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August 5, 2009

Scandals

Dear Fellow Scandalmongers:

There have been so many city government scandals in the past few weeks that it’s impossible to go into each one in detail; the most that can be done is to list a few of them. Here are three. Federal District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan has issued an order (http://www.dcwatch.com/govern/occ090730.htm) in the cases of the Pershing Park mass arrests of 2002, in which the Office of the Attorney General has either destroyed evidence or withheld it from the plaintiffs for the past seven years. Like the devastating court hearing that was discussed in the last issue of themail, it portends dark days ahead for the Office of the Attorney General, which is responsible for what Judge Sullivan called these “shenanigans.” In the intervening week, Councilmembers Cheh and Mendelson, as well as a growing list of civic leaders, have called for Attorney General Peter Nickels’ resignation. When the council comes back into session in September, it is likely to hold hearings into not only this incident, but also into other instances of the AG’s misconduct.

The Grand Chapter Meeting Opening Reception of the national Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity was held on Monday. Kappa Alpha Psi is Mayor Fenty’s fraternity, and he attended the event and was praised there for funding it. Several months ago, City Administrator Neil Albert, when he was Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development, arranged for OPED to give a grant of $37,000 to the Historical Society of Washington, DC, to pay the Kappa’s bill for holding their reception at the Society’s headquarters at the Carnegie Library. Alexander Padro, the cochairman of the Historical Society, told us that the grant was unsolicited by the Society and unexpected by them. (In recent years, the Historical Society and its board have had a very close working relationship with OPED. In FY 2009, for example, the Society received $500,000 in an earmarked grant administered by the Office of the Deputy Mayor.) The request for the Kappa Alpha Psi grant came from someone in the Office of the Mayor, but the mayor’s office refuses to identify who made the request, though it claims the mayor was unaware of it. The grant was revealed on Tuesday by Washington Post reporter Nikita Stewart, and after her article was published on the Post’s blog (http://voices.washingtonpost.com/dc/2009/08/dc_mayor_adrian_m_fenty.html), the city claims that it was repaid by the fraternity. Stewart identified the fraternity brothers whom Fenty recognized at the reception as members of his administration: “Greg O’Dell, chief executive of the convention center; Erik Moses, chief executive of the DC Sports and Entertainment Commission; Lee A. Smith III, director of the Department of Small and Local Business Development; and Chip Richardson, general counsel to the mayor.” In addition, she notes that Fenty crony Sinclair Skinner was recognized by the fraternity’s highest officials as someone who made the event possible and whom they referred to as another member of the administration. Richardson and Skinner are two individuals who are involved in the scandal over the irregular donation of a fire truck and ambulance to Sosua in the Dominican Republic.

The failure to fight effectively the fire that totally destroyed the home of Peggy Cooper Cafritz, in the Palisades neighborhood, seemed at first to be merely the result of low water pressure. But a thorough and startling job of reporting by WUSA’s Dave Statter on his blog shows that the problem goes much deeper, http://www.wusa9.com/news/columnist/blogs/2009/08/councilmember-calls-hearing-on-dc-water.html. After a fire destroyed an apartment house in Mt. Pleasant on October 1, 2007, because low water pressure hampered the efforts of the fire department, the city council held two hearings on the problem of low water pressure in city fire hydrants. Former Shreveport, Louisiana, Fire Chief J. Gordon Routley was hired to research and write a report on the problem for the DC Fire Department; the DC Water and Sewer Administration produced its own report; and Routley also wrote a critique of the WASA report. Statter writes, “Routley wrote that both WASA and the fire department had to do a better job of handling the water supply needed for larger fires. The report was critical of WASA’s response and the information it provided at the scene of the fire. It also had serious questions about the water system’s reliability. By contrast, WASA’s report found that the water system around the Adams Morgan fire met NFPA guidelines. The WASA report, looking at the city’s smallest water mains, concluded there was only one occupied portion of the city where water flow was a significant problem.” But, Statter writes, the city council hearings completely overlooked Routley’s report: “There was no appearance by Routley, or any discussion of his report. At the time, STATter911.com was told by a number of sources there was some sort of an agreement between city officials and WASA that the report would not be part of the hearing. No reason was given other than the parties were now in agreement on how to move forward with many of these difficult issues. Councilmember Graham says he has no recollection of any agreements and does not recall the Routley report. During the December 10 [2007] hearing there was much discussion over the progress Chief Rubin and WASA’s Jerry Johnson made in addressing the problems. Their memorandum of understanding set the stage for jointly funded hydrant inspections by firefighters, along with flow testing and hydrant marking by WASA.” In other words, two years ago city officials knew that there was a serious, systemic, citywide problem with fire hydrant water pressure; they had been warned about it by a report commissioned by the fire department itself; and they came to an agreement to ignore the problem and proceed with the much more sanguine findings of WASA’s report.

