Delusional
Dear Deluded:
Here’s what really happened with the baseball vote yesterday. The
Williams administration had negotiated with Major League Baseball
without involving or informing the city council. The usual practice of
the administration has been to work only with its small circle of
trusted insiders, excluding the council and the community. Again this
time, as it has so often in the past, this arrogance and secrecy
backfired on the administration. When Williams sent the agreement to the
council, he and Jack Evans, who acted as the administration’s
representative on the council for the bill, said that no matter how
onerous the provisions, how bad the contract was for District residents,
the council had to approve it without any changes. But the
administration negotiated with MLB like a rookie, like a first-time car
buyer who walks into the dealership saying, “I have to have that car
at any price,” and then pays the sticker price plus a premium, opts
for the overpriced chrome accessories, takes the unnecessary
rust-proofing, and gets taken by the manufacturer’s predatory
financing deal. As the details of the bill became known, it became
increasingly unpalatable to the public and to councilmembers.
Then, having negotiated a lousy deal, the administration took the
insupportable position that the mayor could commit the city on his own,
without the council’s agreement, and that the council was required to
honor anything the mayor had agreed to. In the end, there weren’t
seven votes on the council to write a blank check to MLB. At the first
vote, Council Chairman Linda Cropp and Councilmembers Kathy Patterson
and Phil Mendelson kept the ballpark financing bill alive by abstaining
from voting on it, but Cropp gave the mayor and MLB the clear message
that she wanted some flexibility, some changes made, some concessions on
the financing of the stadium and the risk the District government would
assume when construction of the new stadium inevitably fell behind
schedule. Instead of making even minor face-saving concessions, the
administration and MLB gambled that they could disrespect and ignore
Cropp, refuse to make any concessions to improve the deal for the
District, and bully the bill through. Before yesterday, administration
officials were predicting that they were going to get ten council votes
for the ballpark financing bill; they were that delusional. The boys
didn’t take the girl seriously; it was that raw, and the emotions were
that childish. Cropp was willing to compromise with them, but they weren’t
willing to deal; they thought they could roll her, and they were wrong.
Since she couldn’t trust the administration to evaluate private
financing proposals fairly, Cropp was forced to amend the bill to
require that at least 50 percent of the construction costs of the
stadium, not counting the infrastructure costs, be borne by private
financing. That amendment was the price of her vote for the bill, but
even with that amendment six councilmembers held firm, and voted against
the bill: Catania, Fenty, Graham, Mendelson, Patterson, and Schwartz.
That’s another clear signal to the administration and MLB that this is
the best deal they can get, and that if they want to bring the Expos
here they need to agree to it. If they don’t, good riddance to this
deal.
Gary Imhoff
themail@dcwatch.com
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Ms. Cropp, as chairperson of the DC city council, has done just what
she should be doing -- looking out for the best interests of those who
live and have businesses in Washington. Ms. Cropp has secured an
excellent compromise position for funding the new baseball stadium in
DC, requiring the new team owners or private outside financiers, to pay
half of the new stadium costs. Ms. Cropp has performed a good service
for the District. It's not likely that she will be invited to Mayor
Williams' Christmas party.
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I had been under the impression that it was forbidden for the council
chair to hold outside employment, only to learn that Linda Cropp has
been moonlighting for Peter Angelos all along. I would be delighted to
be proven wrong and see her private funding scheme materialize, but
after hearing her insist that the District would still retain exclusive
ownership of a stadium built with private funds, I began to wonder: who
will step up to the plate, so to speak, and offer to build a stadium,
then turn over ownership to the DC government? The tooth fairy, perhaps?
For the past couple of decades we have collectively whined about Major
League Baseball ignoring us whenever a new franchise was being awarded.
Well, you can rest assured that they won't bother to even tease us in
the future. The Council's stadium vote, engineered by the duplicitous
Ms. Cropp, will likely keep baseball out of DC forever.
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It seems that Chairman Cropp rang the death knell for baseball's
return to DC. Though I hope that it won't be so. Does the council really
believe this can be renegotiated? Did the council buy the argument that
we should fund schools and libraries and other needs instead of
financing a new baseball stadium? I wonder. If they did, shouldn't we
expect to see a new gross receipts tax bill to do just that? After all,
the business community did acknowledge that they wouldn't object to a
new tax if it went to the stadium. How could they object to a bill that
would fix schools and libraries? I won't hold my breath.
