Unethical
Dear Ethical Readers:
Contumacious consigliore Peter Nickles has backed down — somewhat,
but not entirely — from his unethical threat. Nickles was angry that
Council Chairman Vincent Gray questioned his ethics for making a deal
that rewarded Fenty’s cronies at Banneker Ventures after the council
squashed their questionable contracts to build DC Parks and Recreation
facilities, so he threatened to retaliate against Gray by launching a
criminal investigation against him. Fenty wanted to award a contract to
run the DC Lottery to a group that included some of his cronies; after
months of wrangling, the city council ended up approving a contract with
a different group that included cronies of some of the councilmembers.
As I wrote nearly two years ago, “It’s a shame that one of these
groups has to win” (http://www.dcwatch.com/themail/2008/08-10-12.htm).
But Nickles has resented the shutout of Fenty’s cronies for months,
and won’t let it go; he accused Gray of cronyism, even though Gray
recused himself from voting on the DC Lottery contract.
Last week, Nickles threatened to use his prosecutorial powers to
retaliate against an elected official who would dare both to criticize
him and to run a political race against Mayor Fenty. This threat was a
clear violation of the DC Bar’s rules of conduct. But today Jeffrey
Anderson reports in The Washington Times (http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/jul/20/dc-official-calls-for-probe-of-lottery-pact)
that Nickles has decided not to bring charges against Gray, at least
immediately, but to refer his complaint against Gray to Inspector
General Charles J. Willoughby. Nickles, as a campaign surrogate for
Mayor Fenty, accompanied his complaint with a heavy dose of political
rhetoric designed to smear Gray, damage his reputation, and to convince
voters that Gray’s contracting practices are as unethical and
unprincipled as Fenty’s. This is another ethically questionable act by
a prosecutor.
Nickles may have taken one step back, but using the office of
Attorney General (or its predecessor, the Corporation Counsel) to pursue
and threaten to prosecute the mayor’s political enemies is still more
unethical, and more dangerous, than any past city administration has
ever been. It is corrupt.
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In the last issue of themail, I wrote about Kwame Brown’s personal
financial problem, and asked whether it would affect your vote. Jackie
Young gives her opinion below. Jonetta Rose Barras gives hers in her
column in today’s Examiner, http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/local/Council-Change-Agent-1002087-98869269.html.
As always, Jonetta wanders off into giving her opinion that the mayor is
always right in any dispute between the mayor and the city council, but
in the end she gets around to choosing sides in the Council Chairman’s
race between Brown and Vincent Orange. She picks Brown.
Gary Imhoff
themail@dcwatch.com
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The District government is in the midst of a true Charter crisis. As
Tim Craig reported in the Post’s City Wire on Wednesday, “unless
the DC council and Mayor Adrian Fenty act fast, there might not be a
Board of Elections to oversee the September 14 Democratic primary,” http://voices.washingtonpost.com/dc/2010/07/fenty_could_directly_appoint_e.html.
Under District law, the three-member Board of Elections and Ethics must
have at least two members in order to constitute a quorum. Last week, on
July 16 (the day after the council went on its summer recess), Errol
Arthur, the chairman of the BOEE, submitted his letter of resignation to
the mayor in order to accept an appointment as a magistrate judge at DC
Superior Court. After July 31, Charles Lowery will be the sole member of
the BOEE and, without a quorum, the board will not be able to “conduct
official Board business,” including the deliberation and resolution of
disputes, preparations for the September primary, and the certification
of election results following the primary. Nevertheless, Mary Cheh,
chair of the council’s Government Operations Committee, which the
oversees the BOEE, told Craig, “I don’t want anyone to think there
is any crisis or issue cause things are quite under control.”
The options open to the District government to resolve this crisis
are limited. Under District law, the mayor nominates BOEE Board members,
subject to confirmation by the council, but over the past year the mayor
has nominated a series of his cronies who did not have the
qualifications for Board membership, and the council did not approve
their appointments. Currently, however, the council is on summer recess,
so that the mayor cannot legally even forward a nomination to the
council unless it agrees to come out of recess. According to Wilson
Building sources, Cheh is working with David Catania to develop a list
of possible candidates who would be acceptable both to Fenty and the
council. At the Ward 2 Democrats forum this evening, Bruce DePuyt from
NewsChannel 8 interviewed Fenty, who indicated that the City
Administrator was working with Cheh and Catania to identify a “blue
chip” nominee whose name could be forwarded to the council in the next
twenty-four to forty-eight hours. Under this scenario, the council would
end its summer recess briefly and hold an emergency legislative session
to approve the nominee.
