Empty Victory
Dear Victors:
Here’s the city council’s version of an “ethics bill,” which
it passed on Tuesday: preserve the councilmembers’ office slush funds,
with special attention paid to making sure that councilmembers can use
the funds to buy tickets to sporting events; pretend to improve
oversight by creating a new ethics board to duplicate the current
functions of the Board of Elections and Ethics; don’t fund that new
ethics board so it won’t take effect for years, or will be severely
reduced from what was promised if it ever gets started; expand the bill
from an original 58 pages at introduction to 109 pages at the mark-up to
221 pages in the final version, so that nobody will read it, and the
loopholes built into the bill will be well hidden, until those loopholes
will eventually be exposed months and years in the future. Most of all,
claim that councilmembers are proud of having passed a “comprehensive
ethics reform bill,” so that those are the words that will appear in
the headlines and in campaign literature, and maybe enough members of
the public will be fooled so that all the incumbents can get reelected.
All the councilmembers know the emptiness of the bill is going to be
exposed eventually, but they don’t know how to avoid it. Indictments,
likely to be more sweeping that we expect now, are waiting down the
road. When the indictments start rolling in, and the “comprehensive
ethics reform bill” proves toothless, the bill will be exposed as an
unquestionable fraud. The only hope that the councilmembers share is
that the indictments won’t come until after the April primaries, and
they’ll already have won the Democratic positions on the general
election ballots. And to them that’s tantamount to victory.
Gary Imhoff
themail@dcwatch.com
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Quick Observations on Ethics Reform
Dorothy Brizill, dorothy@dcwatch.com
Amidst a backdrop of growing public concern about the culture of
corruption in the District government and the multiple ongoing
investigations of the District’s elected officials, the city council
on Tuesday adopted the Board of Ethics and Government Accountability
Establishment and Comprehensive Ethics Reform Amendment Act of 2011
(Bill 19-511). In the coming weeks, when the final text of the bill is
available, it should be evaluated first in terms of whether it is
effective in actually addressing the ethical challenges that have
confronted the District in recent years (e.g., Harriet Walter’s
theft of millions from the DC Office of Tax and Revenue, Harry Thomas’
embezzlement of earmarked District funds, Kwame Brown’s failure to
account for campaign funds properly, nepotism in the Gray
administration, the use of constituent services funds for questionable
expenditures, the unbridled and unchecked influence of lobbyists, the
pay-to-play culture pervasive in the Wilson Building, conflicts arising
from the outside employment of government officials, the unregulated use
of transition and inauguration funds, among others).
A second issue that must be considered when evaluating the bill is
its implementation. How easily and quickly can the ethics bill be
implemented? A quick review of the bill suggests there are numerous
hurdles. several of the bill’s key provisions will require that the
District’s Home Rule Charter be amended. No one has seen the final
bill. But several elements addressed by the bill were established by the
Home Rule Charter, and changing them will require amending the Charter.
First, the Board of Elections and Ethics and its prescribed duties were
established by the Charter. Eliminating those duties, or moving them to
a different Board, can only be done by amending the Charter. The
provisions allowing the city council to expel its members cannot be
passed by simple legislation, but require a Charter amendment.
Similarly, the provisions requiring removal from office of a
councilmember convicted of a felony have to be passed as a Charter
amendment. The changes in the recall process in the bill require yet
another Charter amendment. When the final bill is available for
councilmembers and the public to review, several other issues may become
evident. Amending the Charter is a lengthy process that requires
drafting a ballot measure, holding multiple public hearings before the
DC Board of Elections and Ethics, and holding a citywide election to
secure voter approval (see DC Municipal Regulations, Volume 3, Chapter
18, Elections and Ethics).
In addition, the council legislation cannot be implemented without
regulations that will have to be drafted and approved following a public
comment period. Finally, the bill faces several administrative hurdles.
A key provision of the bill, insisted upon by Councilmember Muriel
Bowser, who chairs the Government Operations Committee, is the
establishment of a Board of Ethics and Government Accountability. Given
the difficulty both Mayors Fenty and Gray had in appointing people to
the existing Board of Elections and Ethics, the selection process for
board members is certain to be difficult and protracted. In addition to
the Board of Ethics, a key component of the bill’s implementation will
be the appointment of the new Board’s staff and a Director to oversee
the work of the Board. Under the new ethics bill, the Director can be
appointed only by the Board after it is in place. A final administrative
hurdle facing the Ethics Board is budgetary. Currently, there is no
funding in the District’s budget for the Ethics Board and its staff.
As a result, the Council’s bill authorizes the use of funds
(approximately $325,000) that were previously allocated to the first
year’s budget of the Open Government Office). The Open Government
Office was established by legislation in 2010, and was supposed to be up
and operational this year, but no steps were ever taken to actually
start it — and this kind of delay is also the likely fate of the Board
of Ethics.
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One unexpected aspect of the upswing in house prices of the last ten
years is its effects on the average size of what is termed the estate of
many people arising simply from their relative prosperity in this
period, and stemming directly from the value attached to their houses,
and reflected in consequent property tax assessments..
It becomes more significant in the context of the wide discrepancy
between what is now the federal exemption level for estate taxes (now, I
believe at $3.5 million) and that minority of states (perhaps ten of the
fifty) which have these exemptions pegged at their former levels --as
with the District of Columbia where, I understand, the exemption to
which the local tax is levied stands at somewhere between $635,000 and
$1 million.
A few years ago one million dollars would have been a very
considerable sum. Now, it is not, and many houses alone certainly
approach that level in annual property assessment, or near it. Do other
people find themselves in this situation? One obvious remedy is to bring
the District into compliance or identification with the federal level of
exemption, but this requires action by the mayor and council, which will
only happen if enough people find that the local estate tax is likely to
affect them and their heirs, and that they can only avoid this outcome
if this change is made. Naturally, I am told that the effect can be
mitigated by creating some form of legal trust to take over ownership,
not merely of real estate but also of the various forms in which
retirement funds are held or disbursed, or which are the principal other
elements in estates of this kind, and which would be directly affected
by the process of probate or other legal requirement when a death
occurs, but this is not always possible.
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The probe into possible corruption by Ward 5 Councilmember Harry
Thomas, Jr., has widened. According to Department of Parks and
Recreation (DPR) attorney advisor Jamarj Johnson, authorities are now
examining funds associated with two additional grants issued by DPR in
2008. The additional funds in question total $832,000. Read the full
article at http://www.brooklandheartbeat.org.
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I work a half block from the encampment on K Street, NW, and since I
am too lazy to make my own breakfast or lunch, I eat out near my office
and the Occupiers every day. I haven99’t noticed any businesses around
the square lacking for customers, therefore I’m always concerned when
the suggestion is made that the Occupiers are somehow preventing
businesses from operating. I haven’t noticed a single hungry K Street
lawyer that has hopped a cab to leave K Street just because the
Occupiers are in McPherson Square. The lines are still very long at
Potbelly, Potenza, Starbucks, Au Bon Pain, Devon & Blakely, etc.
I can understand why the major business coalitions would claim that
business is down, but that is typical of what they always claim. Name a
protest/demonstration that business groups have ever supported. I’ve
seen no statistics on loss sales/income since the Occupiers arrived. I’m
hoping we have a Board of Trade advocate reading themail who can provide
us with statistics on this purported loss. In the meantime, I’d love
to hear from others some reasons why a mostly peaceful protest in
America, should be removed, forcibly or otherwise.
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