Honest Politicians Aren't Enough
Dear Honest Voters:
Harry Jaffe’s column in The Washington Examiner on Thursday
completely misstated the facts and politics of the Jeffrey Thompson
case, http://tinyurl.com/7rjnkpp.
“Thompson, a pillar of the city’s old guard,” wrote Jaffe, “rained
dough on Gray’s effort to beat incumbent Adrian Fenty. Why? Because
Fenty had neither love nor contracts for Thompson, nor other members of
the old guard. Many returned to the table with Gray. Fenty would not
play.” That’s wrong. Fenty played. Jeffrey Thompson gave just as
much money to Fenty as he did to Vincent Gray. Thompson got just as many
city contracts from Fenty, for just as much money, as he did from
Williams before Fenty, and from Gray after Fenty. The cardinal rule that
Jeffrey Thompson used when calculating his financial donations to
politicians is the same cardinal rule that other major political donors
use: give to incumbents, because incumbents can use their offices to
return your favors, and their challengers can’t.
The danger of accepting Jaffe’s analysis is that we will be fooled
into thinking that all we have to do to solve our predicament is simply
to choose good and honest politicians. That’s important, of course,
but it’s not enough. We also have to change our whole system of
pay-to-play politics, of slush funds (“constituent service” funds),
unaccountable campaign funds, and so on — the corrupting and
corruptible funding that underlies our political system and that the
city council refused to address when it passed its misnamed and totally
inadequate “ethics” bill.
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Please also see “Campaign Finance Inquiry Takes Close Look at
Money-Order Donations in District,” Mike DeBonis and Nikita Stewart, http://tinyurl.com/7t6ceht.
Gary Imhoff
themail@dcwatch.com
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Has anyone asked who on the council plays golf with PEPCO?
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Report on DC Arts Advocacy Day
Robert Bettmann, rob@dayeight.org
Close to a hundred arts advocacy supporters and community organizers
gathered at the steps of the Wilson building in downtown Washington on
March 14 to show their support for the eleventh annual DC Arts Advocacy
Day. The rally, organized by the DC Advocates for the Arts with eighteen
partner organizations, attracted dozens of activists who expressed their
support for arts in Washington, DC. The group urged DC Mayor Vincent
Gray to increase the FY13 budget for the DC Commission on Arts and
Humanities to $10,000,000.
A city of six hundred thousand residents, DC has between fifteen to
twenty million tourists visiting every year. Arts and culture are a
vibrant part of the local economy. The recent series of arts budget cuts
have cost the District jobs and led to an overall decline in visual and
performing art activities. In total, DC government support for the arts
has been cut by 69.88 percent from FY 09 to FY 12. The DC Commission on
Arts and Humanities received $13,018,000 in local funds in FY 2009 but
only $3,920,000 in 2012. As a percentage of the FY 12 budget, this year’s
funding for the Arts is 0.034 percent of the DC’s overall budget.
Tina Barksdale, marketing director for Arts Advocacy Day, says that
the rally represented just a small fraction of actual support for arts
funding in DC. Mayor Gray received a petition with over seven hundred
signatures in support of the funding increase, and arts leaders
representing the Advocacy Day partner organizations met with members of
the DC city council in private meetings throughout the day to address
funding the arts in 2013. After the proposed budget is released, the
city council will consider the mayor’s budget over a period of weeks
and vote on it. If the mayor does not support the arts, we are hoping a
champion or group of arts champions will emerge in the council to
support our community. Thirteen members make up the council, including a
representative elected from each of the eight DC wards and five at-large
members, including the chairman. There is strong support among several
councilmembers, including Jack Evans, Ward 2, who spoke at the rally
yesterday.
For more information, contact Robert Bettmann, DC Advocates for the
Arts, http://www.dcadvocatesforthearts.org
Washington DC deserves ten million dollars for the arts in FY13. Show
your support for the arts in the District by signing the arts community
petition to DC Mayor Gray at http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/support-art-in-dc/
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The Washington Post’s editorial board described the United
Medical Center as “A DC hospital on life support”
[February 27, http://tinyurl.com/7gewkub].
Such a misleading headline gives readers the impression that the
hospital is losing money every minute its doors are open. But nothing
could be further from the truth. Nowhere does the editorial reference
the current financial health of the hospital. The national accounting
firm KPMG recently conducted an audit that confirmed a $2.5 million net
income for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2011. This is the second
positive audited financial statement since the hospital became an
independent entity of the DC government in July 2010. The editorial also
did not note that a positive net income statement cannot be claimed by
the majority of hospitals in the District. In this respect, UMC is a
regional leader. The editorial did make note of a request for fifteen
million dollars made by UMC’s Board of Directors to the District
government. None of those funds were to be dedicated to operational
functions.
