Scofflaws
Dear Law Abiders:
This week, there have been two big developments and revelations about
the extent of corruption in DC politics. The Examiner’s Bill
Myers exposed fifteen million dollars in bonuses that have been paid to
city government employees under the Fenty administration (http://tinyurl.com/yg4oasv,
http://tinyurl.com/ydgzk59),
“including some $565,000 given out since October. The council passed a
law this year forbidding the city to hand out any cash perks after the
start of fiscal 2010, which began Oct. 1.” Of course, the bonuses paid
out illegally since October have been defended vigorously by Attorney
General Peter Nickles, who — as with the $85 million in Department of
Parks and Recreation contracts that were diverted so that the contracts
wouldn’t have to be approved by the city council — never finds that
the Fenty administration is bound to obey any law, but finds that
contracts and private agreements trump city laws.
Second, the embarrassing revelations in the Pershing Park case, and
the threat of even more revelations in the future in open court, forced
Nickles to settle one Pershing Park case on terms highly favorable to
the plaintiffs: “The settlement includes much more than the $8.25
million District payout. It addresses the problems that have dogged this
case long after the Sept. 27 mass arrests: the missing and or/destroyed
evidence and the OAG and MPD General Counsel’s embarrassing delays in
handing over thousands of pages of relevant documents,” http://tinyurl.com/yla99r5.
That settlement still leaves open one other Pershing Park case, one
concerning only four plaintiffs — but those plaintiffs are represented
by George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley, who is
determined to bring his case to trial to address issues broader than
just police mishandling of the protesters on the day of their arrests.
Turley is going to build on the success of the case that has just been
settled to expose and punish the District government for the cover-up of
the police officials’ lawbreaking at Pershing Park and the subsequent
and ongoing cover-up of the cover-up by the Metropolitan Police
Department and the Office of the Attorney General (http://tinyurl.com/yfq7asr).
Gary Imhoff
themail@dcwatch.com
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Master Facilities Planning
Richard Layman, rlaymandc@yahoo.com
One of the problems with the discipline of urban planning as it is
executed within municipalities is that for the most part it is about
land use, and not about comprehensive planning of how the government
operates. Even so, comprehensive “land use” or “master” plans
are the closest most municipalities get to a vision and mission
statement that unites all the agencies of government. While this is
typical everywhere, not just in DC, were a planning commission to be
created in DC, ideally it would have oversight over all master plans
created by all government agencies. If the proposed planning commission
only has oversight of the office of planning, and not even the
department of transportation, then more than half of the city government’s
planning activities and actions are missed. (Note that a handful of
jurisdictions have Transportation Commissions separate from planning and
zoning oversight bodies.)
Parisa Nourouzi’s post on the Public Facilities Bill [themail,
December 13] mentions that DC law has required a capital improvements
and facilities plan for over twenty years, but one has not yet been
produced. Most other jurisdictions do have such a plan, and it is
managed by the office of planning in conjunction with the mayor or
county executive. It is the closest that an office of planning gets to
providing coordinated planning across the government agencies, because
facilities and capital budgets for all agencies are planned and
monitored through this process. Money can’t be spent (i.e., the
parks department transfer of monies to a unit of the DC Housing Agency)
if it is not managed through this process. (Note that decision rules are
programmed into government management software systems to prevent the
release and transfer of monies outside of the master plan, and other
rules and regulations that govern the appropriation, utilization, and
expensing of funds. I presume that is how the system is supposed to be
set up in DC.)
Of course, a plan in and of itself can be either good or bad,
depending on its scope and its organizing and implementing principles,
goals, and objectives. For example, the most enlightened jurisdictions
practice co-location of government facilities to maximize the
utilization of public monies. Even fewer jurisdictions require that
government facilities be located proximate to robust transit service.
Regarding Gary’s point that achieving statehood is a process that
ought to include a focus on best rather than worst practice government
operation, imposing such principles and discipline on the “wild wild
west” planning and facilities regime that is typical of the various DC
agencies, including the Deputy Mayor’s office, would be a useful place
to start.
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Animated Children’s Story on YouTube
Phil Shapiro, pshapiro@his.com
After finishing my law degree at Howard University School of Law I
needed to re-balance my brain, so I taught elementary school for several
years. (That did the trick.) During that time I wrote a bunch of
children’s stories. Some of these are bouncing back to life as
animated multimedia and YouTube videos on the web. Here’s a children’s
story animated and narrated by a very talented teacher in Oklahoma City.