We’re owed a full explanation of why the Routley report was buried. Here’s what we have heard: the Fenty administration has a policy that one city agency will not criticize another city agency. In 2007, that policy was enforced by Dan Tangherlini, who was then the city administrator and also a board member of WASA. Tangherlini made sure that Fire Chief Dennis Rubin would not introduce the Routley report at the city council hearings, and he ensured that Councilmember Graham would not ask about it or call Routley, who was in the building for the first hearing, as a witness. There also should be an investigation of the report by an anonymous commentator on Statter’s blog who writes that he was inside the Cafritz house that night fighting the fire and that, “The fire ground leadership (Incident Command) during this fire through their poor decisions and poor fire ground tactics created the mess that became that fire. Was the water supply an issue. Yes, however, with good leadership, sound tactics, and a coordinated fire attack that fire could have been extinguished before it became a total loss. The infighting that went on at the Chief’s level on the fire ground was disgusting to see from a line firefighter’s perspective. No one from the Chiefs to the line fireman should be proud about anything that went on at this fire. It was a disgrace. I am sorry that Ms. Cafritz and her family lost everything, if I were her or some diligent reporters that are covering this story I wouldn’t rest until I found the answers that satisfied my questions. It worked for the Rosenbaums and now they own the DC Fire & EMS Department.” Statter’s article includes links to the tapes of both city council hearings in 2007, as well as to Routley’s report, the WASA report executive summary, and Routley’s critique of the WASA report. They’re all worth reviewing.

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

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LA Dreamin’ and WTU Contract Talks
Candi Peterson, kempclp@msn.com

I, along with approximately thirty to forty committed teachers, met in Los Angeles, California, at the United Teachers of Los Angeles (UTLA) union headquarters last week . We represented over five cities. Our goal was to create a national agenda of education reform, along with organizing in our local unions, along with the community organizing many of us are already engaged in. Among our group were some young teachers, and their opposition to wanna be education reformers of the Klein/Rhee type was awe inspiring, to paraphrase the blogger at Education Notes on Line.

I recently received a call of concern from a reliable source regarding the Washington Teachers Union contract talks. There may be a teachers union contract coming soon for teachers to vote on. This insider source indicated that the WTU and American Federation of Teachers Prez Randi Weingarten are selling out to Rhee while figuring out a way to make it look like a great victory for the teachers. Teachers beware! Read the fine print, and stay tuned for more.

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Another Tax Office Adventure
Jack McKay, jack.mckay@verizon.net

Well, I have to give credit where credit is due. My cousin, who trusts me to do her income taxes, got a nastygram from the DC Tax Office demanding a very large sum in underpaid taxes, penalty, and interest, to be delivered within three weeks, or harm would be done. This was bogus, of course, but there was nothing for it but to pay the Tax Office a visit. Working these things out over the phone, with an operator who can’t see the papers in your hands, doesn’t work. Snail mail is way too slow. And the DC Tax Office has yet to discover the marvel of E-mail, by which means this could have been quickly resolved.

So it was off to 941 North Cap, where I stuffed a parking meter full of quarters, hoping that two hours would be sufficient. Once in the office, I didn’t even have time to open my New York Times before my number was called. Then one E. Mosley, after worrying a bit about whether I really had my cousin’s permission to deal with her taxes, wordlessly worked a keyboard for several minutes, then printed out a letter stating that my cousin had “no current outstanding liabilities.” In short, my tax return was correct, and my cousin owed nothing.

