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DCWatch
1327 Girard Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20009-4915
202-234-6982, fax 202-234-6982
http://www.dcwatch.com
June 7, 2004
Ms. Wilma A. Lewis
Chairman
DC Board of Elections and Ethics
441 4th Street, NW
Washington, DC 20001
Dear Chairman Lewis:
As you are aware, the DC Board of elections and Ethics, at its June 2,
2004, meeting, scheduled a public hearing on June 9, 2004, to determine if
the Lottery Expansion Initiative of 2004 is the proper subject matter for
an initiative and, if so, to formulate its short title and summery
statement. The Board's decision was predicated, however, on the revised
text for the initiative's being published in the DC Register on
June 4.
Enclosed is the text of an article I wrote for my web site, DCWatch.com,
that details the unusual circumstances and unlawful manner in which a
supplement to the June 4, 2004, Register containing the text of the
slots initiative came to be published.
As you are aware, the DC Code and Title 1 of the DC Municipal
Regulations are very clear regarding the DC Register. DC Code
§§2-504(a), 2-554, and 2-558(b) are applicable, as are, especially, DC
Code §§2-553(a) and (b)(2):
(a) The District of Columbia Office of Documents shall also
supervise, manage, and direct the preparation, editing, and publishing
of the District of Columbia Register which shall serve as the only
official legal bulletin in the District of Columbia government and the
temporary supplement of the District of Columbia Municipal Regulations.
(b) The District of Columbia Register shall contain the entire text
of the following . . .:
(2) Every notice of public hearing issued by an agency.
Because of the improprieties surrounding the preparation and
publication of the supplement to the June 4th edition of the DC
Register, I do not believe that the supplement can be considered a
true and official issue of the Register. If that is the case, then
I believe that the June 9, 2004, hearing of the Board must be postponed
until such time as the revised text for the initiative is properly
published in the DC Register.
Sincerely,
Dorothy Brizill
cc: Kenneth McGhie, Legal Counsel, BOEE
Alice Miller, Executive Director, BOEE
Robert Bobb, City Administrator
Back to top of page
The Best Government Money Can Buy, in themail, June 6, 2004
Dorothy Brizill, dorothy@dcwatch.com
Proponents of the Lottery Expansion Initiative of 2004 (http://www.dcwatch.com/election/init18.htm)
are facing some very tight deadlines if they are to get their Initiative
on the November general election ballot, as they want to. They filed the
Initiative late, on April 22 — and they can't afford to lose any time.
To get on the November ballot, any Initiative has to file approximately
17,500 valid petition signatures with the Board of Elections and Ethics by
July 6. The Lottery Expansion Initiative would authorize 3,500 slot
machines, or "video lottery terminals," in a complex at New York
Avenue and Bladensburg Road, NE. The Board of Elections and Ethics will
hold a public hearing this Wednesday at 5:00 p.m. to determine whether the
Initiative is the proper subject matter for an initiative and, if so, to
formulate its short title and summary statement. The BOEE had originally
scheduled the hearing for June 2, but at that meeting the initiative's
proponent, businessman Pedro Alfonso, and his lawyer, former councilmember
John Ray, submitted a new text for the Initiative that differed
significantly from the initial version that had been published in the DC
Register. So the Board insisted that it be republished and that the
hearing be rescheduled. The DC Register is the District's official
legal bulletin. It is published every Friday by the Office of the
Secretary's Office of Documents and Administrative Issuances. The firm
deadline for publication in the Register is noon on Thursday of the week
preceding publication. So, when John Ray stated emphatically at last
Wednesday's BOEE hearing that he was sure the revised text of the
initiative would be published two days later in Friday's Register,
most people reacted with surprise and skepticism. But that Friday, June 4,
a supplemental Part 2 of the DC Register, consisting only of the
Initiative text, was mailed to its subscribers and delivered to government
offices.
How did that happen? Text for the DC Register is submitted by
government agencies; the Register is then formatted by the Office
of the Secretary and printed and mailed under contract by the federal
Government Printing Office. But this supplement was handled differently.
On Thursday afternoon, the text of the revised Initiative was delivered to
the Office of the Secretary by Margaret Gentry, a longtime aide to John
Ray who originally filed the Initiative with the Board. When the Office of
the Secretary finished formatting the supplement, Gentry picked up the
copy and paid for having it duplicated at Kinko's. Gentry then returned to
the Office of the Secretary and picked up a set of mailing labels that
they ran for her, took them to the Post Office and paid for their mailing,
and then personally delivered the copies that the Office of the Secretary
normally delivers to DC government offices.
When the Office of the Secretary was initially asked about this unusual
process on Friday afternoon, its initial reaction was denial. The office's
spokeswoman originally claimed that the supplement was printed by the GPO
in the usual way, and that the BOEE requested and paid for the expedited
supplement. Two hours later, the spokeswoman admitted what had happened,
but claimed that there had been a series of misunderstandings — that the
Office of the Secretary had been led to believe that Margaret Gentry was
an employee of BOEE, and that the proponents of the Initiative had
misunderstood what BOEE told them, and thought that it would be all right
for them to pay for printing and mailing a supplemental DC Register.
Finally, on late Friday afternoon, the Secretary of the District, Sherryl
Hobbs Newman, formerly Director of the Department of Motor Vehicles,
answered a telephone call. Although the Office of the Secretary is
relatively small — only about 27 employees — and the publication of
the DC Register is its single most important task, Ms. Newman said
that she was completely unaware that a supplement to the DC Register
had been published; that a private interest's publishing the DC
Register was completely wrong and unauthorized; that she would
immediately start an investigation to determine how it had happened; and
that as far as she was concerned the supplement containing the
Initiative's text wasn't an official DC government publication or a real DC
Register at all. |
