Sharlynn Bobo, left, Director of Child and Family Services, shares her regret in the murder of the Jacks sisters during a press conference in which D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty announced the firing of six people following the city government’s failure to help the four children of Banita Jacks. (Also pictured are City Administrater Dan Tangherlini, second from right, and Interim Attorney General Peter Nickles, right) – Andrew Harnik/Examiner

Bill Myers and Michael Neibauer, The Examiner
2008-02-28 08:00:00.0
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An administrative hearing officer has ordered three fired child welfare bureaucrats put back on the job, overturning a decision by Mayor Adrian Fenty who blamed them for failing to help four sisters whose bodies were discovered last month.

The employees, whose names were withheld, were ordered back on the job because Fenty had violated their due-process rights by summarily sacking them amid the Banita Jacks scandal, the hearing officer ruled.

Jacks is charged with murdering her four daughters. She and her family were reported to welfare agencies for years, but nothing was done to help them. In late April 2007, a school social worker begged a child welfare hot-line worker to take action, saying Jacks was holding her daughters “hostage.”

But the case was closed because no one answered the door of the row house in which Jacks and the girls had been squatting.

Fenty and his aides said they were shocked by the rot in the system and fired six bureaucrats who they said failed Jacks and her family.

The city, already under federal court monitoring because of its child welfare collapse, now faces lengthy litigation over the reinstatements of the three employees.

Acting Attorney General Peter Nickles said the Fenty administration was unfazed by what he characterized as an “advisory” opinion and would fire the employees anyway.

“If we’re going to have accountability in this government, when people don’t do their jobs, we’re going to take swift and forceful actions,” Nickles told The Examiner. “We have to change the culture of a lot of agencies in this city.”

The hearing officer’s opinion can be rejected by the head of the agency which employed the workers. The workers would then have the right to appeal, a process that could ultimately end up in court.

For increasingly vocal critics of the Fenty administration, the decision was no surprise. Some suggested it showed an administration, helmed by the city’s youngest ever mayor, that is making up the rules as it goes along.

“Oversight is hard work,” said District Council Member Phil Mendelson, D-At Large, referring to Fenty’s own time as a council member when he had authority over the child welfare system.

“The problems with the hot line, the problems with having follow through from social workers has been identified repeatedly by the court monitor and would not have been a surprise to anyone listening,” Mendelson said.