She used Adobe Flash (formerly Macromedia Flash): http://tinyurl.com/yeqjlo9.
I’m still quite fascinated at what law school does to the human
brain. To my mind, the study of law constricts and diminishes the brain
in some interesting ways. It’s hard to explain to someone who hasn’t
been through the process. If you know of a youth eager to head off to
law school, you might want to ask them, “Have you heard what law
school does to your brain?” Maybe they’ve heard. Maybe they haven’t.
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Winter Holiday Trash and Recycling Schedule
Kevin B. Twine, kevin.twine@dc.gov
The Department of Public Works (DPW) announces the following holiday
schedule for services through January 2010: Christmas Day, Friday,
December 25, DPW will be closed and most services will be suspended,
including DPW trash, recycling, and leaf collections. Parking
enforcement also will be suspended, including rush hour and residential
zone violations. All services will resume Monday, December 28. All
Friday trash and recycling collections will slide to Saturday, December
26. Trash and recycling containers should be put out for collection no
earlier than 6:30 p.m. the night before collection and removed from
public space by 8:00 p.m. on collection day. Leaf collection service
also will resume on Saturday, December 26.
The Ft. Totten Transfer Station, 4900 John F. McCormack Road, NE,
will be open Saturday, January 2, 2010, from 8:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m., to
receive all household hazardous waste (HHW), electronic waste, and
personal documents for shredding. This is an ideal time to recycle those
old TVs, computers, and other electronic gadgets and toys to make space
for new gifts. The transfer station will not be open to the public on
Saturday, December 26.
On New Year’s Day, DPW will be closed and most services will be
suspended, including DPW trash, recycling, and leaf collections, and
parking enforcement, including rush hour and residential zone
violations. All services will resume Monday, January 4, 2010. All Friday
trash and recycling collections will be made on Saturday, January 2. Any
remaining leaf collections also will resume on Saturday.
Residents who receive DC trash and recycling collection services are
encouraged to place holiday trees and other greenery in curbside tree
boxes — without ornaments or tinsel — no earlier than Friday,
January 1, and no later than Sunday, January 10. Trees will be picked up
during a special two-week collection and chipped. Tree chippings are
added to leaves collected during leaf collection season to make compost,
which is provided free of charge to residents during the spring, summer,
and fall. Residents also can bring trees to the Ft. Totten Transfer
Station January 2 through 9, from 1:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. weekdays and
8:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. Saturdays for free tree chipping. Trees not
collected by January 16 should be placed with your regular trash. DPW
will collect the trees, along with the regular trash, as truck space
permits over the following weeks.
In observance of Martin Luther King, Jr., Day, January 18, 2010, DPW
offices will be closed and most services will be suspended, including
DPW trash and recycling collections and parking enforcement. All DPW
services resume on Tuesday, January 19. Trash and recycling collections
will continue to slide one day citywide for the rest of the week. For
example, Monday trash and recycling collections will be made on Tuesday
and Tuesday’s collections will be made on Wednesday. In neighborhoods
with twice-weekly trash collections, Monday and Thursday collections
will be made Tuesday and Friday and Tuesday and Friday collections will
slide to Wednesday and Saturday. Trash and recycling containers should
be put out for collection no earlier than 6:30 p.m. the night before
collection and removed from public space by 8:00 p.m. on the day(s) of
collection.
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Term limits are an impossibility because Charter Amendments must come
from either Congress or the Council. You cannot propose an Amendment by
initiative, and it would take a Charter Amendment to have term limits
that the council could not simply void. Of course, given the desire by
some DC residents (including the moderator) to put the civil rights of
other people to a vote, perhaps not having this vehicle is a good thing.
[The Home Rule Charter doesn’t contain anything that would prevent
a citizen initiative from limiting the number of terms (total or
consecutive) that elected officials can hold — and in fact such an
initiative was proposed by R. David Hall in 1994. The city council
argued that the people had no power to introduce such an initiative; the
Board of Elections and Ethics disagreed, and allowed the initiative on
the ballot. It was passed with 62 percent of the vote in the 1994
general election. The initiative would have limited the mayor,
councilmembers, and members of the board of education to serving two
consecutive terms. Since the initiative did not apply to terms served
prior to its taking effect, and since the Board of Education was
restructured by Charter Amendment No. 3, term limits would have first
applied to any officeholders in the 2004 election. On January 23, 2001,
Councilmember Jack Evans introduced legislation to prevent term limits
from taking effect, and the city council passed that legislation. See http://www.dcwatch.com/issues/termdefault.htm.