As I am writing this article for themail on late Wednesday evening,
the Washington Post has posted that City Administrator Neal
Albert is saying that Mayor Fenty “could unilaterally appoint two
members” to the BOEE “if he and the council are unable to agree on
consensus candidates,” http://voices.washingtonpost.com/dc/2010/07/fenty_could_directly_appoint_e.html.
According to Albert, “Attorney General Peter Nickles has opined that
in emergency circumstances” the mayor “has the authority to make
interim appointments to boards and commissions.” Since under the DC
Code the mayor has no such authority, if he did try to strong-arm the
council and try to make unilateral appointments without council
confirmation — to appoint more unqualified cronies instead of “blue-chip”
BOEE board members — it would create a crisis that would be headed to
court. Fasten your seat belts; it’s going to be a bumpy ride.
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There’s More to Scores (and Stats) Than
Meets Rhee’s Eyes
Len Sullivan, lsnarpac@bellatlantic.net
The recent stir over school test scores indicates how little the
Fenty/Rhee team understands them, and the dangers of trying to peg the
future of DC’s students and teachers to arbitrary annual increases.
NARPAC spent years rummaging through test score data (http://www.narpac.org)
and concluded that it would be unwise to exaggerate DCPS educational
deficits or assume that school actions alone could overcome them.
Excessive management pressures on scores will simply replace kids’
broader educational needs with more knee-jerk test-taking. This teaching
approach will be particularly counterproductive when so many of the kids’
learning problems reflect socioeconomic issues way beyond the control of
Fenty, Rhee, or the WTU A cursory review of the latest (2009) National
Center for Education Statistics (NCES) “average age scores”
continues to show the importance of both “score creep” and “score
gaps” (my terms) in assessing both school performance and management
professionalism.
Score creep continues apace: the average US public school student had
an “average scale score” of 282 in 8th grade math in 2009, up some
20 points over 1990, and this growth applied almost equally among the
major subsets described next. Nationwide, the major score gaps between
those subsets also remain unchanged: boys and girls vary by only one
point; but on average, Asian kids still beat whites by 8 points,
Hispanics by 35 points, and blacks by 40 points (301 versus 261). Poor
kids lag better-off kids by 28 points (266 versus 294), and the average
score of kids with college-grad parents is 30 points higher than for
those with high school dropout parents (295 versus 265). DC kids have
also improved by 23 points since 1990 reaching 254 in 2009, and not all
that far below the expected average for any 8th grade math class made up
of predominantly (90 percent) black/Hispanic kids, 69 percent poor, and
with parent(s) 75 percent non-college educated. (NCES does not score
single-parent kids separately.) But the notion that schools, unionized
or not, can routinely offset these socioeconomic disadvantages is not
supported by national statistics — or any teachers union.
It may be the WTU’s “fault” that DC has twelve times as many
charter school kids as the US average, but it surely isn’t their fault
that DCPS has four times as many pre-K kids, six times as many special
ed kids, or 39 percent too few kids per school It is not their fault
that current DCPS schools are emptier than the larger number of DCPS
schools were four years ago. Such stats help perpetuate one of the most
inflated ratios of teachers-to-students among large city school
districts, as well as the second highest cost per student. If DCPS was
on average for the hundred largest US school districts (mostly urban,
mostly underprivileged), it would have 78 fewer school properties, 1500
fewer teachers, and consume $490 million less annually. These figures
are well within the authority of the Fenty/Rhee management to manage
without the WTU’s agreement. In principle, DC could save $355 million
by simply farming out DC’s kids, half each to Maryland and Virginia
public schools, at their average costs per kid. Or maybe Mayor Gray
could hire one of their more professional, less egocentric, school
district superintendents.
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Candidate Petition Challenges
Bill O’Field, wofield@gmail.com
The September primary nominating petition challenge period ended
Monday at 5:00 p.m. On Monday, as the clock in the Voter Services
Division of the DC Board of Elections and Ethics (DCBOEE) was
approaching 5:00 p.m., some DC voters were busy putting their finishing
touches on their paper work for challenges to the nominating petitions
of Democratic candidates for the September 14 primary election.