I was back at my car after no more than fifteen minutes total elapsed time, wishing that I could have some of those quarters back. Thanks to Mr. Mosley for quick and competent work. No thanks to the Tax Office, of course, which had fumble-fingered my cousin’s return. Wouldn’t it be nice if, when their computer spits out such a complaint, some sentient being actually looked at the return to confirm that the mistake wasn’t just a Tax Office mis-typing? This is not the first time I’ve been through this drill.

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Straight from the Horse’s Mouth
Wenzell Taylor, plantation_america@verizon.net

Possibly the most important project in DC citizens securing their God-given rights to sovereignty is the freedom movement, The Continental Congress 2009.

Bob Schulz, the founder of the We the People organization and the organizer of Continental Congress 2009, is coming up Friday, August 7, at 6:00 p.m. Be sure to tune in. Listen to the broadcast here: http://www.RevolutionBroadcasting.com. Give DC its voice in Congress.

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DC Before the Jury
Ed Johnson, mvcorderito@yahoo.com

About twenty years ago, I served on a jury in a case where the plaintiff was suing the District of Columbia over a slip and fall accident on city property. Reading about these cases (Chang v. US and Barham v. DC) reminds me of the French expression, “plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose” (the more things change, the more they stay the same). Several things stood out for me from the civil suit back then, not the least of which is the question of why the plaintiff had to go to court at all. It took us longer to have lunch, select a foreman, and decide on a process than it did to find the District guilty of negligence.

We felt that the case had gone to trial solely so the just-graduated from school lawyer for the city could get some court room experience. He did a terrible job, and it was obviously because he didn’t know what he was doing. The judge ended stipulating a number of things because this poor guy had failed to produce various documents and obviously had no clue about how to get them. He tried, and I imagine he’s a competent attorney by now, but it was a sad spectacle to watch then. On the jury, we all agreed it would be unfair to hold his inexperience and lack of help against him, and we spent the first afternoon trying to figure out what the defense was. We were unanimous in deciding the city was negligent but spent the next day figuring out how to be fair to both parties in determining the damages. The plaintiff’s attorney had done a good job of valuing the actual damages and long term costs to her client, and had made an argument for punitive damages. In the end, we awarded double the plaintiff’s legal fees as punitive damages, since we decided that the District should have settled the case at least two years beforehand and not have dragged her through a trial they had no chance of winning. In hindsight, maybe we should have awarded more, since that doesn’t seem to have been a lesson learned for the city.

Back then, I thought the District was callous towards the plaintiff for not settling that case, wasted people’s time and money on a trial, and the government was serving its own bureaucratic interests and not the interests of justice. Plus ça change. . . . As an aside, serving on that jury was a tremendous experience and one I would recommend to anyone who’s desperately trying to figure out how to (legally, I hope) dodge a summons. Everyone on that jury was interested in doing what was fair. It was an interesting group dynamic as well, because not only did we have different a lively discussion about what constituted “fair,” the group also wanted to commit the time to reach a unanimous decision; there was a feeling that a decision on the award would be a better one even if it involved more individual compromise.

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You Can’t Put a Metro Station in East Podunk
James Treworgy, jamietre@gmail.com

Harold Goldstein writes [themail, August 2], “why, even in Manhattan, when public transportation is convenient, low cost, and goes where you want, it wins.” As much as I love and support the growth of public transit, it is not always the best option for every place in every city. Washington, DC, has about 650,000 residents living in 87 square miles. Manhattan has an area of 23 square miles and 1.7 million residents. Paris has an area of 34 square miles with 2.2 million residents. It should not be very hard to understand why public transportation cannot be offered with the same coverage as it is in Manhattan, Paris, or the vast majority of European cities that have much higher population densities than Washington. Metro is already heavily subsidized by taxes. Creating comprehensive coverage in places with low population density would be extraordinarily expensive with very little benefit. This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t intelligently plan for growth in some areas, but if the potential use of a new metro station is too low then the benefits would not outweigh the cost.

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