The Little Rock public housing authority board voted Wednesday to fire the executive director who had complained about board members' conduct in a June memo that became public.
The Metropolitan Housing Alliance Board of Commissioners' vote was 4-0 -- with one commissioner absent from the special meeting on Wednesday -- to terminate Nadine Jarmon, who the board officially hired in April after her seven-month stint as the interim head of the agency.
The board didn't publicly state any reasons for Jarmon's termination, and board Chairman Kenyon Lowe in an interview after the meeting declined to provide a reason for the ouster.
In response, Jarmon is preparing to file a lawsuit under the federal Whistleblower Protection Act, said her attorney, Chris Corbitt of the Corbitt Law Firm in North Little Rock.
"It's pretty cut and clear that they fired because of her 161-page whistleblower notification," Corbitt told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, referring to the memo Jarmon sent to the Little Rock mayor's office and the U.S. Housing and Urban Development Little Rock field office on June 23. "We'll give the Metropolitan Housing Alliance the opportunity to do the right thing, but in my previous experience with government and quasi-government entities, they won't do the right thing and we'll see them in court."
The Whistleblower Protection Act prohibits retaliation against federal government employees who report mismanagement, negligence, abuse of power or illegal activity by a government entity. The Little Rock housing agency is federally funded, but it was created by the Little Rock Board of Directors in 1940.
[DOCUMENT: Complaint against board of commissioners » arkansasonline.com/826complaint/]
Jarmon's departure is the most recent in a carousel of executive directors at the housing authority, which has seen five directors in three years. The last three directors, including Jarmon, have left the agency or been forced out amid clashes with the board.
The Alliance oversees about 900 traditional public housing units, 200 affordable housing units and 160 market-rate units. It also administers more than 2,000 Section 8 vouchers. It is the largest public housing authority in Arkansas and provides housing assistance to about 8,000 low-income people.
Jarmon's June memo alleged that the housing authority board repeatedly engaged in unnecessary spending, sidestepped federal approvals and had conflicts of interest with parties involved in transactions with the agency. She included a collection of emails, bank statements, board minutes, board resolutions and other documents as evidence to back up her claims.
Her letter to Mayor Frank Scott Jr. and Anthony Landecker, the head of Little Rock's federal housing field office, asked them to remove all five commissioners from the board.
As of Wednesday afternoon, the board had not sent Jarmon a termination letter or contacted her at all about the firing, Corbitt said. She has been suspended with pay since shortly after the June memo was sent.
Financial Director Andy Delaney was named interim director in Jarmon's absence, and he will continue in that role until a new director is hired, Commissioner Leta Anthony said during Wednesday's meeting.
Lowe did not specify at the board meeting or respond to a Wednesday text message asking whether the board fired Jarmon with or without cause.
According to Jarmon's contract, the agency will immediately cease paying her if fired for "good cause," which includes "malfeasance, gross negligence, willful neglect of duties, willful misconduct ... violating MHA Personnel Policy or incompetence in the performance of duties."
If the board fired Jarmon without cause, she will be paid for six more months, according to the contract. Corbitt said the terms of the contract "will be litigated," and he believes "ultimately [Jarmon] will prevail."
Jarmon's two-year contract was set to pay her $166,000 a year.
On Wednesday, the board voted to continue the self-authorized investigation into Jarmon's allegations. It also voted to immediately freeze all contracts and payroll activity that Jarmon approved since April.
Lowe initially dismissed Jarmon's concerns as "noise" and "hearsay" and said they had no teeth because she did not reach out to the federal Housing Department's Office of Inspector General. He then contacted the department with a "request for an OIG investigation" into Jarmon's claims, and Jarmon said this and the internal investigation appeared to be "diversionary tactics."
The board initially hired attorney Leon Jones Jr., the former head of the Arkansas Fair Housing Commission, to lead the internal investigation. Jones' contract said he would be paid a maximum of $160,000 for a maximum of 10 months of work, starting July 1.
Landecker then told the board in a July 19 letter that the board didn't follow procurement guidelines when hiring Jones. He gave the board two days to end the contract or prove its legality.
Lowe then moved to terminate the contract the same day in an email to Delaney that he later provided to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. The board did not vote publicly on the contract termination.
ONGOING CONCERNS
The agency has now seen the departure of four executive directors in fewer than three years.
Rodney Forte resigned in November 2018 after six years in the position.
Marshall Nash then served as interim executive director for five months before resigning. He has filed a federal lawsuit against the board over his treatment while at the agency.
