States Rights

Dear Washingtonians:

Larry Seftor and Bill Coe, below, criticize DCWatch’s position in the slots initiative case, and maintain that the home rule rights of Washingtonians are undermined by the decision of the DC Court of Appeals [http://www.dcwatch.com/election/init20ee.htm]. My contribution argues with them, so I’ve demoted it to follow theirs.

Gary Imhoff
themail@dcwatch.com

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Mayoral Takeover of the Schools: A Cautionary Report from the NYC High School Council
Erich Martel, ehmartel at starpower dot net

Anyone wishing to know more about some of the problems that resulted from mayoral takeover of the schools in New York City will be interested in reading the annual report of the New York Citywide Council on High Schools. The Council, which consists of elected high school parent representatives and one high school student, was “established to advise the NYC Chancellor of Schools on high school policies and to annually review and report on conditions in the city’s high schools.”

The report raises questions about the legitimacy of NYC Department of Education’s reported graduation numbers and class size data and criticizes “the imposition of incessant change on students, parents, teachers and principals, who are given little voice in the direction of the school system. . . . These changes, such as regionalization, small schools, a new accountability system, and the ‘empowerment’ zone, while well-intentioned are often inconsistent and are taken to scale with inadequate planning and evaluation, [place] stress [that] is outweighing the so-far unproven benefits.”

The Report describes the NYC Department of Education as unwelcoming; it alienates parents and “demoralizes those needed to carry out the reforms.” The complete thirteen-page report is at http://www.dcpswatch.com/martel/061117.htm.

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Can’t We All Get Along?
Pleasant Mann, pleasant@chesapeake.net

Like a number of other people, I saw the tabling of Council Bill 16-734, the “Library Transformation Act of 2006,” last week as an opportunity to start a serious discussion on the future of the District’s library system. Unfortunately, Education Committee Chair Kathy Patterson has suggested that she wants to bring this still fatally flawed bill up for consideration again. Reconsideration would be a serious mistake. Although there have been revisions that helped to modify the bill’s Rube Goldberg-like financing scheme, obvious weaknesses remain. Almost 40 percent of the total cost of the new central library is covered by philanthropy and the federal government, two sources that have provided a total of zero dollars to date. Even if the city had to build a new central library, there has been little evaluation of the best place to put it. There is no evidence that a new central library on the old Convention Center site would be to the benefit of either the library system or downtown commerce compared to other cheaper centrally-located sites in the city.

Beyond the specifics of the bill, I get another reason for avoiding it every time I pass by my local branch library, Watha T. Daniel, which is currently closed. When the library was closed in December 2004, even though there were still controversial aspects of the new design, we were told that the new branch would be completed in eighteen months. By the time the problems with the new design were recognized, it was too late to reuse the old, now stripped, branch library. Plans were made a year ago to develop an interim branch library, plans which still have not been completed. The effort to build a replacement for Watha T. Daniel has yet to start. In the case of Watha T. Daniel, and the other three branch libraries that have been closed, the library system found itself in a situation it could not easily resolve. The provisions of Bill 16-734, and its attempt to build a new cental library, calls for an even more complicated project, which could easily go awry.

Committee Chair Patterson said that she was “disappointed in my colleagues in not having the vision” to pass Bill 16-734 out of committee. Vision, of course, is usually invoked by politicians when a project’s numbers will not work. The true vision was on the part of the three councilmembers who tabled the bill. They did not vote based on the wishes of campaign contributors, developers or high-powered constituents. Their only motivation was the best interests of the District of Columbia, its citizens and its taxpayers.

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Evidently, Not Cost Effective
Ed T Barron, edtb1@mac.com

After a week of rain in Seattle, I returned to find out that Alfonso, “Fonzie” Soriano has signed an eight-year contract with the Chicago Cubs at seventeen million dollars per year. That’s an enormous contract, which was deemed too expensive for the Nationals’ owners, the Lerners. It would have been nice to have Soriano here for the next few years as the Nationals build up a team to be competitive as a National League ball club. Building the team around Soriano and Zimmerman would be a great approach. Having those two in the lineup would also attract free agents from other ball clubs as they become available in future years. Free agents should only be sought after to fill a specific hole in the roster (e.g., a relief pitcher, or additional starter). Trying to build the whole team with free agents doesn’t work. Just look at the hapless Redskins. Hope that the Lerner’s strategy works. It would be nice to have at least one winning professional sports team in DC.

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Paper Trails Again
Harold Goldstein, mdbiker@goldray.com

In my precinct in Maryland every voter could choose a paper ballot, so out of about 1600 voters there were about five who made that choice. So an assertion that four out of five voters say “paper please” is as misleading as the assertion that a paper trail in itself somehow assures a correct count or recount.

If one believes that the machine itself is or can be hacked then there is no reason to believe that the paper you might get in your ideal machine is actually being counted. If I can program the machine to lose a vote occasionally, then I can program it to print a piece of paper that I will not count.

