Street testifies about his role in firing Greene as PHA chief
Former Mayor John F. Street testified Thursday in federal court that he had no interest in dropping the former and being mayor again.
"It has never occurred to me to run for mayor," Street said in the third day of testimony in the breach-of-contract lawsuit brought by Carl R. Greene, former executive director of the Philadelphia Housing Authority.
Greene was fired in 2010 after Street, then PHA chairman, investigated Greene's handling of multiple sexual-harassment complaints filed against him. Greene says the agency had no cause to fire him and owes him $743,000 plus damages.
In a scathing report delivered to PHA's board on Sept. 23, 2010, before the vote to terminate Greene, Street called him a "true serial sexual harasser" who was abetted by senior staff in covering up complaints.
Greene's attorney, Clifford Haines, said in his opening arguments that Street wanted to reenter public life and saw the Greene matter as potentially damaging.
Asked about that by PHA's lawyer, Steven Engelmyer, Street denied being motivated by concern for his political future.
"When conducting this review, did you have any intention to run?" Engelmyer asked.
"It never occurred to me," Street answered.
In challenging him, Haines produced a Philadelphia Daily News article from April 19, 2011, in which Street hinted he might be considering a run for mayor as an independent.
U.S. District Judge Ronald L. Buckwalter, however, cut Haines off.
"I don't think it has any relevancy," Buckwalter said. "I've never heard of a politician who has ever forsaken seeking office. It's in the blood."
Testimony for most of the day focused on further scrutiny of the investigative report produced by Street and his assistant, Kafi Lindsay.
Street said he told Lindsay to "follow the money" after reports in August 2010 that Greene had settled sexual-harassment complaints without telling the PHA board.
Street testified that PHA was in disarray. He said Greene had not shown up for work, avoided the board, and checked into a mental-health treatment facility near Baltimore.
"We didn't have six months or a year to do an investigation," he said.
Instead, he set a deadline of the next board meeting, a month away.
Lindsay, a lawyer who was hired in 2008 as Street's assistant, said her assignment was to determine whether the settlements should have gone before PHA's board and whether Greene violated his employment contract by failing to submit them to the panel.
She testified that a procurement policy adopted in 2002 required legal settlements of more than $100,000 to be subject to board approval.
Starting in 2004, Greene settled three complaints filed by women who worked at the Housing Authority, and had a tentative settlement with a fourth. The settlements eventually cost PHA more than $1 million.
The board did not vote on any of the settlements.
In questioning from Haines, Lindsay said she focused on documents but did not interview any of the four former PHA employees named as coconspirators of Greene in hiding the settlements from the board.
Lindsay and Street also did not interview any of the former PHA women who complained about Greene.
"You were involved in a report in which an individual was going to be publicly called 'a true serial sexual harasser,' " Haines said. "Did it give you pause that you may not have enough information to make that accusation?"
Lindsay testified she was not the author of that line in the report and had registered her objection with Street to using such language.
Contact Jennifer Lin at 215-854-5659, jlin@phillynews.com, or follow on Twitter @j_linq.