What about the administration? Why couldn't they tell us that the
financing deal wasn't that bad? Why couldn't they tell us that 80
percent of the ticket and merchandise tax will be paid for by
out-of-state visitors to DC — who now don't pay any tax? That the
gross receipts tax will likely catch businesses that don't currently pay
any tax to DC? That the so called studies on the economic benefits of
stadiums don't necessarily apply to DC — what other stadium sits
between two other states? What other stadium can draw new out of state
entertainment dollars to the city?
Were we scared that we would be on the hook if the revenue estimates
don't hold? Well aren't we also on the hook when the revenue projections
Tax Increment Financing deals don't hold? Perhaps in another thirty or
so years we'll get it right.
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Why No Talk of a Referendum on the Baseball
Bill?
Art Spitzer, (artspitzer at aol dot com)
Given that reported opinion polls show majority disapproval of the
Mayor’s baseball bill, I’m puzzled that I haven’t heard a word
from the opponents that if the Mayor’s bill passes the Council they’ll
subject it to a referendum. Under DC law, a bill enacted by the Council
can be taken to referendum upon the timely submission of petitions with
the necessary (close to 20,000) valid signatures. As I understand it,
these signatures must be submitted before the congressional review
period for the bill has expired, which is thirty "legislative
days" from transmission. Others can guess better than I can; my
guess is that the review period will end in about mid-March.
But that doesn’t mean that time isn’t short for those who oppose
the Mayor’s bill. Before referendum sponsors can even begin collecting
signatures, they must get their petition forms approved by the Board of
Elections. This requires submission of the necessary paperwork to the
Board, which must then publish a notice of a public hearing in the DC
Register, and then hold a public hearing at which opponents of the
referendum can argue that the proposed referendum is improper. The Board
sometimes agrees and sends the sponsors back for another try. All of
this doesn’t happen overnight. Many precious weeks can evaporate.
Ideally, then, the sponsor of a referendum will want to file the
necessary papers with the Board of Elections, in good form, moments
after the Mayor signs the bill. One would think that would also be the
story opponents want in the next day’s papers: “Mayor Signs Baseball
Bill; Opponents Demand Referendum.” So why the silence?
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“Not as Important as a Stadium”
Ed Dixon, Georgetown Reservoir, jedxn@erols.com
Ed Barron is right that something with the Tenley-Friendship Library
is amiss. The library is slated to close at the end of December and to
be torn down in March. The new design sits in the lobby at Tenley-Friendship.
The renovation will essentially replicate the current one in its
footprint and height. Of course all the modern trimmings and hardware
will come with it. The modernized version will have lots of glass. It is
one of four cookie cutter projects the DC Public Libraries has been
building steam on since early on in the Anthony Williams' mayoral tenure
with the help of the libraries recently resigned director Molly Raphael.
The other three sit in Anacostia, Benning, and Shaw.
By being a cookie-cutter project and tied to three other citywide
projects, the funding has had more political muscle than if it had run
on its own. This practice has been used with the DC Public Schools with
the distribution of its school modernization program. However, many have
noted (Ed Barron, Marc Fisher of the Washington Post, outgoing
Councilmember Harold Brazil, and early on Ward 3 Councilmember Kathy
Patterson) that the corner upon which the Tenley-Friendship Library
sits, only a couple hundred feet from a Metro escalator, needs to be
more efficiently used. None of the planning and budgeting processes that
it has gone through though, at the agency, executive, legislative, or
community level, has turned the plan around.
According to library's own web site, it acquired the land it now sits
on from DCPS' adjoining Janney Elementary School. Recently, Janney
Elementary has gone through bitter comity discussions over possibly
giving up more of its land to finance the renovation of the old school.
But there seems to have been little effort to ever combine the two
agencies’ need to modernize facilities by making better use of the
city land at the busy intersection and along Albermarle. Nor is there
any attempt in the library design to accommodate either Janney
Elementary or St. Anne's Catholic School, both immediate neighbors of
the library. The children's section is tucked away downstairs away from
the atriums upstairs that will glorify the library with the entrance on
the far side of the building. The quiet room upstairs, presumably for
adults, looks out at Janney Elementary across its soccer field with its
handsome elms. If DCPS ever decides to sell off Janney's soccer field,
the view from the quiet room will be lost.
