Spectacles

Dear Watchers:

If anyone is still sitting back and waiting just to see what will happen in next year’s city council primsary and general elections, or is wondering whether the elections are important, please read and reread Colbert King’s op-ed article last Saturday, “Ethics in Short Supply on DC Council,” http://tinyurl.com/3pjqfey. “Residents are sick of puffed-up, self-serving, marginally effective council members. And they are tired of being embarrassed,” King writes. “There are some promising new names and faces out there on the hustings. They want to be heard. Civic associations and community groups ought to invite them in. Schedule candidate forums. Listen to what they have to say and, by all means, ask away. Maturity? Civility? Integrity? What do they inspire? Match them up against what we have now. Are they any better?” Can they be any worse? King’s judgment is hard, but in light of the facts it is not too harsh: “Some current members of the council have made spectacles of themselves. Sadly, they are too self-absorbed and too obtuse to know it.”

As if to prove King right, Councilmember Jim Graham’s own op-ed was published in the Post the next day, “Stop Calling It a Bribe,” http://tinyurl.com/4x22ggv, a self-deluded and embarrassing non-apology. It would be embarrassing, that is, if Graham or other councilmembers were capable of embarrassment.

Citizens and civic associations need to get busy, since the special interests are way ahead of us in organizing, both to reelect some of the current members of the city council and to replace others with their own nominees. Even Mayor Fenty is plotting a comeback with the support of his most faithful followers, who are heading the recall movement aimed at unseating Mayor Gray. It’s a pivotal time for DC, one that stands a chance of substantially improving DC’s governance, but also one that poses huge dangers.

Gary Imhoff
themail@dcwatch.com

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Robert Mallett’s Nomination to the BOEE
Dorothy Brizill, dorothy@dcwatch.com

On Friday evening, Mayor Gray’s press office sent the following E-mail message to members of the DC press corps and me regarding his nomination of Robert Mallett to the DC Board of Elections and Ethics: “Mayor Gray will not be sending Mallett’s name forward [to the council]. He is very disappointed that he is unable to send the nomination. As you know, Mallett would have been a tremendous asset to the city and would have provided great leadership to the BOEE. The other two names [Devarieste Curry and Stephen Danzansky] will move forward.” Gray was forced to withdraw Mallett’s nomination after Muriel Bowser, chair of the council’s Government Operations Committee, indicated that she would not support legislation to exempt Mallett from the legal eligibility requirement that he reside in the District continuously for three years prior to his appointment (DC Code §1-1001.04). (Mallett, who had served as City Administrator during Sharon Pratt Kelly’s tenure as mayor (1991-1995), had lived in New York City for ten years, and had returned to Washington only in May 2010.) In a statement, Bowser argued that a waiver from the eligibility requirement wasn’t warranted because “the District enjoys an abundance of qualified potential nominees.”

Perhaps the most shocking aspect of the Mallett debacle is the acknowledgment by Gray’s office that it was still not properly vetting appointees to senior positions. In an E-mail sent to me last Thursday, the mayor’s press secretary explained the vetting changes that the mayor’s office was going to institute: “The Chief of Staff (COS) [Christopher Murphy] met with Ron [Collins, Director of the Mayor’s Office of Boards and Commissions] this morning and in an effort to bring more resources to support his workload, they’ve decided to review all nominees for legal sufficiency review before they are announced. Typically this has taken place after the announcement. By moving that review up on the timeline, we should be able to help catch any legal issues before we go public with a nominee. Going forward, the COS will not sign off on any nominees and will not allow any nominees to be announced until we’ve completed this important process step. Among any other things, the OAG [Office of the Attorney General’ will help us to catch statutory requirements like the residency issue that came up yesterday.”

