sanctioned organization petty and....umm meting out retribution as they see fit? (We could go there with something locally, but we won't...at least right now...)

Good for Arlen Specter on this one. Clean up HUD and clean out the worthless and petty. Mind you, we aren't advocating for eminent domain, however. We're just saying good for Arlen.

HUD Questions Go Unanswered
Senators Urge Secretary to Explain Philadelphia Dispute
By Carol D. Leonnig
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, March 16, 2008; Page A04

Housing Secretary Alphonso Jackson twice last week declined to directly answer senators' questions about allegations that he and his agency sought to punish a housing authority for refusing to help one of Jackson's friends.

Senators were focused on a January 2007 e-mail exchange, first reported by The Washington Post on Wednesday, in which two of Jackson's assistant secretaries discussed how they could make the Philadelphia Housing Authority director's life "less happy" by taking away the authority's federal funds.

In a recent lawsuit against the Department of Housing and Urban Development, authority director Carl R. Greene accused the agency of moving to strip his office of about $50 million based on exaggerated claims that the authority was not providing enough accessible housing. He asserts that it was retaliation for rebuffing Jackson's earlier demands that Greene give a $2 million vacant authority property to developer Kenny Gamble, a friend of Jackson's.

....But when Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) said he had learned that the judge's gag order did not prohibit Jackson from answering senators' questions....In the e-mails, Orlando J. Cabrera, then-assistant secretary for public housing, asks Kim Kendrick, assistant secretary for accessible housing, to suggest ways he can help "make life less happy" for Greene.

Kendrick responds: "Take away all of his Federal dollars? "

Cabrera writes back: "Let me look into that possibility."

Specter to HUD leader: Explain
A budget hearing led to an interrogation over motives behind a 2007 freeze in aid to Phila.
By Michael Matza
Inquirer Staff Writer

WASHINGTON - Sen. Arlen Specter turned up the heat under Housing and Urban Development Secretary Alphonso Jackson yesterday. He peppered him with questions about HUD's January 2007 decision to freeze more than $40 million for Philadelphia public housing. He demanded to know if the cutoff - ostensibly because the city hadn't met disabled-access requirements - was in fact "retaliation" against the Philadelphia Housing Authority and its director for spurning a politically connected developer.

At a hearing on HUD's budget, Specter said the dispute between the department and PHA - involving a federal lawsuit, an inspector general's investigation, and flippantly worded HUD e-mails that were leaked to the press - had turned "rancorous, cantankerous . . . involving very sharp accusations."

Specter wants HUD PHA dispute resolved
By Jennifer Lin
Inquirer Staff Writer

U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Alphonso Jackson had a lapse of memory last week when Sen. Arlen Specter asked him whether anyone with a nonprofit run by R&B giant Kenny Gamble had complained to him about a dispute with the Philadelphia Housing Authority.
"If they did. I can't. I really. I don't think. I just can't remember," Jackson testified Thursday before the Senate appropriations subcommittee.

But a document related to a federal court case here offers new details:

Jackson twice met with Gamble in Washington, traveled to Philadelphia to meet with Gamble once, and spoke on the phone with him another time.