The LA Times nails APRIFascinating story in the LA Times today about the A. Philip Randolph Institute.
It focuses on James Bryant, the APRI president who earns $117,000 a year from the nonprofit while also working full-time for the city as a Muni station agent (at $68,000 a year), who hired his son as a $62,000 acting executive director and who charged APRI $5,000 in rent for the use of his half-million-dollar house.
"There is just a conflict of interest all over this thing," said Ken Berger, president of Charity Navigator, an online review service. "It looks like something that should be reported to a government entity."Daniel Borochoff, president of the American Institute of Philanthropy, said Joseph Bryant's job -- the son says his salary last year was $62,000 -- is similarly troubling.
"In effect, it's like putting himself on the payroll," Borochoff said of James Bryant.
The story also notes that Bryant is on the executive board for SEIU Local 1021 and that there’s an internal union complaint against him.
But it mentions only in passing that APRI has received $290,000 from Pacific Gas and Electric Company since 2005, and tens of thousands more from Lennar Corp;, and in many ways, that’s the real scandal here.
Because APRI, named after the legendary African American trade unionist, has become little more than a shill for PG&E and Lennar. APRI worked against the public power campaign, worked against city efforts to install peaker plants (and thus compete with PG&E for energy generation), and worked in favor of giving Lennar control of the entire Bayview Hunters Point revedelopment project.
It’s a bogus astroturf front group for corrupt big businesses. That’s the real issue with Bryant and his sleazy organization.
Why is this guy chairing the political committee for Local 1021, a progressive union that has always supported public power? Now that the whole world knows that he's PG&E's guy, he should resign from that job.
digg •
del.icio.us •
sphere •
google
•
Comments (1)
He's a bully. The Union won't do anything. Members are too scarred too confront him and the president is even too scarred to ask him to step down. If he goes, he'll take many with him. He brought Willie Brown to his hearing. Imagine what kinda dirt he must have on him and Gavin. Taking James Bryant down is taking down a whole chapter in San Francisco politics. The Amos Browns. The James Bryants. The folks that took the money from the Bayview and made a living off it. Sold off their own community. And the Gavins and the PG&Es that needed them to rob the Black community. What happens to them as James Bryant becomes the fall man? Will Gavin and Willie finally be exposed?
Posted by JB Anon | March 12, 2009 04:05 PM