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The Washington Post Protests a Modest Tax Hike for the Rich
David Schwartzman, dschwartzman@gmail.com

The Washington Post editorial of September 20 [http://tinyurl.com/67ynctp] condemning the city council’s very modest tax hike on income over $350,000 comes as no surprise, since the Post has long stood behind protecting the privileges of the wealthy. Hiding behind rhetoric for “fiscal discipline” we now hear from the Republicans in Congress, the Post once again stands for austerity for those least able to bear the burden during the nation’s economic recession, a depression for low income residents in our community. Fiscal discipline indeed, how about curbing corporate welfare such as hundreds of millions of dollars spent for tax abatements? DC has the highest income gap between rich and poor in the nation, the highest fraction of households making over $200,000 per year, the lowest overall tax rate for families making over $100,000 per year in the region. DC millionaires’ overall effective DC tax is 6 percent of family income, the same as the poorest families, while working/middle class families pay 9-10 percent (see this data at ITEP, Who Pays? and reports from the DC Fiscal Policy Institute; note that the overall tax burden consists of income, property and sales tax payments). DC’s child poverty rate is now over 30 percent, unemployment rate 11 percent.

The council’s rather small rate hike for those making over $350,000 will actually have a very minor impact on our revenue stream because it was coupled with an exemption on taxing out of state bonds purchased before January 1, 2012. Gandhi estimated the future net revenue increase after four years at $8.4 million. Nevertheless, this minor tax hike on the wealthy should be welcomed, since it finally broke the ice, i.e., the long-standing refusal of the city council to pass such a tax hike since it reduced the income tax rates by enacting tax parity in 1999, with most of the benefit going to the wealthy. Tax parity was part of the neo-liberal package deal “urban structural adjustment,” greasing the wheels of finance capital at the expense of the great majority of DC residents. The other components have included privatization of public services, cuts in the so-called safety net, eroding democratic governance and public education with the closure of neighborhood schools and the growth of charter schools, firings of teachers and other public workers., and massive subsidies to the corporate sector from the District budget.

According to the IRS, in 2009, the year with the most recent data available, DC taxpayers with incomes over $100,000 had a taxable income of $11.1 billion; for over $200,000 the taxable income was $7.5 billion (it is likely higher now). As an example of potential revenue enhancement using the 2009 data, a modest 2 percent increase in the DC income tax payment for those making $200,000 or more would generate an additional $150 million per year. A 2 percent increase in DC income tax payment, 2 cents more per dollar income, for DC’s wealthy, would go far to restore the $200 million of cumulative cuts in low-income programs in DC’s budget since 2008, especially in affordable housing and child care. Of course even a somewhat more modest increase could be supplemented by curbs on corporate welfare, tax abatements, and subsidies, as well as other progressive steps such as establishing a DC Public Bank, following the example of North Dakota, which could leverage incoming tax revenues into investments boosting green economic development, living-wage jobs, and affordable housing.

Of course, we hear the oft repeated objection by those who empower our regressive tax structure and growing income inequality such as the Councilmembers Evans, Catania, and the Washington Post that even modest tax hikes on our wealthy residents would drive them out of the District thereby reducing our tax base. However this argument ignores the fact that the wealthy have been steadily moving into the District in the last two decades, despite the lower tax rates of suburban Virginia (Maryland had until recently a lower tax rate for the top 5 percent income bracket, but now it is about 1 percent higher than DC). The advantages for living in the District, in particular lower commuting costs and especially time, justify a modestly higher tax rate for wealthy residents than what the same income residents would pay in the suburbs, at least 1-2 percent higher, judging from historical comparisons for the last few decades.

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Meet Vijay Ravindran, Chief Digital Strategist at the Washington Post
Phil Shapiro, pshapiro@his.com

Since Vijay Ravindran, the chief digital strategist at The Washington Post, is not present here in themail@dcwatch.com, I wanted to take this opportunity to welcome him here and introduce him via this YouTube video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Noii92hncag#t=13m15s

Welcome, Vijay. One of the best ways of engaging the public is probably to continue inviting people over to your forum rather than engaging in outreach to existing (sixteen years old) digital civic forums in DC. “On our terms” is a smart strategy. A sustaining strategy.

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Zoning Reporting at Capital Community News
Andrew Lightman, andrew@hillrag.com

Mr. Layman [themail, September 21] may not be aware that the Hill Rag has served for more than a decade as the newspaper of record for all four Ward 6 Advisory Neighborhood Commissions. Our ANC reports, which typically total more than four thousand words monthly, are mostly devoted to historic preservation and zoning concerns. In addition, we have reported extensively, for example, on the development plans for Hine School, the controversy surrounding the Apple Tree Charter school on 12th Street, and the redevelopment of the southwest Waterfront.

