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January 17, 2007

Debate Starts

Dear Debaters:

The time for the first city council hearing on the mayor’s school takeover proposal has been moved up a half hour. At the hearing, Mayor Fenty will present his case for the proposal. The hearing will take place at 9:30 a.m. in the council chambers at the Wilson Building, 1350 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW. If you can’t make it to the hearing, you may want to watch it on cable or the net.c

We have a suggestion for a question that an interested councilmember could ask the mayor. Mayor Fenty has promoted his takeover proposal by using the highly biased report of the Parthenon Group that he characterizes as an academic study of mayoral takeovers of school systems (links to the report, its executive summary, and it appendix are at http://www.dcpswatch.com/mayor). When the mayor released this report at a press conference on January 4, Dorothy asked who commissioned and paid for it, and how much it cost. Mayor Fenty said his administration would be open and transparant with regard to all information, and said that members of his staff would provide the answers. At the end of that press conference, Dorothy asked Victor Reinoso, the Deputy Mayor for Education. In the ensuring two weeks, she followed up with repeated E-mails to Reinoso, members of his staff, and other staffers in the Office of the Mayor. Several members of the administration said they didn’t have the information, and referred the questions upwards, finally saying that only Reinoso could answer them. After repeated requests, Reinoso finally provided this answer at 10:30 this evening:

“The Parthenon Group was selected by then Mayor-Elect Fenty from among three consulting firms that submitted proposals. The proposals were in response to an RFP soliciting firms to conduct a best practice review of urban school districts that were either experiencing accelerated reform or were under Mayoral control. Parthenon has extensive strategic advisory experience in both the private and public sector including experience in a range of urban school districts. Parthenon began its engagement the first full week of November. The cost of the engagement was negotiated between Parthenon and the private funders who donated the best practice study to the transition as an in-kind contribution. As of now, the invoice has not been presented to the transition, the administration or any members of its staff. As I understand it, the transition will disclose contributions (including in-kind contributions) in its final report pursuant to District law, which is not yet due. Parthenon does not have a media contact and has referred media inquiries to the administration.”

In other words, Reinoso refused to answer the questions, and flouts Mayor Fenty’s promise of “an open and transparent administration.” The law authorizing city funds for the mayoral transition requires that a final financial report be filed on March 31. So Reinoso is saying that he’s not going to disclose who commissioned and paid for the report, and how much they paid, until March 31, after he hopes the city council has approved the bill he has proposed. So, interested councilmember, please ask the mayor these questions. He doesn’t feel the need to reveal the information to the public, but he may tell you.

Gary Imhoff and Dorothy Brizill
themail@dcwatch.com and dorothy@dcwatch.com

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Minimum Distance from an Intersection to Park
Jack McKay, jack.mckay@verizon.net

The District specifies that it is illegal to park within forty feet of an intersection, much more than the twenty-five feet that is most commonly specified (in Virginia, for example). Councilmember Schwartz has led the effort to decrease this distance to a more reasonable value, and that effort has succeeded, though in an awkward manner. As of last November, there is a "moratorium" on the enforcement of the forty-foot law, following Act 16-0464, now Law 16-0186. The DC Municipal Regulations, Title 18, Chapter 24, now include this paragraph:

“2411.21 Vehicles displaying a valid residential parking permit may park at all times, within a designated residential permit parking zone, twenty-five (25) feet or more from the intersection. The Director of the District Department of Transportation shall have the discretion to exempt intersections from the parking restriction moratorium established by this section that the Director determines would be inappropriate and unsafe with such parking.”

This was already the case for nighttime parking (10 p.m. to 7:30 a.m.), but now it’s valid twenty-four hours a day. Of course the signposts indicating, symbolically, "no parking beyond this point," remain forty feet from intersections. But if the block is zoned for Residential Permit Parking, and you have the appropriate RPP permit, then you can park extending fifteen feet beyond that signpost. This is too subtle a point for many Parking Enforcement aides (Public Works employees, not the police), so some residents have been ticketed, despite the moratorium. You can protest the ticket, citing this law.

