OFFICIALS LEGISLATION INTEREST GROUPS PUBLIC STATEMENTS COMMITTEES VETOES

Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2015

Floor Speech

Date: June 9, 2014
Location: Washington, DC
Issues: Unemployed and Low-Income Entitlements and the Safety Net Housing and Property

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. Chairman, I want to first off thank my good friend from Iowa, Chairman Latham, for the hard work he has put into this bill. There is a matter that I think we are going to have to do some more work on.

The Federal Government, through the Department of Housing and Urban Development, each year allocates a significant amount of taxpayer dollars to public housing authorities to provide affordable and safe housing for those in need.

Unfortunately, Mr. Chairman, some public housing authorities, executives of public housing authorities, are taking home excessively generous compensation packages each year, partly paid for with Federal dollars. One needs to look no further than the public housing authority in Raleigh, North Carolina, the Raleigh Housing Authority, to see an example of excessive compensation.

Audits that I requested from both the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Raleigh Housing Authority itself have brought to light this fundamental problem with compensation. When the executive director of the Raleigh Housing Authority manages a housing authority that ranks somewhere near 400th in terms of overall size but still receives a total compensation package, Mr. Chairman, that puts him in the top ten of all public housing authority directors in terms of salary and other benefits, it certainly raises some red flags to me.

Following the disclosure of the executive director's compensation package, which brought about outrage from the local community and Congress, the Raleigh Housing Authority board made what amounts to cosmetic changes to their compensation practices--which still flout Congress' intent, in my opinion.

Mr. Chairman, I commend Chairman Latham and the T-HUD subcommittee for including provision section 227 in the base text that continues a cap on how many Federal dollars public housing authorities can use to compensate a chief executive officer or any other official or employee of a public housing authority. So I commend for that. I want to thank the chairman for his work on this issue and hope we can examine additional measures that Congress can take to ensure that public housing authorities serve the public.

So thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I yield back the balance of my time.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT


Source
arrow_upward