Alex Koma
NEWS LOOSE LIPS
Mean Streets The District’s Main Streets program looks riddled with questionable accounting practices, all enabled by inaction from the agency overseeing it. By Alex Koma @AlexKomaWCP Once a Green Teamer through and through, Jackson Carnes makes for an unlikely whistleblower. Yet that is exactly the position Carnes finds himself in following his tumultuous three-month tenure running the Upper Georgia Avenue Main Street program. He told the D.C. Council he has extensive evidence of “unethical and potentially fraudulent activity” on the part of the people running the city-funded program, and repeatedly raised the issue with District officials. But all he’s gotten for his trouble is a stiff arm and a pink slip. Carnes, a former staffer for former Ward 4 Councilmember Brandon Todd and a veteran of Mayor Muriel Bowser’s 2014 campaign, isn’t alone. A series of businesses and nonprofits that work with the city’s Main Street organizations, which are designed to support small companies and invigorate D.C.’s commercial corridors, have grown increasingly concerned about the agency overseeing the program: the Department of Small and Local Business Development. They believe officials at DSLBD have been playing favorites as they hand out these Main Street grants, passing over some applicants in favor of
the same handful of bidders that are friendly with agency leaders. And when those organizations have been accused of mismanagement, by Carnes and others, the agency has ignored those concerns and continued to hand out grant money, the agency’s critics say. The Office of the Inspector General launched an investigation into the matter in December, which is still ongoing, and several councilmembers have begun asking probing questions. DSLBD Executive Director Kristi Whitfield faced some of those queries in a D.C. Council oversight hearing last month, where she insisted the allegations from Carnes and others were without merit. The agency adds in an email to Loose Lips that it is “participating fully” with the OIG’s review. The whole mess involves complex questions of nonprofit stewardship and grant management, but at bottom, people concerned about DSLBD worry that this dysfunction means small businesses aren’t getting help at a time when they desperately need it. “It feels like the administration only sees economic development as redevelopment, with big, shiny projects like The Wharf,” says Brianne Dornbush, the head of District Bridges, a nonprofit that has won six Main Street grants. “There’s a real lack of focus on supports for small businesses and that is really harming our
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economic growth as a city.” Mysterious Money Moves So how does one of these Main Streets work, exactly? In short, if a community successfully organizes and convinces DSLBD that it needs the program for its local businesses, the agency will round up funding and award a grant for a third party to manage. Each Main Street entity essentially functions as a neighborhood advocacy organization that can connect businesses with city resources, manage local events, or simply run marketing for the corridor. The Center for Nonprofit Advancement, headed by CEO Glen O’Gilvie, has helmed the Upper Georgia Avenue Main Street (covering the Takoma, Brightwood, and Shepherd Park neighborhoods) since winning the DSLBD grant in 2019. The broader organization provides support services and hires an executive director specifically for the Main Street program. That’s where Carnes comes in. He took over as executive director of the Upper Georgia Avenue Main Street in July 2021 after Todd lost his Council seat. Right away, Carnes says he began noticing irregularities with how O’Gilvie managed things (all of which he documented and then reported directly to DSLBD, per emails he forwarded to Loose Lips). Often, O’Gilvie would make financial decisions without consulting Carnes or the
Main Street’s volunteer board, moving money around and charging the group’s grant for services it never received. O’Gilvie, who did not respond to requests for comment for this article, subsequently denied all this at the Council hearing. In one instance, O’Gilvie billed nearly $7,000 that he said paid for technical assistance services for several local businesses. Carnes says he contacted those businesses, and they had no memory of ever receiving those services. Crucially, Carnes found that the money was set to go to MJ Consulting, which has a close relationship with O’Gilvie and CNA. O’Gilvie described the company as the center’s “grant writer,” according to Carnes. MJ Consulting is also listed on CNA’s website as an “industry expert” nonprofits should consider hiring. O’Gilvie ultimately agreed to remove the charge from the Main Street, though a subsequent DSLBD investigation determined the incident amounted to “serious mismanagement” of funds. In another episode that troubled Carnes, O’Gilvie placed an order for $11,000 in street pole banners under Carnes’ name, even though Carnes never approved the purchase. Carnes also discovered that CNA funneled donations meant for the Main Street into its own accounts, never to be seen again. He believes this happened with at least two separate donations totaling roughly $300, though there could be more. Carnes provided LL with documents corroborating these claims, all of which he also forwarded to DSLBD. “They completely took advantage of the situation,” Carnes says. Carnes and the full Main Street board wrote an Oct. 1 letter to O’Gilvie laying out these concerns, saying that “there is mismanagement of [Main Street] funds to the point where it has affected our ability to provide the expected amount of support to [Upper Georgia Avenue] businesses.” The board and Carnes forwarded that letter to DSLBD and began discussing these issues directly with officials there on Oct. 14. On Oct. 15, O’Gilvie fired Carnes and dissolved the board. The chair of the Main Street’s board, Monica Goletiani, also has not responded to LL’s repeated requests for comment on the whole dispute. “We all loved Jackson, he was doing a great job,” says Margery Goldberg, who runs the Zenith Gallery in Shepherd Park. “We were all mystified that he was fired, until we found out he was raising these complaints.” Agency Inaction Carnes believes DSLBD has a clear understanding of these problems, but it won’t act. The agency investigated after repeated messages from Carnes and issued its own Dec. 30 memo on the subject, noting a series of “deficiencies, weaknesses and shortcomings” in the center’s management structure. But DSLBD stopped short of finding any fraud in these instances. In particular, the agency argued that the center’s decision to mix Main Street funds into its own bank account was not “fraudulent, malfeasant, unethical or even mismanagement,” as they were sufficiently segregated (an assertion Carnes disputes). Ultimately, DSLBD decided to put the center on a “performance improvement plan” and will give it “reasonable time to correct identified administrative/managerial issues,” the agency writes in an email. That will allow O’Gilvie and the center to continue running the Main Street, managing a roughly $150,000 grant in the process.
