Follow the Money
Dear Bag Men:
For years now, I’ve been writing about the inexplicable attack upon
independent taxicab operators in this city. First, after many years of
battling against independent drivers, the city government forced cabbies
to switch from the zone system and to get meters. Government officials
at least had some cover for that decision; the business and tourism
industry lobbied very heavily for it, and many cab riders believed that
the zone system was confusing and allowed drivers to inflate fares. But
the only people who really benefited from the switchover were the
companies that sold meters and the garages that installed them. However,
the cost of a meter for an independent driver was only a few hundred
dollars — not enough to push many drivers out of the business or into
the arms of large fleet owners. The proposed legislation limiting the
number of cabs and forcing them to buy city-issued medallions is a much
different matter. Cab medallions serve no purpose except to limit
competition, and they don’t benefit anyone except the owners of large
fleets and those who barter medallions, who profit hugely. (The New York
City Taxi and Limousine Commission held its last public auction of new
cab medallions on May 2, 2008. It sold eighty-six corporate medallions,
available for fleet vehicles, for between $1,201,189.51 and
$1,312,000.00 apiece. It sold only a single medallion for an independent
cab, for $413,000 (http://www.nyc.gov/html/tlc/medallion/html/home/home.shtml).
Drivers who are unable to buy a newly minted medallion are forced to buy
a secondhand medallion on the open market, at prices at least as high.)
There’s a lot of money in the medallion business, more than there is
in the taxicab business itself, and the medallion business exists only
because the government imposes an artificial limit on cabs.
So why should government officials want to impose a cab medallion
system on Washington, if it doesn’t benefit either drivers or riders?
We’re coming closer to finding out why, but we’re only at the
beginning stages of the prosecution, and only a small part of the
investigation’s findings have been revealed. In the coming weeks and
months, we’ll find out more. In the meantime, don’t assume anyone’s
innocence. If you’ve been discounting the importance of this case by
relying on the small size of the $1,500 in reported bribes to Ted Loza,
take note of the “money quote,” both literally and figuratively, in
Saturday’s Washington Post story about the bribery conspiracy:
“It is widespread and continuing and involves bribes in excess of
$100,000. . . .” (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/25/AR2009092503648.html).
Until the prosecutors release more information, read Katherine Mangu
Ward’s libertarian take on the scheme, http://www.reason.com/blog/show/136327.html,
and Lou Chibarro’s article on the case in the Washington Blade, http://www.washblade.com/thelatest/thelatest.cfm?blog_id=27359,
which is especially interesting for its witty, catty, and non-PC reader
comments.
As the scandal grows, it will increase the dissatisfaction with city
government — both the mayor and the city council — that already
exists among the public. WJLA’s poll, released on Friday, showed, “A
majority of DC residents disapprove of Mayor Adrian M. Fenty’s job
performance and even more believe he cares more about advancing his
career than about the city’s needs. . . .“ (http://www.wjla.com/news/stories/0909/662700.html;
be sure to click through for the raw results of the survey). A mayor
disapproved of by half the population — the half of the population
that has to deal with city government — and a city council tainted by
scandals of earmarks and bribery will have to face an election next
year, and there still aren’t any strong candidates running against
incumbents or challenging them on the many issues on which they are
vulnerable.
Gary Imhoff
themail@dcwatch.com
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Corruption and Ethics
Dorothy Brizill, dorothy@dcwatch.com
In the past week, there was renewed attention to corruption and
ethics in the DC government. At Tuesday’s city council session, the
council, at Chairman Vincent Gray’s direction, amended its Rules of
Organization and Procedure to include a “Code of Official Conduct”
for councilmembers and council staffers (http://www.dcwatch.com/council18/conduct.htm).
The new rules, however, are little more than a toothless general
statement of principles, since there are no sanctions or penalties for
violation of the code, and enforcement is relegated to the General
Counsel, Brian Flowers, an employee of the council.
Within two days of the council’s legislative session, Ted Loza,
chief of staff to Ward One Councilmember Jim Graham, was arrested by the
FBI and charged with accepting a bribe in exchange for influencing
legislation regarding the District’s taxi industry. In coming weeks,
there will undoubtedly be renewed attention focused on the District
government regime to investigate and prevent corruption. Within this
regime, the DC Board of Elections and Ethics (BOEE) should play an
important role. Under District law, the Office of Campaign Finance, a
subordinate unit of the BOEE, “administers and enforces District laws
pertaining to campaign finance, lobbying activities, conflict of
interest, and the ethical conduct of public officials.” In recent
years, however, neither the BOEE nor the OCF has been effective,
aggressive, or thorough in investigating or rooting out corruption in
the District government.