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When You Can’t Argue the Facts
Dennis Jaffe, DennisJaffe @ G ma i l . c om

Harold Goldstein now labels as “misleading” my assertion in themail (November 15 and November 22) that 80 percent of DC voters have indicated their preference to cast their votes by using electronically-scanned paper ballots over paperless electronic voting machines. According to official results tallied by the DC BOEE: In the September 12 primary, 82,890 voters voted on the optical scan voting machine and 20,516 voters voted on the touch screen voting machine, which totals 103,406 voters. That equals 80.2 percent who voted by paper ballot.

Mr. Goldstein cites his approximation of results in his Maryland voting precinct showing how few people chose paper ballots there. But he fails to mention what was reported in the Washington Post on October 31: “A record 166,000 Maryland voters had requested absentee ballots as of yesterday, spurred in part by suggestions from the governor and other state officials to abandon electronic voting for the security of a paper ballot . . . in the wake of widespread voting problems during the Sept. 12 primary.” That is hardly a vote of confidence in paperless, electronic voting machines.

While no system is perfect, there’s a reason why in this town the phrase, “don’t leave a paper trail” has become venerable: it gives people something to go back to and compare against. I don’t expect to persuade Mr. Goldstein of the value of this. Reasonable people can agree to disagree. But I also don’t expect people to bandy around the word "misleading" when the facts show my assertion was 100 percent officially correct and truthful. I don’t know how poll workers present the question of “choice” to Maryland voters, and I don’t pretend to. But in DC, 80 percent of those going to the polls have chosen paper over paperless. Them be the facts.

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Gambling on Sovereignty
Bill Coe, bceedeec@aol.com

Does anyone else see an irony in the outcome of that proposed gambling referendum? It was, as we know, nixed by the DC Court of Appeals on the basis of an old federal law aimed almost entirely at the District.

I, for one, am agnostic on the subject of gambling in DC. I figure it’s not my business or the government’s to block people, rich and poor alike, from using their money as wisely or as foolishly as they like. There are for me issues a great deal more important for the city than whether or not gambling should be permitted here. One of them is a cause espoused by many of the same people who adamantly oppose organized gambling -- viz., the sovereignty of this fair city which, in my view, has suffered as a result of the court’s ruling.

Why are these folks celebrating — “giving thanks,” as Mr. Imhoff puts it [themail, November 22] — that the court has done its thing and once again used the federal cudgel to settle a question which could just as well have been decided by us citizens? Their joyful reaction to this expedient ruling strikes me as politically immature. It’s rather like the grownup child who whines about controlling parents and then, when he runs into trouble, runs to daddy for help. Daddy’s help may come, as it has in this case, but the outcome is contemptible nevertheless. The hazards for DC of gambling are far outweighed, it seems to me, by the damage sustained when we cede our moral and political authority to Congress — hoping they will save us from ourselves.

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With Friends Like Dorothy, Who Needs Enemies?
Larry Seftor, Ward 3, larry underscore seftor .them757 at zoemail.net

As reporting in the Post of November 23, Dorothy Brizill, Thelma Jones and Anthony Muhammad, in their zeal to defeat slots, appealed their loss in DC Superior Court to the DC Court of Appeals. The resulting Appeals court ruling is a legal precedent that further erodes the self determination of District residents. The appeals court said that the initiative “would exceed the legislative powers granted to the District and its citizens by the Home Rule Act. . . .” For those that think this was an established legal principle before the action of Brizill and friends, it should be noted that the DC Superior Court did not recognize this when it ruled on the case. Now, because of the appeal of Brizill, we have a new legal precedent that limits our ability to rule ourselves. It is one thing when outsiders want to treat District residents like children who can only exercise self determination when it is harmless. It is quite another when our fellow citizens, in their knowledge of “what is best for us,” pursue a course that limits our rights. The contempt with which Brizill treats the rest of us is simply stunning.

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Nullification
Gary Imhoff, themail@dcwatch.com

The reason that DC has to obey an “old federal law” is because of an even older US Constitution, which made the national government preeminent over state governments. I think that Bill and Larry misunderstand what was at stake in this case. The Johnson Act, the major federal law regulating gambling devices, is a national law that applies nationally. The section of the law that applies specifically to the District of Columbia also applies to almost all areas that are not states or are otherwise directly under federal control, such as US territories and possessions, Army bases, and so on.

The sponsors of the slots casino initiative and the DC Board of Elections and Ethics held that the DC city council, and thus an initiative passed by DC voters, could overturn, repeal, or amend the Johnson Act. They held, in fact, that DC could overturn any federal law passed by the US Congress and codified in the US code, if that law applies only to the District of Columbia. Larry and Bill agree. They argue that DC citizens’ rights are harmed if the DC city council isn’t given priority over the US Congress, if it doesn’t have the power to overturn federal laws that apply to the District of Columbia. But no state has the power to overturn federal laws, and DC isn’t shortchanged in any way by not being given that power.

