Culture of Corruption
Dear Honest Citizens:
Patrick Madden at WAMU-FM has bad news for the city’s taxicab
drivers (http://tinyurl.com/3f2osdc).
“[Councilmember Tommy] Wells chairs the council’s Public Works and
Transportation Committee, and he says the latest incident [the arrest of
two reporters at a taxicab commission meeting, see themail, June 26] has
convinced him it may be time to scrap the taxicab commission and start
over. ‘The taxicab commission has not seemed to be able to do its job
for quite awhile,’ says Wells. Wells says the commission has not held
meetings or been responsive to drivers. The agency has also endured a
few controversies, such as a bribery scandal that led to the arrests of
dozens of cab drivers and a council staffer. ‘I’m going to look at
other states to see how they set rates and hear complaints, and also how
they plan for the number of taxi cabs,’ says Wells.”
Wells is a bad fit for the job of overseeing cabs. He has an
unrelenting hostility to automobiles, he does everything he can to make
life more difficult and expensive for drivers, and he doesn’t exempt
taxi drivers from his anti-driver crusade. (See “The Nose’s”
January column in the Hill Rag for a humorous take on this, http://tinyurl.com/3p4lo4g.
Also see a January 27 NY Times article for a description of the
kind of European anti-car policy Well’s wants DC to pursue: “While
American cities are synchronizing green lights to improve traffic flow
and offering apps to help drivers find parking, many European cities are
doing the opposite: creating environments openly hostile to cars. The
methods vary, but the mission is clear — to make car use expensive and
just plain miserable enough to tilt drivers toward more environmentally
friendly modes of transportation,” http://tinyurl.com/5upcr3r.)
What makes the situation even worse for cab drivers, however, is that in
this case Wells’ anti-car bias is reinforced by his preference for
centralized government planning of the economy. Wells’ quote to
Madden, that he is going to see how other governments “plan for the
number of taxi cabs,” exposes his underlying assumption that
government should control how many people it will allow to practice
particular occupations.
While the DC Taxicab Commission hasn’t been operating well for many
years, the opportunity for corruption presented by the proposed taxi
medallion scam has made it worse, and acting Taxicab Commission Chairman
Dena Reed’s unprofessional and disruptive behavior at the last meeting
of the Commission took its malfunctioning to a more public stage. But
the solution isn’t to dissolve the Commission and to give its power to
a councilmember who wants to make things miserable for automobile
drivers in the city, as Wells and anti-car crusaders Greater Greater
Washington suggest. The solution is to remove Dena Reed, to appoint good
members to the Taxicab Commission, to ensure that independent drivers
are represented on the commission, and to strengthen it.
Gary Imhoff
themail@dcwatch.com
###############
Gambling Parlors, Coming to Your Neighborhood
Soon
Dorothy Brizill, dorothy@dcwatch.com
At a roundtable hearing today before Jack Evans’ Committee on
Finance and Revenue, councilmembers and the public learned for the first
time how the DC Lottery Board and the Office of the Chief Financial
Officer plan to implement “iGaming,” i.e., Internet gambling,
in the District of Columbia. Internet gambling was approved by the city
council when it voted in December on a supplemental budget. The
initiative was contained within a “Lottery Modernization Act”
offered by Councilmember Michael Brown as an amendment to the FY 2011
Supplemental Budget Support Act of 2010, and it was voted on by the
council on December 7, 2010. As a result there was no public hearing or
input, and no council debate, on this amendment.
Since the adoption of the legislation in December, neither the
Lottery Board nor the CFO’s office had revealed its plans for
implementing it. Both councilmembers and the public learned the details
only today, at the hearing. CFO Natwar Gandhi testified that his office
plans to offer two free games, blackjack and Victory at Sea, on the http://www.dclottery.com
web site starting on July 26. On August 23, it plans to move all
gambling to a new web site, http://www.igamingdc.com,
and add Texas hold-em poker, bingo, e-scratch, and “Random Number
generated games,” and to begin making all games cash games on
September 8. The CFO’s office claims that it will be able to verify
that all players will be nineteen years old or older and that all
players are located within the District of Columbia.
At the hearing, citizens and councilmembers were shocked to learn
that Internet gambling will initially be available only at facilities
licensed by the Lottery Board — bars, restaurants, hotels, libraries,
and recreation facilities. In my testimony, I raised the issue that
neither the Lottery Board nor the CFO’s Office had any plan to inform
communities about the siting of these gambling parlors, and had no
provision to allow public comments, even from organized community groups
or Advisory Neighborhood Commissions. Residents of neighborhoods and ANC’s
have statutory provisions allowing them to comment on the siting of
various facilities, including liquor stores, bars, and adult
entertainment facilities, in their neighborhoods, but gambling parlors
will be allowed as a matter of right, even in government buildings where
children gather, such as libraries and recreation centers.
The other shocking issue I learned in preparing for the hearing was
that one game that the Lottery Board describes benignly as “Electronic
Instant Ticket Vending Machines” is actually just a euphemism for “Video
Lottery Terminals,” which is itself a euphemism for slot machines.
Slot machines are banned by federal law (the Johnson Act) in DC, and
this ban has been confirmed as recently as 2006 by the DC Court of
Appeals.
Because the city council is getting ready to go out for summer
recess, there is great interest among councilmembers in having Jack
Evans introduce emergency legislation on July 12, at the council’s
final session before its summer recess. That legislation would at a
minimum delay the roll-out of Internet gambling until the public and the
council have a full chance to weigh all the issues — and at best would
overturn the law completely.
