Openness is still needed”I was nervous about everything at first,” Johnson was quoted as saying after his first board meeting on March 1, 1994. “I didn’t want people to say, ‘He’s just going to sit there and be another ‘yes’ person.'”
Johnson was not another “yes” person on the board. He demanded access to authority documents. He successfully proposed a sweeping anti-nepotism policy to halt the hiring of relatives of board members to housing authority jobs. With Johnson’s background as an independent, and sometimes outspoken, member and chairman of the housing authority board, it is disappointing to hear that he has asked an attorney to investigate the possible takeover of the authority operations by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
Johnson said he is “disgusted” about the politics involved in selecting members for appointments to the board. It’s no secret that Johnson has objected to the questions raised by board member Angela Zimmerlink.
Johnson knows that even if HUD were to take over the authority, which is extremely unlikely, no one would be evicted from any of the housing units. It’s never going to happen, under any circumstances. Anyone who believes hundreds would be left homeless is uninformed.
It’s ironic that Johnson believes Zimmerlink’s questions are inappropriate. When he was first appointed he was the lone board member raising almost identical questions about the authority’s operations. Why are Johnson’s demands for openness made in 1994 no longer appropriate in 2002?