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Let Them Take a Limo to Work, Compliments of DC Taxpayers
Mary C. Williams, mslaw1121@aol.com

The new DC council has gotten off to a rocky start in 2007. And if the Firehouse Parking exemption legislation proposed by newcomer Mary Cheh and veteran Councilmember Kwame Brown is any indication of what residents can expect from this body, we all should start heading for the hills now. Rookie Councilmember Cheh kicked off this “you’ve got to be kidding” moment last week when she noted that the Tenleytown firefighters lost their staff parking lot in the renovation. With nowhere on site to park their cars, the staff parked along nearby residential streets and got hit with $25 parking tickets issued daily by our hardworking parking enforcement officers. (Kudos to the Department of Public Works.) But just when this city was finally putting residents first and getting its message out to commuters and parking scofflaws that public transportation is their most economical means of getting to the job, our elected officials decided that this policy is a bit harsh for those employees who “protect” us. Well, please point out which of our thousands of employees don’t provide an equally important and necessary service to the residents? That’s their jobs. I would bet that if we take a poll, almost every employee believes that he or she should have a reserved parking space. Why not? If the firefighter gets a space, then so should the police officer, the teacher, the public works sanitation collector, and the housing inspector. Other than the mayor, I know of no other city employee who is guaranteed transportation to and from work. That’s not part of the job description, and it is not an elected official’s responsibility to provide employees with a pass to work. What’s next? Catered lunches?

Even more important, why would any official of a city with among the worst traffic congestions in the world even consider a proposal that directly conflicts with its conservation and environmental policies? Never mind that the Williams’ administration, along with the Department of Transportation under Dan Tangherlini, who is now our city manager, spent the last eight years selling this community on the benefits of public transportation, and offered alternatives such as more bike and pedestrian paths to help improve the quality of life. I need not point out the environmental concerns associated with these additional cars. Again, I want to know what these councilmembers were thinking when they started to write this legislation?

Cheh might have been entitled to a new member’s pass on her first piece of legislation, but this one is too obvious a mistake to let it slide. Her proposal would have a detrimental effect on parking citywide, including in my Southwest neighborhood, where we have not only a fire station but the Fire Department repair shop, DMV’s Inspection Station, the Virginia Williams Family Center, and soon a baseball stadium. We already have a persistent parking problem because city, federal, and contract employees park in our neighborhood. There is no excuse for Councilmember Brown, whose generosity knows no bounds. He proposed that the exemption also include teachers, and then offered us another reason why so many children in the District can’t get a quality education. It’s those darn parking restrictions, particularly in Columbia Heights, Brown explained. It seems that the teachers can’t teach the entire time because they have to run out and move their cars to another location or they are ticketed. Da? Here’s a simple lesson that everyone should have learned by now: Leave the cars at home. Walk, take the Metro or bus, hitchhike, carpool, or take a cab. I don’t care how you get there. And our councilmembers should not, either.

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Pre-Home Rule in themail
Michael Bindner, mikeybdc at yahoo dot com

Jonathan Rees proposed turning back the clock on Home Rule in the District. He makes the valid point that DC has its share of corruption. What he obviously does not know is that prior to Home Rule the District government was a dumping ground for patronage appointments serving the interests of the largely southern membership of the congressional committees overseeing the District. Even through the [Mayor Walter] Washington administration, the finances were called unauditable, and yet Marion Barry reformed the District’s finances and secured a clean audit within two years. Going back to a federal system is indeed an interesting solution if you compare current District finances (which are in surplus with a large slush fund) to those of the federal government, which has red ink as far as the eye can see. Can District government be reformed? Of course. A reform mayor was just elected to do the job. Let’s see what he accomplishes before closing the book on self-government.

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One Solution to Corruption in DC Government
Scott McLarty, scottmclarty@hotmail.com

Jonathan R. Rees, in the January 14 themail, says he opposes statehood for the District because of the DC government’s rampant corruption and incompetence. I sharply disagree with Mr. Rees. Americans deserve rights, including democracy and equality (currently denied to DC residents), because we live under a Constitution that guarantees such rights to all of us, regardless of who’s in office and how they discharge their duties. We should seek solutions to DC’s crisis of bad local government elsewhere. One way is to end DC’s entrenched one-party rule. Cities dominated by a single political party are notoriously prone to corruption — legal cronyism and bribery as well as the illegal kind. DC is no exception. Consider the consistent willingness of DC’s leading Democratic politicians to let the Federal City Council and other big corporate lobbies call the shots on District policy and development. That’s how we got a convention center and a baseball stadium built on DC taxpayers’ money. It’s why rent control is under constant threat. It explains Mayor Fenty’s antidemocratic scheme, under obvious pressure from the Federal City Council, to ask Congress to strip the school board of its powers.

