An important message from Scott McLarty, Green Party candidate for the Ward One City Council seat. Paid for by Ward One Citizens for McLarty, Philip Barlow, Treasurer. For more information, call (202) 518-5624. We take no corporate contributions. VOTE GREEN!

The people of DC lack democracy In two ways:

1. We enjoy no representation in Congress; we suffer the recent cancellation of limited home rule through the appointment of the Financial Control Board and the imposition of the DC Revitalization Act of 1997 by Congress and President Clinton.
2. Our elected city government has sold out to corporations and the suburbs. The result of our lack of democracy is a DC Domino Development Plan... turning DC into “Disneyland-on- the-Potomac” or “Crystal City North”!

The Domino Effect

Out-of-town corporations, with the cooperation of sold-out DC politicians in City Council, have undertaken this master plan to sell out and sell off DC, piece by piece, drive out middle and low income residents and small businesses, weaken labor protections, cater to out-of-town corporations, and perpetrate schemes to make money fly out of DC Here's how it works...

Domino 1: The MCI Arena

• Despite some genuine economic benefits, such as more Metrorail use, Abe Pollin’s MCI Arena has cheated the people of DC. It broke promises to provide good jobs, instead offers several hundred part time, seasonal, low-level positions with no benefits or job security. The arena now threatens to drive out Chinatown businesses the arena was supposed to benefit.
• Council imposed an MCI Arena Surtax on DC businesses, but provided major tax breaks and a steady welfare check for millionaire Abe Pollin.

Domino 2: The Shaw Convention Center

• The Convention Center will disrupt and displace a historic African American neighborhood, and cause a traffic crisis — congestion, pollution, parking problems, lack of room for buses. (Why don’t they build it in Georgetown or Cleveland Park?)
• “Guaranteed Maximum Price” scam: The Convention Center was originally proposed at $444 million; priced at $650 million in early 1998, then raised to $ 685 million; projected by the US General Accounting Office (GAO) at $730 million; projected by the Committee of 100 at $964 million. Expensive excavation of an underground river and payment of the bond interest will push the price well above $1 billion!
• It will be obsolete after ten years, but we'll pay for it for over 30 years. Even though the Shaw Convention Center will get most of the start-up money through the sale of bonds, it will leave an enormous debt for DC, with likely surtaxes for DC businesses (like the MCI Arena Surtax) and payment by DC taxpayers through the general fund. Promised jobs will be outsourced and low-level, like those at the MCI Arena.
• The Convention Center was promoted by the Marriott Corporation and Virginia Rep Tom Davis — whose suburban corporate supporters will reap over half the economic benefits. Conflict of interest: City Council named Marriott CEO Terence “fox in the chicken coop” Golden to the Washington Convention Center Authority (WCCA). It was approved by Council before the financing plan was seen.
• Over half the revenue will go to the suburbs: Why haven’t Virginia and Maryland offered to invest in the Convention Center? Why haven’t private investors rushed to finance this gamble? Answer: high risk.
• The National Capital Revitalization Act (see below) targets Shaw for “priority development”: when the flood of conventioneers demand bus and truck loading zones, parking lots, and across-the-street hotels, the Revitalization Corporation board’s powers of eminent domain will clear away homes and small business for blocks around the facility.

Domino 3: 14th Street NW Corridor In Columbia Heights and other priority development areas

• Rushed “emergency” development, such as the “Tivoli Parcels,” a set of properties near the future Columbia Heights Metro Station, gives an unfair advantage to out-of-town developers, who often ignore community needs and wishes (green spaces, locally owned shops, harmonious architecture) and instead impose parking lots, strip malls, fast food chains, non-DC-owned businesses, and ugly glass-box office buildings.
• The National Capital Revitalization Corporation Act targets the land within a 1,500 feet radius around all Metro stops —eminent domain threatens to displace anyone living or running a small business near the Columbia Heights Metro stop.
• The power of Council’s Business Regulatory Reform Commission (with only corporate appointees — no consumer, labor, or tenant members) has tried to roll back public safety regulations, such as the DC Environmental Policy Act, removing protections and accountability when buildings are constructed.
• If eminent domain, rise in property values, and possible rent control repeal sweep away residents, the ethnic and economic diversity of neighborhoods like Columbia Heights will vanish.

