At yesterday’s marathon hearing on Mayor Vince Gray‘s administration’s hiring practices, recently fired Department of Employment Services Acting Director Rochelle Webb repeated what’d she’d already told LL: the bad political optics involving her staying at the W Hotel and having a DOES employee driver her to and from work weren’t her fault.

Instead, she said, she was just going with the flow based on what Lisa Mallory, a deputy at DOES who is now Webb’s temporary replacement.

LL obtained emails through a Freedom of Information Act request that make Webb’s case, but certainly don’t make Mallory look like she was purposely trying to set Webb up, as some Webb supporters have suggested.

Here’s one exchange:

“Can you arrange for me to be picked up for work on Monday?” Webb asked Mallory in early January.

“Of course! What time would you like to be picked up at the W Hotel?” Mallory replied.

The most notable thing in the FOIA response: how many District government manhours went into booking and paying for Webb’s room at the W. It looks like it took a small army to take care of that sucker.

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