Increasingly, concerns have been raised about the independence and
aptitude of the BOEE. Currently, the three-member board has only two
members, both of them close personal friends of Mayor Adrian Fenty.
Board Chairman Errol Arthur attended Howard Law School with Fenty, and
Board member Charles Lowery served on the Advisory Neighborhood
Commission with him. Fenty has attempted to fill the third, empty seat
with a campaign contributor and member of his triathlon team, Omar Nour,
but the first two times that Nour was nominated he failed to win the
approval of Councilmember Mary Cheh’s Committee on Government
Operations and the Environment. Last week, on September 16, Fenty
renominated Nour for a third time. It is unclear whether this is just an
example of Fenty’s stubbornness and determination to steam roll the
council, or whether Cheh and he have reached an agreement to ensure that
there will be a BOEE totally subservient to Fenty in place in time for
the 2010 election. Cheh, who has challenged Fenty on a few issues,
within limits, has been helpful to him recently — for example, she was
the leading council negotiator who totally capitulated to Fenty on the
independence of the Board of Education. Fenty has held several
groundbreakings in Ward 3 over the past two months (the new aquatic
center at Wilson Senior High School, the modernization of Alice Deal
Middle School, the Tenley-Friendship Library, and new playgrounds at
Hearst Elementary, Horace Mann Elementary, and the Chevy Chase
playground). Cheh has appeared at several of these events and referred
to the groundbreakings as “campaign promises made and delivered” by
Fenty and her. Through a partnership of convenience, Fenty would benefit
from shoring up his position in vote-rich Ward 3, and Cheh would lessen
the likelihood that Fenty would support a challenger’s run against
her.
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DCPS RIF Memo to Principals Released
Erich Martel, ehmartel@starpower.net
Shortly after midnight, on Thursday, September 24, I received a
seventeen-page DC Public Schools RIF (Reduction in Force) Memo that was
sent to principals on Friday, September 17, instructing them on
implementing RIF procedures [http://www.dcpswatch.com/dcps/090918.htm].
Here is a key excerpt: “You must identify the positions within the
school that will be eliminated to meet your budget reduction target by
Saturday, September 19, 2009, at 10:00 a.m. As previously discussed, you
will identify these positions in conjunction with your Instructional
Superintendent and on the final Budget Reduction Worksheet you received
earlier this week. . . . You may identify filled teaching and
non-teaching teaching positions pursuant to the guidance given last
week.”
Some principals met with their LSRTs on Tuesday, September 22, for
the purpose of receiving recommendations for the areas to be reduced.
This document gives the very strong impression that decisions had
already been made. If that is the case, then, on top of the questionable
need to institute a RIF, it appears that principals were put in the
position of misinforming their staffs and parents.
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Safety Inspections Nixed by Mayor and Council
George Clark, GRClark@GeorgeRClark.com
The mayor and council say we’ll help balance the budget by
eliminating car safety inspections. I don’t know what they‘ve been
smoking. Anybody think about the lost sales tax on the parts for all
those repairs? The mechanics who will be put out of work and the shops
that will close? Guess all my repair business will move to Maryland.
Forget about the human toll this will take. I suggest instead we stop
providing police, EMS and other services to the mayor’s private
triathlon or spending more than seventy-five thousand dollars to heat
and spiff up a public pool used for his training. Bet we come out way
ahead. The council slept through this one, led by a mayor whose
arrogance makes W’s look small time.
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DC Council Leads the Way for Unethical
Behavior
Paul D. Craney, pcraney@dcgop.com
The District of Columbia Republican Committee made the following
statement in response to Thursday’s arrest of Ted G. Loza, chief of
staff to Councilmember Jim Graham (Ward 1). Loza was arrested on bribery
charges. “The arrest of Jim Graham’s chief of staff on bribery
charges only reminds us that the DC council’s new ethic laws are as
strong as a cup of tea. District residents are suffering for the council’s
lack of leadership and ethics under Graham and Gray,” stated Robert J.
Kabel, Chairman of the DC Republican Committee.