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Anacostia Waterfront Corporation Board Problems, Part 3
Dorothy Brizill, dorothy@dcwatch.com
An incident last week gives us a glimpse into some of the backdoor
deals that have already been struck on the Anacostia Waterfront
Corporation. On December 9, the city council’s Committee on Economic
Development held a meeting to mark up the mayor’s nominations to the
Corporation’s board, but at the eleventh hour, and without
explanation, Chairman Harold Brazil pulled from the agenda all the
nominations except for that of Stephen Goldsmith, who was nominated to
become chairman of the board. Here’s the explanation: Joslyn Williams,
the president of the Metropolitan Washington Council of the AFL-CIO, had
sent a letter to Brazil saying that: “To win the support of the labor
movement for the legislation to create the Anacostia Waterfront
Development Corporation, the [Williams] administration agreed to appoint
a representative of organized labor to the corporation’s board. The
legislation was amended to accomplish that. Unfortunately, this
agreement has not been honored. Without consulting with the labor
community, the administration instead nominated [former Deputy Mayor for
Planning and Economic Development] Eric Price as the ‘labor’
representative to the board.”
Mayor Williams may have given his word to Joslyn Williams, but he
didn’t keep it. The legislation was not amended to require a labor
representative on the board. However, the city council does not want to
start the Anacostia Waterfront Corporation by declaring war on organized
labor. The administration’s highest priorities for the Corporation are
to get Andrew Altman, the current Director of the Office of Planning, as
its Chief Executive Officer; Stephen Goldsmith as its Chair; and Eric
Price as a member of the Board. So if the mayor won’t pull Price’s
nomination, he will have to pull another current nominee and replace him
or her with a labor representative — or he will have to get the
council to agree to double-cross the AFL-CIO.
Yet a third problem has arisen with the nomination of Stephen
Goldsmith to be the chair of the Corporation. Goldsmith continues to
maintain his primary residence in Indiana and is legally a federal
employee, both of which disqualify him from serving on the board. But he
also misled the council in his responses to the questionnaire that the
Economic Development Committee sent to the nominees. One of the
questions was, “Are you currently employed by, or do you have a
contractual relationship with, the District or federal government? Is
so, please specify.” Goldsmith just answered “no,” but that’s
not true. He is the Senior Vice President of Affiliated Computer
Services State and Local Solutions (ACS), formerly known as
Lockheed-Martin, which has over $23,000,000 in annual contracts with the
District government, and some of them are the most controversial
contracts the District government has — the contract to run the
photo-radar traffic ticketing program and ticketing processing for DMV.
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CLASSIFIEDS — EVENTS
Reflections on the Japanese Garden, December
19
Brie Hensold, bhenhold@nbm.org
Sunday, December 19, 1:00-2:00 p.m. Film: Dream Window: Reflections
on the Japanese Garden. Renowned for their beauty, Japanese gardens have
been retreats for people to rediscover the natural world and themselves
for more than 1,000 years. Free. Registration not required. At the
National Building Museum, 401 F Street, NW, Judiciary Square stop, Metro
Red Line.At the National Building Museum, 401 F Street, NW, Judiciary
Square stop, Metro Red Line.
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Washington Storytellers Theater presents Kala Jojo in There Is a
River: Stories of Hope and Inspiration, at The City Museum of
Washington, 801 K Street, NW, on Saturday, January 22, 8:00 p.m. Parking
on street or in lot beneath Renaissance Hotel off 14th Street. Ticket
price $15; student, senior, group rates available. Purchase at the door
or in advance by calling 301-891-1129 or on-line at http://www.washingtonstorytellers.org.
Washington Storytellers Theater is proud to introduce the adult
storytelling audiences of Greater Washington, DC to one of the most
exciting and brightest young lights in storytelling, Kala Jojo. He is a
nationally renowned Jeli (“storyteller”), vocalist, and
multi-instrumentalist whose repertoire evokes the oral traditions of
Africa, African-Americans, and the Caribbean. As a singer and masterful
folk song-storyteller, Kala Jojo will touch your heart with this program
of enlightening narratives and thought provoking songs about love,
triumph, healing, family, and the challenges faced by New Afrikan
peoples born in North America.
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CLASSIFIEDS — FOR SALE
I have used this TV since purchasing it two years ago and I love it.
Samsung 20" (diagonal) model TXK2066. Picture quality is terrific
and the size is perfect for a small-medium apartment. Four A/V jacks
make it very easy to connect a DVD player or surround sound stereo.
Selling only because I am upgrading to a larger model. I have the remote
and all original manuals. Pictures available. E-mail me at johnbkern@yahoo.com.
Price: $100 (new model sells at Best Buy for $199).
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