Valencia Mohammad filed challenges to the nominating petitions of
mayoral candidates Carlos Allen and Sulaimon Brown, and Dorothy Brizill
and Gary Imhoff filed a challenge to mayoral candidate Leo Alexander’s
petition. Chairman of the Council candidate Calvin Gurley’s nominating
petition was challenged by Alonzo Edmondson. Four challenges were filed
to the nominating petitions of the five candidates seeking the Ward 5
city council seat currently held by Harry Thomas, Jr. Cynthia M. Gill
filed a challenge to Kathy Henderson’s petition; DC lawyer Cary
Clennon is challenging Delano Hunter’s petition; and candidate
Henderson is challenging both Kenyan McDuffie and Tracey D. Turner. Ward
6 Council candidate Randy Brown’s petition is being challenged by Jim
Abely.
According to the DCBOEE election calendar, http://www.dcboee.org/popup.asp?url=/pdf_files/Draft_Sep_2010.pdf
for the Primary, the DCBOEE has until August 3 to determine the validity
of the challenges. And August 6 is the last day for a challenger or any
candidate named in a challenge to apply to the DC Court of Appeals for
review. Over the next few days, it will be interesting to see if any of
the challenges are withdrawn by the challengers based on lack of
evidence to challenge or “behind the scenes” negotiations between
the candidates and challengers. It has happened before.
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DC’s Department of Motor Vehicles does it again. I just moved and
was very pleased to find that you can change your drivers license
address online. It worked well, but there is no way to change your car
registrations address except when you renew it. So I will wind up going
to one of the service centers, waiting in line just as if they never put
in the new online address change — because they can’t get the
details right and include car registration in the address change
package.
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A New Round of the War Against the Poor
David Schwartzman, DC Statehood-Green Party Candidate for
At-Large Councilmember, dschwartzman@gmail.com
David Catania has recently threatened to introduce a bill to cut off
benefits to welfare families, potentially making them homeless, because
of truancy of student family members. This strong medicine is really a
poison pill. I strongly agree with Kathyrn Baer’s (Poverty and Policy)
and Jonathan Smith’s (Legal Aid) opposition to this approach. Ignored
by the mayor and a majority of the city council is the harsh reality of
being poor in DC, with TANF 60 percent of the federal poverty level for
the majority of recipients (go to the DC Fiscal Policy Institute for
documentation). Could it be that with higher Metro fares many families
simply don’t have the money to send their children to school
regularly, especially since Fenty/Rhee closed 23 neighborhood public
schools? As of June 27, the SmartStudent Pass costs $30 for one month’s
Metro access, and DC Student Tokens cost $7.50 for ten rides. Further,
as Mai Abdul Rahman pointed out in her piece in NorthWest Current
(June 30), District government hasn’t taken advantage of federal
funding for subsidizing transportation for low income folk (Job Access
and Reverse Commute and the United We Ride programs). What a shame and
how typical!
Meanwhile, here is a sad commentary on the council’s misplaced
priorities: they cut $1.3 million for Adult Education, $0.5 million for
Child Care, and $6 million for Interim Disability Assistance in the
FY2011 budget (compared to FY2010) and wiped out Emergency Rental
Assistance entirely — in a depression for so many residents no less
— while they voted eight to five to defeat a very modest tax hike for
wealthy residents (the Graham amendment) that would have avoided the new
hurtful budget cuts and helped to partially restore the $50 million for
affordable housing and other essential needs already cut in the FY 2010
budget. Both incumbent at-large council candidates, Mendelson and
Catania, voted for no tax hike for wealthy residents but did vote for
new regressive fees that have the heaviest burden on low income
residents. Have they no shame?
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You asked [themail, July 17] whether Brown’s financial difficulties
will influence my voting decisions. Yes! Someone so irresponsible about
his own personal finances can not be trusted with someone else’s
money, e.g., DC taxpayers’. Unfortunately, this leaves me with
no one I am willing to vote for. Orange is too pro business and has
disregarded the will of Brookland residents as to underground utilities.
