A contractor with family ties to the Chicago Housing Authority’s board tried to overbill the agency repeatedly, for a total of more than $175,000, according to a new report from the CHA’s inspector general.
After being confronted about her “exorbitant proposals,” the contractor turned hostile toward staff at the housing authority, threatening to complain to the CHA’s chief executive or the board, the I.G. said.
WBEZ has learned the vendor at the center of the I.G.’s investigation was Angela Parker — the sister of longtime CHA Commissioner Debra Parker.
The station reported last week that the CHA has paid a combined $22 million to Angela Parker’s cleaning and construction firm and two companies who also have close ties to Debra Parker. Those other companies who do business with the CHA are owned by Debra Parker’s boyfriend and the commissioner’s daughter.
The scathing report issued Wednesday by CHA Inspector General Kathryn Richards also reveals that the I.G. was pushing for a permanent ban from working for the housing authority against Parker’s daughter. WBEZ reported last week that the daughter, Lovie Diggs, had been arrested and charged with felony identity theft in 2023, eventually pleading guilty to a lesser charge of disorderly conduct.
Although the report did not name the Parkers and Diggs specifically, CHA sources confirmed that the commissioner’s sister and daughter were the targets of the newly disclosed investigations by the agency’s independent internal watchdog.
Debra Parker has said she never used her position as a commissioner — which she has held since 2018 — to help her boyfriend, sister or daughter. She said CHA staff, not board members, have ultimate authority over hiring for contracts there, and that she recused herself from any board votes affecting companies with connections to her.
But the I.G. says the commissioner’s sister threatened to take her case to the same board her sister sits on when staff found Angela Parker “made material misrepresentations in two different price proposals, in an attempt to overcharge the CHA for approximately $147,875 at one property and $27,935 at a second property.”
According to the investigative report, the contractor threatened to complain to the CEO or the board after agency staff questioned the figures she had presented in her proposals to them for the two properties.
“The vendor is widely known among CHA staff as a family member of a CHA commissioner, and by threatening to complain to the Board, the vendor engaged in intimidating and condescending behavior toward CHA staff, in violation of the Code of Conduct included in the vendor’s contract,” according to the I.G..
Richards recommended that CHA officials punish Angela Parker however they “deemed appropriate,” with the options including terminating her contract or blocking her from doing any more business with the agency, records show.
But her punishment was far less severe, with a CHA official deciding instead “to issue a warning letter to the vendor.” A top CHA contracting official concluded, “Since no funds were expensed, we believe that termination and debarment are not warranted in this case,” the I.G.’s office reported.
Angela Parker and Debra Parker did not return messages seeking comment on the investigation Thursday. Angela Parker had signed up to speak at the CHA board meeting last month, telling her sister and the other commissioners that she had unfairly faced investigation by Richards’ office because she’s Debra Parker’s sister. At the Sept. 19 meeting, Angela Parker also said her company, Ryan’s Cleaning Services Inc., had earned all the work that it got and had done nothing wrong.
At another CHA board meeting, on Wednesday, Angela Parker did not speak during the session. But after the meeting adjourned, she complained to a WBEZ reporter about the station’s coverage of the issue, then grabbed the reporter’s microphone and declined further comment.
Report cites “unnecessary or inflated costs”
Records obtained by WBEZ under the Freedom of Information Act show the CHA has paid Ryan’s Cleaning more than $15 million. About 90% of the housing authority’s payments to the company have come since Debra Parker was appointed to the board by then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel.
CHA could have paid even more to Angela Parker’s company under the two proposals described in the new I.G.’s report. In one case, the contractor wanted to bill nearly $150,000 for repairing a roof and replacing “non-existent gutters and downspouts,” according to Richards’ office.
Angela Parker “claimed to have seen evidence of a leak and concluded the damage must have come from a roof leak, but CHA employees on site found no evidence of a leak and determined the roof repair was not required,” investigators found.
Another proposal from Angela Parker, for another property, included what the I.G. described as “unnecessary or inflated costs,” which the contractor said were the product of “unintentional math errors.”
According to the investigators, though, the contractor’s measurements and proposed quantities for those jobs varied dramatically from the actual numbers. In one case, she proposed charging for a 30-foot countertop when the job measured just six feet. Other times, the I.G. alleged, items “were included despite CHA’s instructions to omit them” from the bid.
In the same report, Richards said she had called for permanent “debarment action” against both Diggs, the commissioner’s daughter, and Diggs’ company. Public records show the CHA has paid the business owned by Diggs more than $1 million since she incorporated Lavi Decor and Cleaning Co. in Chicago in 2020.
In 2023, court records show, Diggs was arrested by Chicago police and indicted by a Cook County grand jury for allegedly using another woman’s identity to steal more than $5,000 from the Bob’s Discount Furniture store in south suburban Calumet City. The case ended last year with a guilty plea for disorderly conduct, a year of probation and an order to stay away from the store.
Responding to questions from a reporter recently, Diggs wrote that she was a “victim of mistaken identity in that case.”
The I.G. says Diggs’ lawyer argued that she should not be subject to an automatic ban from doing business with the CHA because she pleaded guilty to only a misdemeanor.
But Richards wrote in the new report that court records and hearing transcripts show Diggs’ plea “acknowledged the underlying facts as charged.”
And the I.G. said the CHA’s Department of Procurement and Contracts has agreed with her recommendation and taken action toward instituting the ban, with the debarment case pending.
Another business, owned by Debra Parker’s boyfriend and called Parks and Bell Cleaning Co., has been paid more than $5.8 million by the CHA, records show.
Debra Parker was involved for four years with Parks and Bell, according to documents from the state of Illinois, city of Chicago and the CHA. Parker was corporate secretary of Parks and Bell and a paid consultant until resigning a few months after she was appointed to the CHA board in June 2018, the records show. But Diggs and Parker’s son also have worked for Parks and Bell, at times, since then.
The commissioner’s boyfriend, Charles Bell, recently told WBEZ his company had been contacted by the CHA’s inspector general. He denied his business received favorable treatment due to his personal relationship with Parker, saying Parks and Bell does great work for the housing authority. The I.G.’s office has not publicly issued any report regarding Parks and Bell.
Debra Parker was the first CHA housing voucher tenant to serve on the agency’s board, after living at the Altgeld Gardens public housing development on the Far South Side and serving as a tenant activist and CHA counselor for teenage mothers. She was reappointed to the board in 2021 by then-Mayor Lori Lightfoot.
Dan Mihalopoulos is an investigative reporter for WBEZ.