Anthony Snell was the next interim director for six months before he was officially hired into the position, which he left nine months later, in July 2020.
Snell wrote in his June 2020 resignation letter that the board had harmed and micromanaged the agency, mirroring claims Jarmon made in her memo.
Jarmon also is not the first to ask Little Rock officials to remove the board of commissioners. Shortly after Snell resigned, a group of Metropolitan Housing Alliance employees sent an anonymous letter to the mayor's office calling for the board's removal. The employees said their anonymity was "due to a fear of future retaliation."
"The board has shown great incompetence in its failure to understand the housing programs it oversees while adamantly injecting themselves in the day-to-day activities, and purposefully through its inability to hire and retain an executive director," the letter stated.
That letter was not sent to federal housing authorities, and Scott said it lacked supporting documentation, making it difficult to investigate further. Jarmon included the letter in her memo.
Scott, after receiving the anonymous letter last year, said that he would initiate the process of dissolving the board of commissioners, citing "a number of concerns." The Little Rock Housing and Urban Development field office also expressed "serious concerns" about the board last year.
Still, the board remains in place, and Scott said in June that the city does not have the authority to investigate an agency that is governed by a federal department.
Arkansas law states that housing authority boards are self-appointing but subject to approval by the local governing body -- in this case, Scott and the Little Rock Board of Directors.
Landecker acknowledged receipt of Jarmon's complaint in a June 28 email to her and Lowe, and he also asked for several more documents to "assist with substantiation" of the allegations. The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette obtained the email through an Arkansas Freedom of Information Act request.
After reviewing some of the additional materials, Landecker asked Lowe on July 28 for specific documents outlining the housing authority's ownership of certain properties. The deadline to provide these documents was Aug. 18, but the Department of Housing and Urban Development had not received a response to this request as of Monday, a regional spokesperson said in an email. Landecker extended the deadline to Oct. 11 on Tuesday.
Lowe declined to comment on Wednesday when asked why the board did not fulfill Landecker's request by the initial August deadline. He also did not comment when asked if the board owes the public an explanation for its decisions.
'SUE ME'
At the time of Jarmon's hiring, Lowe told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette that the commissioners had "several good candidates" in a pool of 35 applicants for the director's post, but they "felt Dr. Jarmon's skill set and background best suited the agency."
Jarmon had worked as a contracting consultant, a monitor and board adviser for the Gary Housing Authority in Indiana; the executive director of the Louisiana Land Trust; the executive director of the Housing Authority of New Orleans; and, most recently, the Deerfield Beach Housing and Redevelopment Authority.
The same day she was hired, Jarmon said in a phone interview that in her time as interim head of the agency she observed a divide within housing authority leadership and hoped she could mend it.
"It seemed to me that in most cases it was the staff and executive director against the board," she said at the time. "One of the first things I want to accomplish is: there's no us, we, I or me. We're a team."
The following day, Lowe told Jarmon and the Democrat-Gazette that he is the only person currently affiliated with the housing authority who is allowed to speak to the news media on the record.
Recently, the agency has failed to comply with two Arkansas Freedom of Information Act requests that the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette submitted in July, asking for copies of emails between the board and Landecker's office.
Lowe has repeatedly told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette that the state Freedom of Information Act does not apply to emails sent from personal accounts, since board members are not housing authority employees and do not have official agency email addresses. He said the Metropolitan Housing Alliance "is not obligated to create any system of records that it does not already maintain."
However, state courts have affirmed that emails pertaining to public business -- even if sent over a private server -- are open to copying and inspection under the state public records law.
When presented with this information Wednesday, Lowe replied, "Sue me, then."
Board attorney Khayyam Eddings of the Friday Firm in Little Rock said in an email later Wednesday that the Democrat-Gazette's interpretation of the Freedom of Information Act was correct and that he discussed the matter with Lowe.
Last year, Scott arranged a Freedom of Information Act training workshop for the housing authority board "in an effort to remedy some of the problems that people were telling him existed," his spokeswoman Stephanie Jackson said in June.
John Tull, an attorney who has worked with the Arkansas Press Association, called Lowe's interpretation "utterly ridiculous and completely unsupported."
A district judge found Forte, the former director, guilty in 2015 of a misdemeanor charge for failing to comply with the state Freedom of Information Act in response to records requests from the Democrat-Gazette. However, the conviction was overturned by a jury on appeal.
"If there's anybody that should know better than to ignore the Freedom of Information Act, it's that entity," Tull said.
