Executive Calendar Objection
Floor Speech
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Mr. President, I intend to object to any unanimous consent request at the present time relating to the nomination of Katherine M. O'Regan to be an Assistant Secretary of Housing and Urban Development.
Every year, the Department of Housing and Urban Development provides billions of dollars to public housing authorities but provides little oversight for how the money is spent. Many housing authority directors are more concerned with padding their own nests instead of providing safe, affordable housing for people in need. One way to change this is to make detailed spending information available to the general public.
I will object to Ms. O'Regan's nomination because I have not yet received a response to my February 14, 2014 letter to HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan regarding HUD's effort to collect Public Housing Authority salary and compensation data for calendar year 2013. Specifically, I asked when the data would be available to the general public on the HUD website and whether it would be available in a searchable, standard electronic format.
This is the second time HUD has requested salary and compensation data from the 3100 housing authorities across the United States. HUD first requested data for the top five wage earners in August 2011. At that time, I requested that this data be made available to the general public. HUD stated in a December 2011 letter:
This information will be posted on a HUD website, consistent with applicable law. We are now in the process of collecting this information for the first time, and expect that it will be posted during the first quarter of the year.
Despite HUD's pledge, the full set of data has never been posted on the Department website. Instead, it only posted three pages of aggregate data in June 2012, and HUD didn't provide the full set of data to my office until May 2013, nearly 2 years after the data collection process was initiated.
HUD is aware of the impact this data can have when made available to the public. Shortly after the compensation information was requested in 2011, Congress imposed a 1 year salary cap for all housing authority executives. Housing authorities are now using Federal funding not covered by the salary cap to continue paying large salaries and compensation packages. The compensation data currently being collected would shed light on this practice and should be posted on the HUD website as soon as possible.
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