The District’s Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities Administration could be placed under court control July 20 unless the agency’s interim administrator, Kathy Sawyer, can avoid it.

Last month, U.S. District Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle gave the city a few more weeks to show that it is making progress on reform efforts at the troubled agency.

On Thursday, City Council Member Adrian Fenty, chair of the city’s Committee on Human Services, asked: “Have we already lost the case and ... [started] deciding how bad our punishment will be?”

Sawyer, who retired from a 30-year public service career in February 2005 after serving as commissioner of the Alabama Department of Mental Health and Mental Retardation, began providing consulting services to the D.C. government in October.

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A subsequent private meeting with Mayor Anthony Williams and City Administrator Robert Bobb resulted in her current six-month contract.

Before assuming her new position at the MRDDA 11 days ago, Sawyer told Williams “we have to do work that is not glamorous,” principally calling for thorough agency-wide changes.

“The staff had no systems to follow, and the product was poor,” Sawyer said.

Some of the proposed methods for that change include letting the public know that contractors have met certain requirements, as well as putting family’s and other stakeholders’ input into creating a system that lasts longer than an administrator.

“Crisis should not drive the agency,” Sawyer said.

mmartin@dcexaminer.com