The UMC Board was not asking for assistance with management or
financial viability. Instead, six million dollars was for deferral of
the balance of a twenty-six million dollar capital infusion made by the
District in 2010. Twenty million dollars has already been repaid, and
five million dollars was to support the engagement of a turnaround
consultant. The DC Department of Health Care Finance believes that a
five million dollar federal match can be found to increase just such a
turnaround fund. Still, the Post’s editors did not ask why a
solvent, verifiably improved hospital might need a ten million dollar
turn-around. The remaining four million dollars of the request was
proposed as a reserve — a rainy day contingency fund. It is worth
repeating that not one penny of that fifteen million dollar request was
to be used for operations.
A responsible discussion about the fate of the United Medical Center
should include a comprehensive assessment of the health care needs of
the communities, in the District and Maryland, served by the hospital.
Although, the mayor and a majority of councilmembers insist that the
hospital should be downgraded to an ambulatory clinic and sold, such a
study has yet to be conducted. This oversight leads to the suspicion
that community health is not as important as the market value of the
hospital’s seventeen acres. After all, thousands of Department of
Homeland Security employees coming to the St. Elizabeth’s campus in
Anacostia will need housing and commercial amenities. Frankly, they
might need a full service, acute care hospital too.
UMC’s current management, medical, and support staffs deserve
recognition and incumbency for the turn-around in finances, service
quality, physical plant conditions, and clinical programs already
accomplished. Furthermore, the United Medical Center has a major role in
achieving any long-term vision of improved health status indicators for
all residents of the District of Columbia, as well as for our neighbors
across the District line.
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I want to thank you for your March 11 notice [in themail] about the
red topped meters. I read the Post every day, and read other
news, but I hadn’t heard of it. As a holder of a disability placard, I
would think the Department of Motor Vehicles could have sent a courtesy
notice. I am currently working in the 18th and M Streets area and have
seen no such meters in this area despite the fact 1800 M Street, NW,
houses the National Multiple Sclerosis Society and the 2100 and 2200
blocks of K Street on the north side are full of doctors’ office. So
if I work on a Saturday I will not be able to park anywhere near here
most likely.
I would never have guessed they were for the handicapped, as other
jurisdictions use blue topped meters (Arlington being the most notable).
Yet as a person who lives in a house bordering on a commercial area,
there have long been requests to the city council to use coded meters on
much a street for people without residential stickers to pay.
To add to this confusion, I saw two blue topped meters for the
handicapped in the 1200 block of 18th, the last two meters on the west
before it hits Connecticut, good since there are no rush hour
restrictions but also non-handicapped persons parked there. So in DC is
it Blue or Red?
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Committee Votes No on Public Service
Commission Appointee
Alma Gates, ahg71139@aol.com
The latest council dustup follows the no vote last Thursday of the DC
Council Committee on Public Services and Consumer Affairs on the
appointment of Betty Noel to the Public Service Commission (PSC). Also
in question is the role of Pepco in ensuring Noel’s defeat. As Mary
Cheh asked, “What’s behind this?” She opined that Pepco wants
another puppet on the PSC, but, “Betty Noel’s nobody’s puppet and
Pepco knows it.”
Last Wednesday a group of about twenty individuals from every ward in
the city sat down with Phil Mendelson for an intense discussion on Betty
Noel’s appointment. Mendelson has been consistent in his opposition to
the appointment and pointed to his feelings that Noel cannot balance
fairly the interests of rate payers and shareholders alike; she has a
demonstrated “take no prisoners” approach to issues; and, lacks “judicial
temperament.” Individuals reminded the Councilmember that the PSC has
been fairly ineffective and slow to offer any decisions and, it was
suggested that Ms. Noel would raise the bar and energize the PSC. The
councilmember also raised the issue of recusal, even though an expert
panel appointed by the Office of the Attorney General did not raise
issue with this aspect except for a limited number of pending cases. Ms.
Noel’s integrity was never questioned, nor was her leadership and
effectiveness as the People’s Counsel for twenty years.