###############
Culture of Corruption
Dorothy Brizill, dorothy@dcwatch.com
Yesterday, June 28, I testified before Michael Brown’s Committee on
Housing and Workforce Development on the appointment of Pedro Alfonso to
the DC Housing Authority Board of Commissioners. The DC Housing
Authority is an independent agency that is overseen by an eleven-member
board. It has limited government oversight, except for the mayor’s
appointment (and the council’s approval) of six public members, and it
is by far the largest landlord in the District of Columbia, with a
massive budget. DCHA was the vehicle that Mayor Fenty used to award all
of the noncompetitive, questionable, contracts — unapproved by the
council — to rehabilitate DC Parks and Recreation facilities,
including recreation centers, a task that had nothing to do with its
central mission.
Alfonso has a history of being appointed to many boards and
commissions around town, a history of being a serious contributor to
many political candidates in DC, and he also has a history of serious
corruption. In 2004 he was the chairman of the Citizens Committee for
the DC Video Lottery Terminal Initiative, and in that position he
promoted a voters initiative that would legalize a gambling emporium
with 3,500 video lottery slots terminals in northeast Washington. After
nine days of public hearings, the Board of Elections and Ethics denied
ballot access to Alfonso’s committee’s petitions. The
forty-seven-page order stated that Alfonso and other initiative
supporters demonstrated a “clear indifference to the integrity of the
electoral process in their management of a petition drive marred by
fraud, forgery, and other irregularities.”
Even though the violations of election law were so overwhelming as to
cause the Board of Elections to reject Alfonso’s committee’s
petitions, Alfonso continued to have a close working relationship with
the District government, signing multiple consulting contracts under
both the Williams and Fenty administrations. Over the past eight years,
his company, Dynamic Concepts, Inc., has had more than eight contracts
with a variety of government departments and agencies, totaling more
than forty million dollars. These contracts have continued under the
Gray administration. When I asked an administration official whether
they were aware of Alfonso’s history of running this corrupt election
petition drive, and the fact that the scale of its wrongdoing resulted
in the Board of Election’s imposing the single largest fine it has
ever levied for violating DC’s election laws — $622,880 — I was
told that they were, and it created no problem for his nomination.
Committee Chairman Michael Brown did not ask Alfonso or me any questions
about my testimony, but at the end of the hearing Alfonso claimed that
the DC Court of Appeals had overturned the Board of Elections order, had
thrown out all fines and all charges against his committee, and had
exonerated him, http://octt.dc.gov/services/on_demand_video/channel13/June2011/06_28_11_HOUSING.asx,
at 1:28:40. He directly, deliberately lied to the council committee
under oath. In fact, the DC Court of Appeals upheld the Board of
Elections order. In a decision issued September 28, 2004, the Court
wrote, “We affirm the Board’s thoroughly documented and carefully
explained decision, substantially for the reasons stated in its
supplemental opinion attached hereto.” It then referenced a “pervasive
pattern of fraud, forgeries, and other improprieties” by the Alfonso’s
committee’s petition drive, http://www.dcwatch.com/election/init18kk.htm.
Will the council reward Alfonso for lying to them during his
confirmation hearing?
###############
Last Thursday, June 23, at the kickoff of the mayor’s Healthy
Summer initiative, announcing that Wal-Mart was granting $655,000 to six
DC organizations, DC’s State Superintendent of Education Hosanna
Mahaley spoke to a gymnasium full of government officials, nonprofit
service providers, and fifty to seventy-five young children in the front
rows of the audience.
I E-mailed Ms. Mahaley about her remarks: “I would like you to
comment on your remark at this morning’s Healthy Summer Kick-Off. As
you may recall, you indicated to the audience that General Mills was one
of the District’s ‘partners.’ You then asked the kids sitting in
the first few rows if they knew what General Mills makes. The kids
responded, ‘Cereal.’ You then asked, ‘What else?’ The kids
responded, ‘Yogurt.’ You then stated to the assembled audience, ‘When
the new Wal-Mart opens, remember to ask your parents to buy cereal and
yogurt made by General Mills.’ As the State Superintendent of
Education, do you think your remarks were appropriate, especially with
regards to promoting the opening of a new Wal-Mart store in DC and the
purchasing of General Mills products?
Ms. Mahaley responded, “It is typical to recognize corporate and
philanthropic partners for their contributions to the District. As
someone who benefited from the Free Summer Meals program as a child, I
am very excited about the opportunities it provides low-income children,
and was probably a little too enthusiastic around my appreciation for
their support for the District’s children. Thanks for your E-mail.”
###############
University President’s Compensation
Richard Rothblum, richard@rothblum.org
Probably it’s a trivial point, but Ann Loikow’s criticism of GWU
President Knapp’s salary [themail, June 26] overlooks the most
important function of a university president: fundraising. I am not sure
how much money Mr. Knapp is expected to bring in, but I would guess that
it is far in excess of what the university is paying for his services.
It’s not cheap to hire the guys who can turn on the money spigots.
###############
themail@dcwatch is an E-mail discussion forum that is published every
Wednesday and Sunday. To change the E-mail address for your subscription
to themail, use the Update Profile/Email address link below in the
E-mail edition. To unsubscribe, use the Safe Unsubscribe link in the
E-mail edition. An archive of all past issues is available at http://www.dcwatch.com/themail.
All postings should be submitted to themail@dcwatch.com, and should
be about life, government, or politics in the District of Columbia in
one way or another. All postings must be signed in order to be printed,
and messages should be reasonably short — one or two brief paragraphs
would be ideal — so that as many messages as possible can be put into
each mailing.
