Perks and Privileges
Dear Top-of-the-Line Readers:
The two big blockbuster story lines that are being followed by the
whole local press corps are about the kinds of minor indiscretions that
can ruin poliicians’ reputations. Both stories exploded to a new level
Sunday. When the first story started, it was about the cost of leasing
of a luxurious, top-of-the-line Lincoln Navigator SUV for Mayor Gray and
an almost identical luxurious, top-of-the-line Lincoln Navigator SUV for
City Council Chairman Kwame Brown. Then it was revealed that two
luxurious, top-of-the-line Lincoln Navigators had been leased for Mayor
Gray, one for the use of his staff. And on Sunday, Mike DeBonis revealed
that two luxurious, top-of-the-line Lincoln Navigators had been leased
for Chairman Brown — the second because Brown rejected the color of
the interior on the first — http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/19/AR2011021904613.html
The second storyline is about Mayor Gray’s hiring of cronies (and
children of cronies do count as cronies), and, as the title of Nikita
Stewart’s story summarizes it: “Gray hires more senior staffers than
Fenty did, and is paying them significantly more,” http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/19/AR2011021903414.html
Both story lines, as they have grown, have caused firestorms of anger
among citizens. The first reminds me of when it was revealed that Mayor
Sharon Pratt Kelly, early in her term, had put a personal make-up artist
on the city payroll. The money involved was insignificant when it was
compared with the millions of dollars the city government wasted on
contracts. That is why it was a minor indiscretion. But it was a major
issue because it was a scandal of a size that people could understand.
It wasn’t a multimillion dollar deal. It was a few hundred dollars for
a make-up artist — a few thousand dollars total for the contract. It
was for something that most people thought she should have been paying
for personally, not putting on the city’s tab. And because of that it
seemed to be a case of a politician’s using her office for personal
aggrandizement, taking advantage of perquisites and privileges that
should not be part of public office.
Gray’s hiring of friends and cronies, and his raising already
inflated salaries for top city employees, also puts him on the wrong
footing, even with his strongest supporters. The city is undergoing a
budget crisis that has necessitated a hiring freeze and putting
government employees, even the lowest paid, on furlough for four days a
year, to start. It’s only a tin-eared politician who would risk the
appearance of favoritism in hiring or who would boost the salaries of
his highest-paid employees while penalizing the rank-and-file. And a
politician who increases the pay of the highest-paid government
officials is undermining any chance he has to convince taxpayers that a
tax hike is necessary to meet necessities, rather than merely wanted to
subsidize extravagances.
Gary Imhoff
themail@dcwatch.com
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Life in the District, Part 2
Dorothy Brizill, dorothy@dcwatch.com
In the Sunday, February 13, issue of themail, I detailed my
frustrations regarding life in the District after suddenly learning on
the previous Friday evening that, without advance notice, “no parking”
signs had been posted on more than half of the north and south sides of
the 1300 block of Girard Street, where Gary and I live. It took
literally an entire week of E-mails, telephone calls, and meetings
finally to learn the details of the parking ban that was being proposed
and to fight it.
NCBA Estates, an apartment building at the corner of 14th and Girard
Streets, NW, is being renovated, with new kitchens and baths in the
units, etc. Hamel Builders, which is doing to work, applied for and
received a public space permit from the DC Department of Transportation
to take the parking spaces as a “construction staging area.” The
community was first informed on Friday, February 11, when Hamel posted
the no parking” signs and distributed a flyer in the 1300 block of
Girard Street, saying that the restrictions would go from February 14
through December 31. Although DDOT initially indicated that the parking
restrictions were needed to facilitate construction staging, the actual
permit indicated it was issued so that the builders could “install a
construction entrance to NCBA’s parking lot from Girard Street for
construction equipment, vehicles, and tractor trailers.
Starting on Monday morning, I started trying to contact Hamel
Builders and NCBA Estates by telephone and E-mail to discuss their
plans. I got no response, so I contacted DDOT. I questioned why the
Girard Street entrance was necessary, since NCBA already had a
double-side entrance to its parking lot on Harvard Street, and that
entrance could be accessed without taking any public parking spaces on
Harvard Street, and could be used by removing only the gate across the
entrance. It took a few days to get an inspector from DDOT to come out
to the site, but when he did he agreed to suspend the permit and to
issue a “stop work” order on constructing a Girard Street entrance.
