Penny Wise and Pound Foolish
Dear Pound Watchers:
Vince Gray and Kwame Brown were sworn in today as the city’s new
mayor and city council chairman; their inauguration speeches can be
found at http://www.dcwatch.com/election2010/110102.htm
and http://www.dcwatch.com/election2010/110102b.htm.
Both spoke today about fiscal responsibility and the necessity of
watching the budget carefully and making budget cuts. I’m all for
that; there are plenty of wasteful and unnecessary expenditures in
programs scattered throughout district government. But neither Gray nor
Brown focused on the huge expenditures and tax forgiveness expenditures
the mayor and city council have lavished on favored developers and
corporations. It is these big expenditures, that the mayor and city
council promote to make themselves players in the economic development
of the city, that was a major contributor to bringing the city the
Control Board a decade ago and is the major factor driving it to the
brink of insolvency again. The government can cut one, two, or three of
these big programs and projects and bring its budget problems under
control — or it can shortchange and scrimp on dozens of smaller
people-oriented programs and raise taxes and fees on everyone in order
to protect the big players who claim that their projects aren’t
economically feasible without massive government subsidies.
See Harry Jaffe’s column in The Washington Examiner on
December 27, “No More DC Tax Breaks for Developers,” http://washingtonexaminer.com/local/dc/2010/12/no-more-dc-tax-breaks-developers,
which starts with the pungent sentence: “The city council is very
generous with our cash.” Jaffe’s advice to councilmembers: “Stiffen
your backs, boys and girls! Quit playing the suplicant to developers, as
if we are the poor cousins in the Washington region. The nation's
capital is jammed with hot property. Demand is strong and will get
stronger. Make developers compete and pay full freight.” Jaffe also
mentions the large tax exemptions the council gives to religious
entities for their non-religious commercial activities, including the
$507,000 earmarked tax break to Central Union Mission for selling its
properties on Georgia Avenue. Art Spitzer of the ACLU wrote the council
that Central Union Mission bought those properties in 2006 and 2007 for
about $2.4 million, and sold them for four million dollars, “a
spectacular profit of 67 percent on its investment in less than five
years, at a time when most real estate investors have been happy if they’ve
suffered only small losses. The Mission can easily pay the taxes it owes
out of its profits.”
Which option do you think the city’s politicians will prefer? Good
government for the many, or massive subsidies for the few? The city
doesn’t have a funding problem; its citizens and businesses pay plenty
in taxes, and the federal government — for all the complaints that DC
politicians make about it — is generous in its support. The city’s
politicians have a spending problem. They’re like other addicts; the
biggest difficulty is getting them to admit they’re addicts. They want
to blame their problem on everyone else.
Gary Imhoff
themail@dcwatch.com
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Your Wish List for the Gray Administration
Dorothy Brizill, dorothy@dcwatch.com
The Washington Post asked a short list of people what their
wish list for the Gray administration would be, and published the
results in today’s Outlook section, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/30/AR2010123001746.html.
I had my chance to comment, but let’s give a broader range of people
the opportunity to comment in themail. Please let themail’s readers
know what priorities you want Mayor Gray to set for his administration.
Here’s a longer version of what I submitted to the paper:
“Vincent Gray campaigned for mayor promising one major change in
the direction of the DC city government — a change in how the District
government interacts with its citizens in the process of decisionmaking.
Gray promised his administration would conduct an open, collaborative
decisionmaking process, and my one wish for his administration is that
he keep that promise.
“Gray’s administration, in contrast to Fenty’s, should present
citizens with options rather than decisions that are fait accompli.
It should respect the views of all District residents and treat them as
adults, not as children to be told of the decisions government has
already made for them. Government information should be readily
available to all citizens. Most importantly, the Gray administration
should respect citizens’ views, not treat as enemies those who
disagree with the administration, not pit one group of citizens or one
neighborhood against another, and most difficult of all, learn not just
to tolerate and listen to criticism, but to treat criticism as an
opportunity to learn and improve policies and plans.
“The Fenty administration was imperial and autocratic, and would
not tolerate criticism. Communications were one-way, to inform citizens
of decisions that had already been made and finalized, and it did not
welcome citizens’ input and participation, or even the consultation of
the city council, on decisions that it made in secret. When, for
example, Fenty named Michelle Rhee as chancellor of schools, even though
the law spelled out a consultation process that involved an appointed
committee to conduct a candidate search, he sidestepped that process and
made the decision unilaterally. It is no surprise that Rhee and Attorney
General Nickles and other Fenty department and agency heads followed
Fenty’s lead and fought with citizens’ groups and the council,
rather than collaborated with them.
