{"id":373,"date":"2018-02-27T19:37:37","date_gmt":"2018-02-28T00:37:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gopplaybook.com\/?p=373"},"modified":"2018-03-01T19:40:32","modified_gmt":"2018-03-02T00:40:32","slug":"ben-carsons-hud-spends-31000-on-dining-set-for-his-office","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.gopplaybook.com\/?p=373","title":{"rendered":"Ben Carson\u2019s HUD Spends $31,000 on Dining Set for His Office"},"content":{"rendered":"
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By\u00a0GLENN THRUSH\u00a0<\/span><\/a><\/span>

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Ben Carson, the secretary of housing and urban development, touring an apartment building in Columbus, Ohio, in April.<\/span>\u00a0Credit<\/span>Ty Wright for The New York Times<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

WASHINGTON \u2014 Department of Housing and Urban Development officials spent $31,000 on a new dining room set for Secretary Ben Carson\u2019s office in late 2017 \u2014 just as the White House circulated its plans to slash HUD\u2019s programs for the homeless, elderly and poor, according to federal procurement records.<\/p>\n

The purchase of the custom hardwood table, chairs and hutch came a month after a top agency staff member filed a whistle-blower complaint charging Mr. Carson\u2019s wife, Candy Carson, with pressuring department officials to find money for the expensive redecoration of his offices, even if it meant circumventing the law.<\/p>\n

Mr. Carson is also facing questions on another front. Under pressure earlier this month, he requested that HUD\u2019s inspector general investigate his son\u2019s involvement in a department-sponsored listening tour of Baltimore last summer. Department lawyers had warned Mr. Carson that including Ben Carson Jr., an entrepreneur who does business with the federal government, could create a conflict of interest.<\/p>\n

Mr. Carson \u201cdidn\u2019t know the table had been purchased,\u201d but does not believe the cost was too steep and does not intend to return it, said Raffi Williams, a HUD spokesman.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn general, the secretary does want to be as fiscally prudent as possible with the taxpayers\u2019 money,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Department officials did not request approval from the House or Senate Appropriations Committees for the expenditure of $31,561, even though federal law requires congressional approval \u201cto furnish or redecorate the office of a department head\u201d if the cost exceeds $5,000.<\/p>\n

Mr. Williams said department officials did not request congressional approval because the dining set served a \u201cbuilding-wide need.\u201d The table is inside the secretary\u2019s 10th-floor office suite.<\/p>\n

The decision was made by a \u201ccareer staffer\u201d who selected the company, Sebree and Associates, which is based in Mr. Carson\u2019s longtime hometown, Baltimore, from a list of preapproved federal contractors, Mr. Williams said.<\/p>\n

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A spokesman said Mr. Carson did not believe the cost of the dining set was too steep and did not intend to return it.<\/span>\u00a0Credit<\/span>Tom Brenner\/The New York Times<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Neither Mr. Carson nor his wife \u2014 who expressed a strong interest in sprucing up the drab, wood-paneled, 1960s-era secretary\u2019s suite, according to several current and former department staff members \u2014 requested that the 50-year-old table be replaced, Mr. Williams said.<\/p>\n

But he had remarked how the previous table was covered in scratches, scuff marks and cracks. Mr. Williams emailed several pictures of the old table, which looks polished and not visibly scarred, during events held by Mr. Carson\u2019s predecessor, Juli\u00e1n Castro.<\/p>\n

The new table, listed as \u201chousehold furniture\u201d in federal procurement documents, has not yet arrived.<\/p>\n

About a month before it was ordered, Helen G. Foster, a former top HUD official, filed a complaint with the Office of Special Counsel, a federal whistle-blower agency, claiming that she had been demoted and transferred after resisting Mrs. Carson\u2019s attempts to get around the $5,000 redecoration law.<\/p>\n

The pressure began in January 2017, before Mr. Carson was even confirmed, when HUD\u2019s interim secretary, Craig Clemmensen, told Mrs. Foster to help secure redecorating funds for Mrs. Carson, a frequent visitor to the department\u2019s Washington headquarters who serves as an informal adviser to her husband, the complaint said.<\/p>\n

Mr. Clemmensen, acting on Mrs. Carson\u2019s behalf, told Mrs. Foster to \u201cfind money\u201d to purchase better furniture for the office \u2014 and he quipped that \u201c$5,000 will not even buy a decent chair,\u201d according to the complaint, which was\u00a0reported by<\/a>\u00a0T<\/a>he Guardian<\/a>\u00a0newspaper.<\/p>\n

Mrs. Foster refused to comply, and said she then sent HUD officials the text of the law requiring congressional approval for the purchases. After she was removed from her position as the department\u2019s chief administrative officer, she was made head of the agency\u2019s unit overseeing Freedom of Information Act requests, which she viewed as an act of retribution.<\/p>\n

She \u201chas suffered much humiliation and a loss of reputation, and harm to career advancement, as a result of this retaliatory reassignment,\u201d according to a letter written by her lawyer, Joseph Kaplan, to the head of the special counsel investigations unit on Nov. 3.<\/p>\n

Mr. Williams said Mrs. Foster was reassigned as part of a routine agency reshuffle, and denied that Mrs. Carson pressured her to help redecorate the office.<\/p>\n

\u201cSecretary Carson, to the best of our knowledge, is the only secretary to go to the subbasement at his agency to select the furniture for his office,\u201d Mr. Williams said.<\/p>\n