Hamel continued to tear down the brick wall on Girard Street, and
continued to want to locate the truck entrance there. On Thursday,
February 17, several senior officials from DDOT came to the site and
inspected it, and heard both from the Hamel site supervisor and me. They
agreed that there was no reason to take public parking spaces
unnecessarily. It revoked the “no parking” permit that it had
issued, and told Hamel to come back with a revised plan. On Friday
evening, I received the following E-mail from the Executive Vice
President of Hamel: “I spoke with [the site supervisor] to better
understand your concerns about the removal of parking spaces along
Girard Street, and found that he has subsequently met with DDOT, and
indeed they have reversed their decision to permit access to the NCBA
side on this side. they have indicated that we should use the Harvard
Street entrance and that the direction we intend to take. I apologize
for any misunderstanding the Open Space Permit may have caused as we
began to set up the site access we were granted. Please let me know if
you have any other questions or concerns.”
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Nominating Petition Challenge Period Underway
for the April 26 Special Election
Bill O’Field, wofield@gmail.com
The challenge period for the nominating petitions for the April 26
Special Election for at-Large Member of the Council is underway at the
DC Board of Elections and Ethics (DCBOEE). The challenge period runs
from yesterday, Saturday, February 19, through 5:00 p.m. on Monday,
February 28.
According to the DCBOEE web site, http://www.dcboee.org/newsroom/showASPfile.asp?cat=News
Releases&id=648&mid=2&yid=2011 and The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/17/AR2011021706884.html,
eleven out of the nineteen individuals who picked up nominating
petitions have filed the requisite three thousand signatures needed for
ballot access for the special election. Those who filed petitions are:
Sekou Biddle (D), Tom Brown (D), Dorothy Douglas (D), Calvin H. Gurley
(D), Arkan Haile (IND), Joshua Lopez (D), Patrick Mara (R), Vincent
Orange (D), Alan Page (STG), Jacque Patterson (D), and Bryan Weaver (D).
Challenges to their nominating petitions can be filed by any DC
registered voter on the grounds that a circulator is not a registered
voter, the petitioner (signer) is not a registered voter, or the
signatures on the petition are in the same hand or do not match those of
the registered voters in the Board’s file. (DCBOEE has the authority
to and should refer those for criminal prosecution.) Also, petitioners
may be challenged because they were not registered at the address on the
petition at the time it was signed; however, DC law allows those
individuals to file a change of address within ten days of the date that
a challenge is filed.
After the challenge period closes, DCBOEE has two weeks to resolve
any and all challenges, and then we will have a better idea of the names
of the candidates on the ballot. However, a challenger or any person
named in a challenge may apply within three days of the DCBOEE decision
to the DC Court of Appeals for review. There is a potential that we may
not know the final list of candidates on the ballot until March 18, when
the entire ballot access process concludes.
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Councilmembers Tommy Wells and Mary Cheh are proposing a bill that
would fine people for not shoveling their sidewalks. What do people
think of the merits and demerits of this proposed bill?
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Indignation over the “Official” Cars
William Haskett, William haskett@hotmail.com
The temporary indignation over Kwame Brown’s official car is
well-founded: it indicates once again that political in the District of
Columbia moves closer and closer to a national norm. Here rank within a
structure such as the council is correlated with large salary and
discriminatory privilege. The original error, of course, was to move the
council’s chair from being simply an officer of the council itself to
being somewhat analogous to the mayor — as elected by a general vote
of the city’s general electorate. This has the effect in the worst
circumstances of attaching material benefit (here the Lincoln, with its
black on black, or disappointingly charcoal black, or gray, or tan
interior) to the performance of a quite unnecessary ceremonial one that
we are invited, presumably, to bow to as it passes. The chairman of the
council does not need it to sustain his importance. If he does, he is in
the wrong place, and probably for the wrong reasons. A suitable
punishment (if that is what is called for) is to allow Mr. Brown the car
(and its decorative interior or exterior), but subtract the monthly
lease cost of $1900.00 from his official salary. Thus, we can all be
pleased: Mr. Brown will have his toy, and we all will not be paying for
it, even by proxy. This seems to me eminently fair to everyone.
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The “Fully Loaded” Democrats Just Don’t
Get It
Paul D. Craney, paul@dcgop.com
DC Councilmembers have been spending taxpayer money so quickly that
they currently spent us into a six hundred million dollar deficit. The
Council has been threatening to raise taxes on DC residents to pay for
their deficit because they can’t find ways to cut the ten billion
dollar budget. Not only are the DC councilmembers some of the highest
paid elected officials in the country, with some of the most expensive
staff in the region, but now we learn our city leaders must have the
fanciest vehicles.