Although Thomas did the right thing in voting for gay marriage, he also
sided with the developers (who have given him campaign contributions)
against the will of 100 percent of Brookland/Edgewood ANCs, so I can’t
vote for him. I support Rhee, but cannot vote for Fenty because of his
giving government contracts to his fraternity buddies, and the city gave
an engineer’s license to a Fenty friend who failed the engineering
exam four times. Give me a break. Is no one honest in our fair city?
Since I support Rhee, I don’t think I can vote for Gray, who won’t
commit to keeping her. Sometimes I can hold my nose and vote; I am not
sure I can do that this year.
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[Re: themail, July 17] Check out the debts of media including
yourself. Also the PEPCO outrageous rate hikes and lobbying by Orange
with Evans and Company. Let those without a closet cast the first stone
.
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CLASSIFIEDS — EVENTS
Norton Roundtable in Ward 2, July 22
Alexander M. Padro, Padroanc2c@aol.com
Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton and Ward 2 ANC Commissioner
Alexander Padro will join together to host a roundtable discussion in
your neighborhood. Come learn about the next steps in securing DC voting
rights and discuss federal issues you are facing here in the District.
Thursday July 22, 6:30 p.m.-7:30 p.m., Chatman’s D’Vine Bakery and
Cafe, 1239 9th Street, NW. For more information, please contact Delegate
Norton’s District office at 783-5065
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Ward 4 Democrats Candidates and Endorsement
Forum, August 4
Deborah Royster, deborah.royster@comcast.net
The next monthly meeting of the Ward 4 Democrats will be held on
Wednesday, August 4, at 7:00 p.m., at St. George’s Ballroom and
Conference Center, 4335 16th Street, NW. Please note that this meeting
will feature a candidates forum for Democratic candidates running for
the position of mayor of the District of Columbia. We will also hold an
endorsement forum for Democratic candidates running for the following
positions: 1) mayor, District of Columbia; 2) chairman, Council of the
District of Columbia; (3) councilmember at-large; and 4) delegate to the
US House of Representatives. Citizens of Ward 4 who are registered with
the DC Board of Elections as of July 28 are eligible to vote in the
August 4 endorsement forum, and voting will occur from 6:00 p.m. until
8:00 p.m. The meeting will begin promptly at 7:00 p.m. Please mark your
calendars and plan to join us on Wednesday, August 4. If you would like
to receive regular notice of monthly meetings, please join the Ward 4
Democrats listserv at ward4democrats@yahoogroups.com.
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Dupont Circle Citizens Association, August 7
Robin Diener, president@dupont-circle.org
Iced coffee social at Filter on Saturday, August 7, from 5:00 p.m.
until 8:00 p.m. Dupont’s newest coffee house, Filter, opened in March
“with the intent of sharing truly amazing coffee.” Drop by to cool
off with neighbors and taste one of Filter’s special pressings or
single origin coffees. Bring a friend to join DCCA and you’ll both be
entered in a drawing for a flat screen TV. Filter is at 1726 20th
Street, NW, http://www.filtercoffeehouse.com.
This is an Historic Dupont Circle Main Streets “First Saturday”
Event.
Artists who are interest in participating in the Saturday, September
11, DCCA-sponsored open-air Art Fair, as part of the 17th Streetscape
Completion Celebration, should contact Debby Hanrahan at debbyhanrahan@yahoo.com.
This year’s Dupont Circle House Tour is scheduled for Sunday,
October 17, from noon until 5:00 p.m. Volunteers are needed the day of
the tour to staff homes and to help set up the afternoon tea. Volunteers
also are needed a few weeks before the tour to distribute posters. The
house tour is the major fundraising event of the year for the Dupont
Circle Citizens Association. DCCA supports neighborhood activities and
charitable contributions for the benefit of the entire Dupont Circle
community, including Historic Dupont Circle Main Streets, Clean Teams
for Dupont Circle Park, Ross Elementary, and much more. All volunteers
receive a free ticket to the House Tour, and admission to the
After-Party at the Black Fox Lounge. Please contact Jara Freeman (Chair,
Volunteers Committee, jyvfreeman@gmail.com)
or Deborah Schreiber (Chair, House Tour Committee, SchreiberDeborah@aol.com)
to volunteer. Houses are also needed to participate in the tour; please
contact Debbie Schreiber to volunteer your house.
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CLASSIFIEDS — WANTED
My air conditioner has pooped out. Can anyone either give me a
replacement or sell me one? E-mail me at streetstories@juno.com.
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