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Parking Ticket Scam to Watch Out For
Phil Shapiro, pshapiro@his.com
Any middle school student in the country can tell you that Pittsburgh
produces steel, Detroit produces cars, and DC produces parking tickets.
With parking tickets a major industry here, it’s no surprise that
parking ticket scams thrive in the same location. Here’s a scam to
watch out for. Someone who drives a Toyota gets a parking ticket. You’re
driving a Toyota and are picking entirely legally. They drop their
parking ticket onto your windshield. If you don’t check the license
plate number on the parking ticket, you might end up paying their
ticket.
The offender likely wrote down the parking ticket number before
placing the parking ticket on your windshield, in order to monitor it
online to see whether it gets paid before the due date. If it doesn’t
get paid, the offender can go ahead and pay it. This is an offense —-
a betrayal of trust — that ought to have a $750 fine attached to it if
the perpetrator gets caught. Also, the online ticket paying system in DC
should not allow a person to log in multiple times to “monitor”
whether a ticket has been paid.
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Bicycle Cooperative in DC?
Phil Shapiro, pshapiro@his.com
Baltimore has a bicycle cooperative called Velocipede where people
learn how to fix bikes, borrow bike tools, and earn free bikes by
volunteering. Does anything similar to that exist in DC?
See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3a1kRvXTHdQ
and http://velocipedebikeproject.org/
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DC Voice Teacher Survey
Marcus D. Rosenbaum, mrosenbaum@usa.net
You (and, indeed, DC Voice) should publish a disclaimer regarding
their interviews with one hundred four DC teachers [themail, September
23]. The teachers were not chosen randomly; therefore, no one can claim
that the results of their interviews are representative of all DC
teachers. All you can say is that they are representative of the people
they interviewed -- most of whom, it seems, were people they already
knew. In other words, to claim, as you did, that DC school system “alienates
80 percent of its workers” is totally unfounded. You should retract it
or come up with good data to prove it.
I have no horse in this race. But just because someone publishes a
survey doesn’t mean its findings are worth anything. You should not
have given DC Voice any publicity.
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Pedestrian Deaths and Speed Limit
James Treworgy, jamietre@gmail.com
Lee Watkins IV says [themail, September 23] we should lower the speed
limit in DC to 20 mph because “pedestrian deaths outnumber motorist
deaths both in the city and nationwide.” First, this statistic is
either wrong or seriously misleading, depending on how you look at it.
In an urban area where very few roads have speed limits above 25 mph, of
course that is true — inside the city limits. It’s pretty hard to be
killed when inside a steel box at 25 mph. But nationwide that is far
from true, as automobile accidents account for nearly ten times as many
deaths than pedestrian fatalities, with 4,757 pedestrian deaths in 2007,
versus automobile deaths that are typically over 40,000 per year.
Second, in DC, there were twenty-four pedestrian deaths in 2008, one
of the worst years on record, and seventeen in 2007. This puts “death
due to walking in the city” as one of the least likely ways to die in
DC, way behind homicide, AIDS, influenza, hypertension, and, actually,
just about everything else. See http://app.doh.dc.gov/services/administration_offices/schs/10_deathcauses.shtm.
I assume “pedestrian” is wrapped up in the roughly 150 people who
probably die due to any kind of accidents in a given year.
Finally, of these twenty-some-odd people who died, how many were the
fault of the pedestrian instead of the driver? How many were a result of
a driver error other than speed, such as failure to yield while turning,
the most common cause of pedestrian accidents where the driver is at
fault? How many were on major roads, outside neighborhoods, with heavy
traffic that’s rarely over 25 mph anyway? When you take out all the
ones that had nothing to do with speed, you probably aren’t left with
much of a problem to solve. Before you propose a dramatic solution, you
should make sure there’s a problem that would be addressed by it.
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CLASSIFIEDS — EVENTS
Sustainable Communities, October 1
Sara Kabakoff, skabakoff@nbm.org
October 1, 6:30-8:00 p.m., Sustainable Communities: Plan Like Your
Life Depends on It. Professor Greg Hise, University of Nevada, Las
Vegas, and Barbara Campagna, National Trust for Historic Preservation,
explore the decisions made by mankind on where and how to live, based on
available materials, technology, and energy sources. $12 members; $12
students; $20 nonmembers. Prepaid registration required. Walk in
registration based on availability. At the National Building Museum, 401
F Street, NW, Judiciary Square Metro station. Register for events at http://www.nbm.org.
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