— Gary Imhoff]
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Gary mischaracterizes [themail, December 13] my position on gaining
full enfranchisement for District residents. I don’t think that a
torch-wielding mob would the best way to get voting rights for the
District. Then again, I don’t think that meekly asking members of
Congress to grant District residents the rights enjoyed by all other
American citizens is a terribly effective tactic — much less is
legislating based only on the fear of what someone in Congress will
think of us. We should be respectful, but forceful. We should not shy
away from making local decisions based on local needs and priorities
just because we assume it will offend someone on the Hill. It’s worth
noting that Martin Luther King, Jr., said: “Freedom is never
voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the
oppressed.” King balanced respectful discourse with forceful advocacy,
and to my knowledge he didn’t apologize to anyone for offending their
sensitivities when he demanded his God-given rights. I don’t see why
we should either.
As for putting issues to the voters of the District, you mistakenly
claim that I don’t support referenda. I do, except when it comes to
the rights of minority groups. While the vote on medicinal marijuana
dealt with a policy issue, the same-sex marriage vote deals with the
right of a minority group to enjoy the benefits and responsibilities a
government contract available to everyone else. I have never believed
that matters of rights and equality should be left to popular vote. If
anything, you’re the one being inconsistent. You’ve loudly advocated
for a referendum on same-sex marriage, but criticized the decision of
two thirds of District residents to allow the use of medicinal
marijuana. Interestingly, you seemed to imply that the marijuana
initiative does not represent the District’s “core values,” even
though a significant majority of voters seemed to think that it does.
[We’ve gone over this before, but obviously I haven’t been clear
enough, so I’ll repeat myself one last time, and call a close to this
discussion for a while. Martin argues that, if I support the initiative
process, I should believe that the vote on every initiative is right; if
I disagree with the result of the marijuana initiative vote, I should
oppose all initiatives. That doesn’t make any sense. I obviously don’t
believe that everyone who wins a democratic election is the best
candidate, but I support democratic elections as the best way of
choosing government officials. Martin also asserts that same-sex
marriage is a basic human right, but that is just his assertion. Its
status as a basic human right isn’t established by history or by the
agreement of a majority of nations or societies. Advocates of same-sex
marriage are in the process of trying to establish it as a basic human
right; they can do that only by persuading the vast majority of people
over a wide range of societies that it is, not by imposing it by fiat or
unsupported assertion. — Gary Imhoff]
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Gary, as a reader of themail, I thank you for writing things that are
not politically correct. You have had the guts to criticize —
legitimately — the marijuana bill and other PC matters. Thank you.
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CLASSIFIEDS — DONATIONS
Northeast Performing Arts Group
Rita Jackson, President/Executive Director, nepag1@aol.com
Have you thought to yourself . . . if there was only something I
could do to help the youth in the District of Columbia? Have you
hesitated about giving to nonprofits because you don’t believe they
are really making a difference with youth? Northeast Performing Arts
Group (NEPAG) is worth taking a chance on. For more than thirty years,
Northeast Performing Arts Group has been transforming untrained at-risk
inner city youth lives and introducing them to all forms of the
performing arts. These young people have excelled and developed into
teachers, lawyers, architects professional performing artists working in
arenas across the United States, giving them a positive outlook on life.
The arts have the power to keep inner city youth healthy in mind, body,
and spirit.
Will you help support Northeast Performing Arts Group? Your tax
deductible donation will enable Northeast Performing Arts Group to give
the young people residing East of the River a venue to express
themselves through the arts. By assisting NEPAG with future
performances, the youth may realize that their current circumstance does
not have to be their circle of life. Give from your heart and make your
donation count.
For more information, go to our web site, http://www.nepag.net.
Featured in the 2008-2009 Catalogue for Philanthropy as “one of the
best small charities in the Greater Washington Region.” To make a gift
to Northeast Performing Arts Group through the Catalogue for
Philanthropy, please click on the following link: http://www.catalogueforphilanthropy-dc.org/cfpdc/nonprofit-detail.php?id=84097.
See the following articles: Washington Post, June 25, 2009, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/24/AR2009062401283.html;
Washington Post, May 30, 2009, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/article/2009/05/29/AR2009052903130.html;
East of the River, April 2007, http://www.capitalcommunitynews.com/publications/eotr/2007_April/html/NonProfitProfile.cfm.
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