Our East of the River publication, the only city publication devoted to Wards 7 and 8, has covered issues such as St. Elizabeth’s development, Skyland, and most recently the Big K properties in detail.

We often work in tandem with bloggers, such as Will Rich, Veronica Davis, John Muller, and Elise Barnard, who maintain blogs independently while simultaneously contributing to our publications. In fact, our extensive employment of bloggers as print freelancers indirectly subsidizes their online activities, contributing to the diversity of the District’s civic voices.

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ANC Single Member Districts and “One Person One Vote”
Richard Layman, rlaymandc@yahoo.com

With regard to Jack McKay’s comments [themail, September 21] about variable population sizes for ANCs and Single Member Districts being desirable as a reflection of neighborhood or community desires, as far as the 14th Amendment of the Constitution’s “equal protection under the law” clause is concerned I believe he is missing the point. The equal protection clause is concerned with the composition of the election district specifically. In the case of the city it is a ward, in the case of an ANC, it is the SMD. SMD’s or Wards (or Congressional Districts or State House and Senate districts in states) are supposed to be roughly equal in population so that every resident (presumed to be a citizen) has an equivalent unit of representation within the body in which the elected official serves.

While “gerrymandering” is legal, it is a geographical not population-based construct. Each election district that is created, such as Congressional Districts for the State of Maryland, is equal in population size even if the geographical organization of these districts is structured in ways that counter normal and typical “community” connections based on other factors.

With regard to ANC’s, the issue isn’t the number of SMD’s within the ANC, it’s the number of residents that each SMD and Commissioner represents. If the districts are drawn in a manner where the population is widely disparate, the 14th Amendment clause trumps sentiment. The districts need to be roughly equal in terms of population to meet the standards expected by election law. And while gerrymandering is legal, dividing up population of particular areas in ways that dilute citizen representation, such as what is proposed for the SMD’s serving the resident student population of Georgetown University should be opposed, because it is “undemocratic” and something that, as citizens, we should find equally odious.

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New Ideas for Funding Libraries
Phil Shapiro, pshapiro@his.com

Regarding the news that MLK Library will be closing on Sundays [themail, September 21], maybe it’s time for public libraries to get creative. See http://tinyurl.com/33e32u9 Bill Gates, who has an interest in libraries and who is now the richest American again (net worth of $59 billion) could put up $100,000 for DC to pilot a “collaborative creativity” project on Sundays at MLK for twenty-five Sundays (i.e., half a year). What is $59 billion minus $100,000? The answer? A number very, very close to $59 billion.

This is assuming that MLK Library could be kept open for $4,000 a day on Sundays. Maybe a DC librarian on this list can share with us the cost of keeping MLK open on a Sunday? Could part of the building possibly be opened, rather than the full building? Could part of the building be rented for special events (such as mini national conferences) to fund another part of the building staying open on Sundays? Could part of MLK Library become a financially self-sustaining hackerspace on Sundays? (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hackerspace) What are the reasons in favor of public libraries hosting hackerspaces? “Wisdom begins with wonder,” Socrates.

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Closing MLK on Sundays
Richard Layman, rlaymandc@yahoo.com

Eliminating a weekend day of service for the DC central library is actually a drastic cut. George Williams writes [themail, September 21] that DCPL had to cut Sunday service at the Martin Luther King Library because of budget cuts. But eliminating Sunday service at the only library that provides it is not merely a matter of tweaking open hours, it’s eliminating an entire day of service, therefore eliminating the ability to serve at least two segments of the library audience, 1) the group that because of work and other reasons, finds it difficult to go to a library during the week, especially during the day, when most of the libraries are open; and 2) people who have the same time-of-day restrictions, but also need access to the special collections (such as Washingtoniana) that are only available at the main branch.

