Word: hud
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Pierce's fraying reputation suffered a more serious blow last week, when one of his former top aides implicated him directly in the scandal. Though Pierce had told a House subcommittee last May that he had never been personally involved in HUD program grants, Shirley McVay Wiseman told the panel that her boss had directly ordered her to approve $16 million in federal subsidies for a housing project in Durham, N.C., proposed by Pierce's former law partner. She refused, she said, so Pierce signed the papers...
While Kemp treated Pierce gently, he scoffed at the claims of some prominent Republicans that the huge fees they received from developers for their influence in obtaining HUD contracts had not hurt taxpayers. The department, he testified, had given developers "a reason to hire a consultant" and then provided "the money to pay the consultant's fees." Moreover, he said, private brokers who handled house sales for HUD and then failed to turn the money over to the Government were not "Robin Hood-type heroes . . . robbing the rich. They are stealing from the taxpayer and depriving low- and moderate- income...
After releasing a summary of steps he has taken to straighten out HUD, Kemp announced he would not permit his department to deal with 54 former senior officials whom Pierce had exempted from the Ethics in Government Act. The waivers permitted the officials to take private jobs in which they could promptly profit from their HUD experience. One had made $1.3 million in two years as a consultant to developers seeking HUD contracts...
...Kemp aide insists that the energetic Secretary is "holding up great" under the double strain of the cleanup while seeking to fulfill his own vision of what his department should accomplish. But with a third congressional inquiry of HUD about to begin, Kemp's visions are likely to remain on hold. More Republican political embarrassment also seems inevitable. One of the House subcommittees said it intends to question Carla Hills, now the U.S. Trade Representative and a former Secretary of HUD, about her efforts to help a mortgage company and a developer get HUD contracts...
PRESS: How reporters missed the HUD story...