Right now, in the Ward 4 special election to fill Mr. Fenty’s old seat on DC council, there are a few dozen Democratic candidates, and Renee Bowser, a Statehood Green (http://reneebowser.com). Renee strongly opposes the school board takeover, taking the position of groups like Save Our Schools (http://www.saveourschoolsdc.org). Like all DC Statehood Green Party candidates, Renee accepts no contributions from developers and other corporate PACs. One of the most prominent Democrats in the Ward 4 race has received Mayor Fenty’s blessing, and will surely act as the mayor’s mouthpiece on council — she has already declared her support for the takeover. Renee Bowser has an unmatched resume of community service: she is a union lawyer (UFCW International Union), former shop steward, former Commissioner on the DC Human Rights Commission, third-term ANC Commissioner, and currently chair of her ANC. Renee helped organize citizens who opposed Mayor Williams’ plan to dismantle and destroy DC General Hospital, DC’s only full-service public health care facility. If Mayor Fenty gets his mouthpiece on the council, parents and children will lose, and the democratic rights of DC residents will suffer another blow. I don’t live in Ward 4, but it’s clear to me that if Renee Bowser gets elected, Ward 4 residents will get someone who fights for their interests, the Dems will face some sorely needed competition, and all of us in DC will get a voice for our democratic rights and some sunshine in DC government.

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Reform and Where You Send Your Kids to School
Katie Hodge, khodge@biglizard.net

Objections to Mayor Fenty’s proposals to reform DCPS include that he can’t really know how to improve the schools, because he sends his children to a private school. Similar objections were made to some school board candidates in the last election. While I wasn’t a supporter of Robert Brannum during his run as a Ward 5 and 6 candidate for the school board, I did hear him speak at a debate sponsored by the Voice of the Hill where his qualifications were questioned on this basis. I was impressed with the clarity of his reply. As memory served, he made an analogy to a broken swimming pool. He went on to say if you know a pool is broken, you don’t put your child in harm’s way. But that doesn’t mean you can’t be concerned about other people’s children or the effect on the neighborhood, or that you can’t work to improve the system.

I dare say all parents want to do what they think is best for their children, and asking them to sacrifice their children’s needs to their public ambition is going to far for me. It doesn’t mean that they can’t also want to work to fix a system so those kinds of choices don’t have to be made. Can childless people not implement school reform?

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When the Roar of the Crowd Is Not a Good Sign
Sam Jordan, samunomas at msn dot com

There is no law that requires Mayor Fenty to obey the wishes of the people with respect to the proposed schools takeover. However, it is always best for a self-proclaimed populist to heed the vox populi. When ignored, the people’s support becomes harder to win and is replaced by a creeping estrangement. After all, if we’ve been ignored on the consensus biggest issue in DC politics, why pay attention to the mayor’s efforts on anything else? Expect him to be dismissive. Let him dig his own grave — and cover it up, too.

Usually, the harder jobs are tackled by an administration that has been "proven" by a welcomed victory such as passage of a unifying piece of legislation. A Universal Workforce Readiness and Training Act for the unemployed and underskilled would be a good start. Instead, Mr. Fenty has begun by initiating a process he wasn’t elected to undertake: assumption of the powers of the hybrid school board. It would seem wise to at least take his case to the people and let the elected school board president be heard also. No “showtime” forums with all manner of flash promoted as real consultation with the voters, but a series of accessible, sincere community-level dialogues with real people who are concerned that progress made will be halted, even reversed. Yes, I did say “progress made.”