Bill’s and Larry’s position goes much further than home rule or self government, by a long stretch. Before the Civil War, an extreme version of states rights theory held what Larry and Bill say, that a state should be able to nullify a federal law and overturn a federal law within that state. However, the theory of nullification held only that a state could overturn a federal law that it believed to be unconstitutional. Larry and Bill, the slots proponents, and the Board of Elections promote what would have been an extreme form even of nullification — that DC should be able to overturn any federal law applying to DC, whether or not the city council believed it was unconstitutional. The Civil War settled permanently any doubt about whether the federal government or the states were preeminent, and whether state law could trump federal law. Since then nullification theory has been unquestionably invalid. No state can overturn federal law, and DC’s power isn’t greater than that of the states. Judge Judith Retchin in the Superior Court got that question wrong, and the decision of the Court of Appeals simply affirmed that. It didn’t curtail DC’s powers in any way; it just affirmed that in this respect DC citizens have the same rights as all other citizens, no less but also no greater. If we want to change national law, we have to change it at a national level; we can’t do it in the city council or by a local initiative. If Larry and Bill want DC’s lawmakers to be more powerful than Congress, then statehood won’t satisfy their ambitions — DC will have to become an independent nation.

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CLASSIFIEDS — EVENTS

DC Public Library Events, November 27-28, December 2, 9
India Young, india.young@dc.gov

Monday, November 27, 7:00 p.m., Martin Luther King, Jr., Memorial Library, 901 G Street, NW, Second Floor West Lobby. All the World’s a Stage Book Club. Different countries, times and lives. Each book is an adventure. Discuss Washington’s Spies by Alexander Rose. For more information, call 727-1161.

Tuesday, November 28, 12:00 p.m., Martin Luther King, Jr., Memorial Library, 901 G Street, NW, Room 307. View the film, “Shooting Back,” a documentary of how Jim Hubbard saw an opportunity to help homeless children by teaching them about photography and allowing them to experience photography on a personal level. For more information, call 727-1213.

Saturdays, December 2, 9, 2:00 p.m., Francis A. Gregory Neighborhood Library, 3660 Alabama Avenue, SE. Noted local historian and author C.R. Gibbs presents two lectures: Blacks in the Old West (December 2) and Scramble for Africa (December 9). For more information, call 645-4426.

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Planning Meeting for Displaced New Orleanians, December 2
Bette Ann Hubbard, ba.hubbard@dc.gov

The District of Columbia Public Library will be one of many cities around the country to host the United New Orleans Plan’s (UNOP) Community Congress on Saturday, December 2. This multi-city, simultaneous meeting will allow displaced New Orleans residents to help prioritize the infrastructure investments needed to rebuild the city. The Washington area meeting is open to any New Orleans resident now living in the DC Metro area. The local Community Congress will be held at the Martin Luther King, Jr., Memorial Library (901 G Street, NW) from 10:00 a.m. until 4:30 p.m. in Room A-5. Interested New Orleanians must register online in advance at http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.asp?u=964642838908 or by calling toll-free at 866-940-1095.

The Community Congress will utilize interactive TV to link thousands of participants attending events in New Orleans and four other cities with high concentrations of New Orleans evacuees: Atlanta, Baton Rouge, Dallas, and Houston. In addition, New Orleans residents living outside those cities will be able to participate in the meeting at participating community locations and libraries in fifteen cities nationwide. There are an estimated 267,000 New Orleans residents who have not yet returned to the city — 60 percent of the city’s pre-Katrina population — according to a study commissioned this summer by the Louisiana Recovery Authority.

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Fenty Transition Town Hall Meetings Date Changes, December 11-13
Mafara Hobson, mafara.hobson@fentytransition.org

The dates of three Fenty Transition Town Hall Meetings have changed. The times and places remain the same. The changed meetings are: Ward 4, Monday, December 11, 6:30 p.m., MPD Regional Operations Command Center North, 801 Shepherd Street, NW; Ward 1, Tuesday, December 12, 6:30 p.m., Garfield Terrace, 2301 11th Street, NW; and Ward 6, Wednesday, December 13, 6:30 p.m., King Greenleaf Recreation Center, 201 N Street, SW.

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CLASSIFIEDS — HOUSING

Housing Sought Near National Cathedral
Joan Eisenstodt, jeisen@aol.com

A newly ordained priest, friend of a dear friend, has been assigned to the National Cathedral and is moving in January to DC. Like many, she is blown away by the prices and is looking for a “reasonable” place to live, preferably with parking. It can be a temporary rental for a few months until she gets to know DC, or it can be permanent. Price range is in the $1200-$1500 range, maybe a bit more, but her salary is not great. If you have a place to rent or know of rentals, please E-mail me and I will pass the information along.

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