“If Gray and his department and agency appointees are open and run
a transparent, collaborative government, not all the final decisions may
come out the way they planned and hoped for at the beginning of the
process. Government may not be as “efficient” as an autocrat would
want. But city government will run a lot better with the consent and
assent of the citizens than it did without it.”
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Dunbar's Decline Began Long Before Rhee and
Continued Under Her
Erich Martel, ehmartel at starpower dot net
Dunbar HS has been in the news. Superintendant Janey's and
Chancellor's Rhee's actions regarding Dunbar do not tell a simple
hero/villain story. Mostly, they reveal how tests and data can be
adjusted to give the appearance of improvement and that students
continue to receive diplomas that do not represent mastery of DCPS
subject standards. The data from Dunbar HS are typical of those in many
of our high schools.
For several decades, students have been allowed to graduate from DCPS
high schools like Dunbar without meeting mandatory requirements in core
subject matter. Standardized tests occasionally reveal, if only
approximately, how great the gulf between image and reality is. This
commentary grew out of an attempt to address the following questions,
which Colbert King's December 18 article on Dunbar HS [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/17/AR2010121704743.html]
brought to mind. First, how could DCPS officials say that ’70 percent
of the class of 2007 were expected to attend college," when two
years earlier grade 10 SAT9 tests revealed that over 90 percent received
Below Basic scores in math and over 65 percent received Below Basic
scores in reading?
Second, how was the following possible? Was it a miracle or mirage?
In April 2005, on the SAT9 Grade 10 Math exam, no students scored
advanced, and three students scored proficient. On the April 2006 DC CAS
Grade 10 Math exam, five students scored advanced, and fifty-eight
students scored proficient.
See more on Dunbar at http://www.dcpswatch.com/martel/110102.htm
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From Monday to Thursday, December 26 to 30, Metro ran its entire
fleet of busses on a normal weekday schedule. Since the kids were out of
school and many citizens were out of town or on vacation, the busses
were nearly emptly. Then on Friday, December 31, Metro veered from one
extreme to another. Metro made a serious mistake on Friday, when it
limited its busses to a Sunday schedule on a busy work day. Early on
Friday afternoon, dozens of people waited for the 90 and 92 bus for as
long as an hour and a half at 8th and H Streets, NE. But when the busses
came they were already full. Many people ended up walking many blocks to
get to their destinations.
Similarly, in the late afternoon people waited half an hour for the
X-2, but when two busses came there was no room for additional
passengers. Eventually a third and much longer bus arrived and people
finally had a ride.
If these angry riders were asked to judge and sentence Metro
officials for Friday's screwup, they would probably send them to the
guillotine.
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Municipal Bankruptcies
Vic Miller, Adams Morgan, millervic@hotmail.com
Thanks to themail for the article on potential municipal bankruptcies
[December 29, 2010]
To provide more context, let me add that while US per capita income
grew only 40 percent in the 1999-2009 decade (the latest year
available), DC's rate of increase was 83 percent. None of the fifty
states was close; only energy-producing small states could be considered
comparable in their growth in taxable wealth. Add that to the doubling
of property taxes in the period, and the continued 10 percent annual
increases since in a noninflationary environment.
So why do we have a budget shortfall? It is not because city
residents are not paying enough taxes. It is having local politicians
who do not know how to say "no" to handing out subsidies to
the Marriotts of the world, to building municipal facilities through
businesses owned by friends, etc.
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[The name and E-mail address on a message in themail were apparently
spoofed. The message has been removed.]
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CLASSIFIEDS — EVENTS
Flying in the Great Hall, January 9
Tara Miller, tmiller@nbm.org
January 9, 9:00 a.m.-4:00 p.m., Flying in the Great Hall: Model
Airplane Workshop. Construct your own rubber-band-propelled model
airplane with the DC Maxecuters, then try a test flight in the Great
Hall. Cost per plane: $8 members, $14 nonmembers. Prepaid registration
required. Ages eight and up and Webelos Cub Scouts. To register visit www.nbm.org.
January 9, 11:00 a.m.-4:00 p.m., Flying in the Great Hall. Watch as
the DC Maxecuters fly their model airplanes in and across the Great
Hall! Free drop-in demonstration program. All ages. Both events at the
National Building Museum, 401 F Street, NW, Judiciary Square Metro
station.
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CLASSIFIEDS — TRAINING
Would you like to get up to speed quickly on Twitter? I offer
one-on-one Twitter trainings at your home or business. I specialize in
teaching Twitter use for teachers, journalists, new media producers, and
community activists. $40/hour. Why is Twitter so useful? In short, it's
a listening tool. Do you value human beings listening to one another? If
so, Twitter might be for you.
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