Following the community consultation, let a referendum ratify the chosen course. Having done so, the people will hold faith with him for displaying respect for them and patience with the democratic process. Keep in mind that Congress must permit and approve the required alteration of the Home Rule Charter. Does Mr. Fenty, the populist, want to do this without solid support from the electorate? If I recall correctly, he began talking about taking over the schools after the primary that guaranteed his victory a month later. It was not among his preprimary talking points. One law with which all politicians must sooner or later comply says, the “people giveth and the people taketh away.” That’s why we call the 110th a new Congress. What’s the rush? It is much too soon to turn the vaunted, but untested bullpen into a bull ring. In a bull ring, the bull always loses — and the crowd cheers and goes home.

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One Hundred Days or So Plan
Tom Sherwood, tom.sherwood@nbcuni.com

Note to everyone about the Fenty “100 Day” plan that everyone keeps referencing. Just to be accurate, it’s officially “100 Days and Beyond.” Many of the action items will take six months or a year on the Fenty schedule, and that includes six months more to find a fire chief, among others. It’s not a 100-day plan. It’s a first year plan.

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CLASSIFIEDS — EVENTS

Woman’s National Democratic Club 85th Anniversary Celebration, January 18
Katie Coon, kcoon@democraticwoman.org

The Woman’s National Democratic Club is proud to announce its 85th Anniversary kickoff celebration on Thursday, January 18 at 6:00 p.m. We begin the year with the jazz age of the Roaring 20s; this decade saw passage of the 19th Amendment and the political empowerment of women. Join us as we celebrate our founding mothers including Margaret Sanger, Daisy Harriman, Emily Newell Blair, and Alice Paul (the founder of the National Woman’s Party). We will honor the newest Democratic women in Congress and Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, the first female Speaker of the House. Entertainment for the evening will be provided by none other than the legendary jazz pianist and humorist, John Eaton, whose repertoire will celebrate women’s history. This event is cosponsored by the Sewall-Belmont House and Museum (former home of Alice Paul) and Planned Parenthood of Metropolitan Washington Action Fund.

The Woman’s National Democratic Club is a membership organization that presents educational programs on economic, social and cultural issues, advocates on behalf of women’s issues and performs community outreach activities. The Club will celebrate their 85th Anniversary in 2007. For more information on the Woman’s National Democratic Club, please visit the web site at www.democraticwoman.org or contact Katie Coon at kcoon@democraticwoman.org.

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National Building Museum Events, January 20, 23
Lauren Searl, lsearl@nbm.org

Saturday, January 20, a day of flying in the Great Hall. Model airplane workshop, 9:00-11:00 a.m.; flying in the Great Hall, 11:00 a.m.-4:00 p.m.; flying fun paper airplane craft and competition, 12:00-3:00 p.m. Bring the family to a day of flying fun in the Great Hall. At the model airplane workshop from 9:00 to 11:00 am, families and scout groups construct their own Delta Dart rubber-motored model airplanes with the help of the DC Maxecuters. From 11:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., families can watch the expert DC Maxecuters fly their own model airplanes during Flying in the Great Hall. Don’t miss out on the high-flying action! Join the Flying Fun Paper Airplane Craft and Competition from 12:00 to 3:00 p.m. to design your own paper airplane and see how far it will fly. Model airplane workshop: $7 per plane Museum members; $13 per plane nonmembers. Ages eight and up. Prepaid registration required; call 272-2448, ext. 3413 or E-mail family@nbm.org. Flying in the Great Hall free. All ages. Drop-in program. Flying fun paper airplane craft and competition free for Museum members, $3 per nonmember participant. Recommended for children ages 6 and older. Drop-in program.

Thursday, January 23, 6:30-8:00 p.m., With thirty years of experience, Penny Bonda, FASID, has become a leading advocate in the cause of sustainable design. Her pioneering efforts in promoting sustainable interiors led to the development of the LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) standards for Commercial Interiors. As eco-editor for Interior Design magazine and interiordesign.net’s "The Green Zone," she will share her perspective on the current state of sustainable interior design and the exciting directions the profession is heading. Following the lecture, she will sign copies of her book Sustainable Commercial Interiors (Wiley). This lecture is held in conjunction with the exhibition The Green House, which will be open for viewing. $12 Museum and ASID members and students; $20 nonmembers. Prepaid registration required. Walk-in registration based on availability. Both events at the National Building Museum, 401 F Street, NW, Judiciary Square stop, Metro Red Line. Register for events at http://www.nbm.org.

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