Urban League of Greater Hartford Disciplines Its CEO


By JEFFREY B. COHEN |The Hartford Courant
February 14, 2009

James Willingham violated his contract with the Urban League of Greater Hartford when he did $15,000 in consulting work for the company that runs the city's massive school construction project, the league has confirmed.

The league said this week that it had disciplined Willingham — its chief executive officer — for the arrangement that "conflicted with the league's policy on outside employment." It would not say what that discipline entailed, and more than two dozen members of the league's board either declined to comment or did not return phone calls.

The league looked into Willingham's consulting arrangement with Diggs Construction after he acknowledged in a story in The Courant that Diggs had paid him $15,000 in 2006. In 2001, Willingham was on the six-member committee that selected Diggs to oversee the city's school construction.

Although it disciplined Willingham, the league's board "expressed its confidence" in his ability to lead the agency. Willingham declined to comment.

Although not a developer, Willingham — who federal records show made about $185,000 in the 2007 fiscal year at the Urban League — said that he used his contacts with the Urban League and his fraternity, Kappa Alpha Psi, to help Diggs land a $20 million construction job in Texas.

"I didn't do anything wrong," Willingham said in December.

Willingham was one of three people on the six-member committee that chose Diggs Construction to later get paid by Diggs.

Another was former city Councilman Louis Watkins, who was chairman of the selection committee and who got an initial one-year, $3,000-a-month contract with Diggs to work as a liaison with the Hartford community in 2006. As of December, Watkins still worked for Diggs.

The third was D. Anwar Al-Ghani, who by the time his contract with Diggs Construction expires in April will have made about $680,000 working as a liaison between Diggs and its minority contractors.

Concerns about Al-Ghani's arrangement have apparently contributed to the stalling of his current effort to be reappointed by the Hartford city council to the board of the Metropolitan District Commission.

The reconstruction of Hartford schools has caught the attention of a state grand jury investigating allegations of corruption at Hartford city hall, although the scope of that interest remains unclear.

At least two people familiar with the investigation said that the grand jury had asked questions about who has been hired to work on the schools project and why.

From the Hartford Courant

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