Domino 4: The proposed Massachusetts Avenue ballpark... and even more freeways!

• In combination with the MCI Arena, the Shaw Convention Center, and other new projects, the proposed ballpark will invite a massive crisis of traffic congestion, solvable only by increasing the number of freeways into and around DC. It is likely to revive the proposed freeway extension through NW Washington, DC, displacing more residents.
• The DC Board of Trade and suburban Congress members want to establish a Metropolitan Area Regional Transportation Corporation, with minimum public accountability, to build new freeways, with the power to take over land and levy new taxes on DC residents and businesses.
• They want a new Outer Beltway (draining DC’s economy), and wider Capital Beltway and Woodrow Wilson Bridge (to pull more commuter traffic into DC), with the resulting air pollution, congestion, more parking lots in DC, and suburban sprawl.

Other dominos

• The National Capital Revitalization Corporation Act of 1998 (Bill 12-514), passed in April, establishes a bureaucratic board to grease the wheels for $2-million-plus private and public projects. It provides no aid for small DC businesses, with minimum public accountability; no required hearings, only a 30-day review period for City Council. Worst of all, the Act confers sweeping powers of eminent domain ( the power to take over land, including homes and businesses), listing certain neighborhoods for “priority development.’
• “Children’s Island Theme Park,” on Kingman and Heritage Islands in the Anacostia River, approved by Council in December, but overturned by the Financial Control Board, which probably thinks it can get a better deal. Another phony promise of “jobs for inner city youth,” it would offer low-wage part-time jobs for some local teens in a park that they can’t afford to visit... It’s an environmentally destructive scheme to draw tourists and suburbanites and keep out local children.
• Private prison corporations need to fill up cells with as many inmates as possible to draw a profit, while they cut the costs of housing them. Private prisons have a financial interest not in reducing crime, but in expanding the class of people who occupy cells. Council rubberstamped the Truth-in-Sentencing Act, which mandates private prison incarceration, in April.
• Elimination of tenant assistance and the threat to repeal rent control when it comes up for renewal in Council in 2000.

Those who dismiss the Domino Plan as a “paranoid conspiracy theory” should...

• read the Washington Business Journal, which discusses and praises these schemes openly; read Board of Trade member Barry Campbell's “We Need More Roads,” The Post, 5/3/98
• examine Council and mayoral candidates’ lists of contributors. Beware politicians that give you a Thanksgiving turkey in November... and sign your eviction notice in January!

Who owns DC?

Consider the power of corporations over DC government: they hire armies of lobbyists, lawyers, and public relations firms; run ads in print and broadcast media; leverage jobs; dump big more into the coffers of candidates and mainstream political parties; get named to commissions...

To make our voices heard, we can take a day off work and wait hours to testify at a hearing or visit a Council member’s office, leverage a $25 campaign contribution, or write a letter. But we can also ORGANIZE and join community organizations and other people who oppose predatory development, inform our neighbors, and VOTE OUT elected officials who don't serve our interests as residents of DC!

Alternatives to the Domino Plan: How to keep jobs, people, and money in DC

• Tell Congress to honor its pledge to keep federal jobs in DC
• Invest in public schools — textbooks, supplies, repairs, small class size, competitive pay for teachers, after-school activities
• Instead of convention centers and arenas, build new UDC sites in Shaw, Ward 1, and other areas that need development
• Promote and assist small DC businesses, locally owned shops and restaurants, food co-ops — instead of big chain stores (Giant, Safeway, CVS, fast food chains, etc.)
• Expand public transportation, especially the Metrobus
• Demand DEMOCRACY for DC — representation in Congress, the right to tax commuters, enforced and expanded “Sunshine” laws (government accountability, mandatory public hearings, no secret deals), LIVING WAGE jobs in all contracts with DC

Support POSITIVE growth and sustainable development NOT exploitation, congestion, pollution, and eviction

VOTE GREEN PARTY! Vote for SCOTT McLARTY for the Ward One City Council seat on November 3