Before making this drastic cut to the service profile of the library system, the library system should have evaluated the service profile in at least three dimensions: 1) main library versus neighborhood branches, 2) days of the week (weekday, Saturday, Sunday), and 3) by day part (time and segment of the day, i.e., morning, afternoon, evening). The point should have been not to eliminate an entire day of service for the entire system, but to maintain the breadth of service, that is the number of days the library system has at least one library open, while tweaking the service profile to save money.

Eliminating an entire day of service that the entire library system is open should be seen as comparable to eliminating or significantly changing a bus route, and should have triggered hearings, just as it does for transit service.

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Tax Increases and Municipal Bonds
Ari Weisbard, grokeden@gmail.com

I’m confused about where you got the numbers for your lead tax piece [themail, September 21], specifically, the $160 million for the new income tax rate. Is that over several years? Your $13 million for the bond tax change is for one year, so it makes it seem like a huge hike, when actually I think the income tax raised just barely more than the bond tax over the next four years and then sunsets, raising a lot less than the bond tax in the years after that (assuming it’s not extended, which I realize is hard to predict).

[Opponents of the tax increase argued that it did not have to be passed this year, since a small part of the $89 million surplus could be used to cover the $13 million that owners of tax-free bonds from other states would not have to pay this year, and the city council could then have time to develop a multi-year strategy. (The savings realized by municipal bond holders will naturally fall over the years, since they will not be able to refresh their bond portfolios by buying new tax-free bonds from other states.) The advocates of the tax increase, on the other hand, insisted that a multi-year tax increase be passed immediately; the provision sunsetting the increase after four years was offered by Councilmember Cheh as the price for her support.

[Another reader who wanted to remain anonymous wrote that, while it may have been true that at one time DC did not offer a good variety of its own tax-free municipal bonds, and fewer still that would be considered good investments, the situation is different now, and that someone who wanted to invest in tax-free municipals could build a good portfolio of DC bonds now. What do readers think? Are you willing to put your retirement savings, or a good portion of them, into DC munis? — Gary Imhoff]

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CLASSIFIEDS — EVENTS

DC Campaign’s Celebrity Auction and Fundraiser, October 13
Erica McKinney, emckinney@dccampaign.com

The board of directors of DC Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy and the celebrity auction steering committee cordially invite you to our annual fundraiser, Thursday, October 13, at DLA Piper, 500 8th Street, NW. Cocktail reception at 6:00 p.m., live auction at 7:30 p.m. Tickets $150 per person, $275 per couple.

A very special award will be presented to Mayor Vincent Gray, DC Campaign’s founding treasurer. For more information, contact bmiller@dccampaign.org or 789-4666 x11.

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CLASSIFIEDS — DONATIONS

Donate for Earthquake Repairs to Affordable Housing Cooperative for Activists
Parisa Norouzi, parisa@empowerdc.org

The Ella Jo Baker Intentional Community Cooperative is a fifteen-unit affordable housing cooperative and intentional community consisting of people who share a history of community activism and fighting for social justice. The Cooperative was founded in 2003 and is legally restricted to be affordable to people of low and moderate incomes for one hundred years. As a “limited-equity” property, the property can not be converted to condo or sold at market rate, preserving badly needed affordable housing in the Columbia Heights community. Ella Jo Baker Cooperative members include community organizers, holistic health practitioners, and artists who have dedicated themselves to community issues in the immediate area as well as citywide.

When the earthquake struck on August 23, part of the cooperative’s property was badly damaged. The damage was both structural and cosmetic in nature, causing the displacement of three members. It will cost over $15,000 to repair the damage, and none of the expenses will be covered by insurance due to the damage originating from the earthquake.

Please help us repair the Cooperative, bring the three displaced members home, and save this important affordable housing community for future residents. Checks can be made out to Ella Jo Baker Cooperative and sent c/o Empower DC, 1419 V Street, NW. You will receive a letter acknowledging receipt of your donation. Questions may be directed to Parisa Norouzi of Empower DC (a cooperative member — not one of the displaced) at Parisa@empowerdc.org or 234-9119. Thank you to everyone who has supported our fundraising drive thus far. We have raised $2,000 of the $15,000 needed for repairs to our building. Donations of any amount are appreciated, and can be given online at http://www.gofundme.com/7rvoo?r=3696

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