Today’s Washington Post reports (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/19/AR2011021904613.html)
that DC Council Chairman Kwame Brown spent taxpayer money to lease two
fully loaded SUVs with all the bells and whistles. Chairman Brown
originally ordered one high-end SUV, but when he learned that it didn’t
meet his check list of demands like leather seats, a moon roof, an
entertainment system, a black paint job and high end wheels, his staff
ordered the Council Chairman another SUV on our dime. Both SUVs are on
lease and had to be delivered for the Chairman before his inauguration.
Mayor Vincent Gray also ordered a high end SUV and a vehicle for his
staff.
Why do our council chairman and mayor need four very expensive
vehicles? Why are DC taxpayers forced to pay for these luxury vehicles,
when there’s a six hundred million dollar budget deficit?
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Plastic Bags, Paper Bags, and Roach
Infestation
Robert Marshall, makeyoufamous@verizon.net
Unless forced to, I never bring home groceries in a paper bag. When I
do, I promptly dispose of them. Why?
Because I read somewhere that that’s how roach
infestations/re-infestations proliferate. Roaches and roach eggs hitch a
ride in paper bags and use them as nesting material. Paper bags can also
provide a source of moisture for roaches, as the bags absorb and hold
water.
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Who Has the Better Argument — Gray or Brown?
Sarah Livingston, ess.livingston@gmail.com
If a voucher program for DC students were being proposed and funded
by a private foundation interested in education rather than by Congress,
who would have the better argument — Gray or Brown? [themail, February
16] In my view, neither, because they are both starting from the premise
that school choice is a good thing. Gray argues there’s enough choice
between the improvements in DCPS and the number of and variety of
charter schools. Brown argues for more choices with the “three sector”
approach.
The DC School Choice Incentive Act of 2003 established the first
federally funded private school voucher program in the United States,
providing scholarships of up to $7,500 for low-income residents of the
District of Columbia to send their children to local participating
private schools. The law mandated that the Department conduct an
independent, rigorous impact evaluation of what is now called the DC
Opportunity Scholarship Program (OSP). The study’s latest report, Evaluation
of the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program: Impacts After Three Years,
measures the effects of the Program on student achievement in reading
and math, and on student and parent perceptions of school satisfaction
and safety. The evaluation found that the OSP improved reading, but not
math, achievement overall and for five of the ten subgroups of students
examined. The group designated as the highest priority by Congress —
students applying from “schools in need of improvement” (SINI) —
did not experience achievement impacts. Students offered scholarships
did not report being more satisfied or feeling safer than those who were
not offered scholarships; however, the OSP did have a positive impact on
parent satisfaction and perceptions of school safety. The same pattern
of findings holds when the analysis is conducted to determine the impact
of using a scholarship rather than being offered a scholarship.
Twenty-five percent (346 out of 1,387 students) of those offered an OSP
scholarship never used it; thirty-four percent (473 students) used their
scholarships during some but not all of the first three years after the
award; and the remaining 41 percent (568 students) used their
scholarship consistently for the entire three years after the lottery.
The study, looking at the full sample for reading, makes a
distinction between the offer of a scholarship, having an impact of 3.1
months of additional learning, and the use of a scholarship, having an
impact of 3.7 months of additional learning. And, as it says above,
there was no impact in math from either the offer or the use of the OSP.
The complete evaluation can be available here: http://ies.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=NCEE20094050
It is very, very strange to me that in the midst of all the budget
cutting being proposed, Senators Lieberman and Collins are standing up
to propose spending money! On a program with the above evaluation, no
less. If I were a parent in a state sending my children to private
school on my own dime, I’d be pretty upset with the Lieberman/Collins
proposal, and if I were a private foundation, I would think twice and
twice more about funding a program with such little “bang for the
buck.” OSP was put to rest last year in a way that harmed none of the
children in it. Let’s leave that be and go on to more pressing
matters!
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CLASSIFIEDS — EVENTS
Ward Three Democratic Committee Hosts Mayor
Vincent Gray and Councilmember Mary Cheh, February 24
Shelley Tomkin, shelltomk@aol.com
The Ward Three Democratic Committee will hold its first meeting of
the 2011-2012 term on Thursday, February 24, at 7:15 p.m. to 9:15 p.m.
at St. Columba’s Episcopal Church, 4201 Albemarle St. NW.
Mayor Vincent Gray and Ward Three Councilmember Mary Cheh will be the
featured speakers for the evening. Mayor Gray will provide his view of
the “State of the District” eight weeks after taking office and
Councilmember Cheh will offer a legislative update from the vantage
point of the DC council. Both Mayor Gray and Councilmember Cheh will
answer questions from the audience.
For additional information, please see our web site at www.DCWard3Dems.org.
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