Defraud the D.C. Government, Keep Your Job

On Sept. 28, the attorney general’s office charged Dr. Charles Hall with 18 counts of defrauding the city. Hall, medical director for the Department of Health’s Addiction Prevention and Recovery Administration (APRA), was accused of essentially double-billing hours for that job and a position with the Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency on 18 separate occasions from 2004 to 2006, making off with more than $12,000.

In a press release, Attorney General Linda Singer said that Hall “took advantage of the government and the taxpayers.”

Wrong tense, Linda: Hall is still on the job, three weeks after the charges came down.

An APRA employee says that Hall was back on the job the Monday after the charges were announced and that he has been involved in the day-to-day operations of the agency’s D.C. General campus detox clinic as recently as last week, phoning in orders from APRA headquarters on First Street NE.

Yes, LL is aware of that “innocent until proven guilty” maxim of American jurisprudence, but under the District’s employment regulations, agencies are empowered to place on leave employees who have “been indicted on, arrested for, or convicted of any crime…that bears a relationship to his or her position.”

Hall, who’s worked for the District since 1991 and currently draws a salary of $147,000, did not respond to a message LL left on his office phone. On several occasions last week, an APRA receptionist told LL that Hall was in a meeting; this week, a receptionist said Hall was “traveling.”

The health department did not respond to LL’s inquiries about Hall by press time; that might have something to do with Director Gregg A. Pane getting shitcanned late last week. Mayoral spokesperson Carrie Brooks confirmed that Hall is still on the city payroll.

Singer is none too happy with Hall’s continuing employment. “We are very concerned by this situation, and our office has contacted APRA to provide any assistance they might need,” says Melissa Merz, Singer’s spokesperson.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 24th, 2007 at 2:51 pm and is filed under Bureaucracy, DOH, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.