Thursday afternoon, Yvette Alexander, chair of the Committee on
Public Services and Consumer Affairs, called an additional meeting to
consider B19-479: Public Service Commission of the District of Columbia
Elizabeth A. Noel Confirmation Resolution of 2012. Alexander, along with
Mary Cheh, Muriel Bowser, Phil Mendelson, and Jim Graham as committee
members, marked up the bill to forward approval of Betty Noel‘s
appointment to the full council for consideration and a vote. The
committee voted 3-2 not to forward the nomination, with Alexander,
Bowser, and Mendelson voting in the negative. Yvette Alexander based her
vote on the number of cases from which Ms. Noel would be required to
recuse herself. Muriel Bowser agreed and also stated, “She [Noel] is a
consumer advocate who must switch and become a judge. Can a leopard
change its spots?” Mary Cheh spoke eloquently on the role of a female
attorney and that as a member of the PSC, Ms. Noel should not be
expected to be “meek and retiring.” Cheh noted that, “When you are
a lawyer, you play the role you are assigned and you do it zealously.”
Jim Graham threw his support behind the candidate, even after reminding
Ms. Noel at her October marathon confirmation hearing that she was
bordering on hostile and that might not be in her best interest. He read
from the letter of the Attorney General’s panel of experts that found
Ms. Noel to be a qualified nominee but that she would have to recuse
herself in some cases pending before the PSC. Graham noted, “Betty
Noel can comprehend the issues before the PSC and would have a positive
impact on utility regulation.” Some individuals who met with
Councilmember Mendelson on Wednesday attended the council meeting and
afterwards expressed disappointment that he was not persuaded by their
obvious support for the nominee. They remarked that his vote would be a
determining factor in their support for his reelection.
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CLASSIFIEDS — EVENTS
Live in Ward 3 and Want to Clean Up DC
Elections?
Keshini Ladduwahetty, keshinil@yahoo.com
Join current and former Ward 3 Councilmembers, Mary Cheh and Kathy
Patterson, members of DC Public Trust, and Ward 3 residents on Tuesday,
March 20, 6:00-8:00 p.m., at Public Bar (4611 41st Street, NW, in Tenley).
We are launching the Ward 3 campaign for Initiative 70, the ballot
initiative to ban direct corporate contributions to DC political
campaigns. Come learn about the campaign, mix and mingle with
supporters, and raise a little money for the cause.
For those of you on Facebook, please RSVP to http://www.facebook.com/events/390153000996166/.
Non-Facebook users, please RSVP to ward3@dcpublictrust.com.
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National Building Museum Events, March 21-22,
24-25
Stacy Adamson, sadamson@nbm.org
Wednesday, March 21, 6:30-8:30 p.m., DC Environmental Film Festival:
How Much Does Your Building Weigh, Mr. Foster? The film traces the rise
of one of the world’s premier architects, Norman Foster, and his quest
to improve the quality of life through design. The film portrays how his
dreams and influences inspired the design of emblematic projects such as
the Beijing Airport, the Hearst Building in New York City, and the
tallest bridge in the world, located in Millau, France. Visit http://www.dcenvironmentalfilmfest.org
for information. $10 members, $10 students, $12 nonmembers. Prepaid
registration required.
Thursday, March 22, 6:30-8:30 p.m. DC Environmental Film Festival:
Urbanized. Over half the world’s population now lives in urban areas,
and 75 percent will call a city home by 2050. Urbanized, a
feature-length documentary, is about the design of cities. It looks at
the issues and strategies behind urban design and features some of the
world’s foremost architects, planners, policy makers, builders, and
thinkers. Urbanized frames a global discussion on the future of cities.
Visit http://www.dcenvironmentalfilmfest.org
for information. $10 members, $10 students, $12 nonmembers. Prepaid
registration required.
Saturday and Sunday, March 24-25, 10:00 a.m.-4:30 p.m., National
Cherry Blossom Festival Family Days. Free drop-in program for all ages.
Celebrate the opening of Washington’s cherry blossom season at this
seventh annual family festival for kids of all ages featuring hands-on
activities, interactive art demonstrations, and indoor and outdoor
performances that celebrate spring and explore Japanese arts and design.
The annual family festival features hands on activities and dynamic
performances, all part of the Centennial Celebration honoring the
100-year anniversary of the gift of the trees. Make a kokeshi doll,
design a shoji screen, construct an origami teahouse, watch taiko
drummers, The Washington Ballet, and much more. All programs at the
National Building Museum, 401 F Street, NW, Judiciary Square Metro
station. Register for events at http://www.nbm.org.
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DCPS Chancellor Kaya Henderson, March 22
Shelley Tomkin, shelltomk@aol.com
The Ward 3 Democratic Committee will hold a community dialogue with
DC Public Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson on Thursday, March 22, at
7:00 p.m. at St. Columba’s Episcopal Church, 4201 Albemarle Street,
NW. In conjunction with the meeting, Committee delegates will hold an
endorsement vote on the At-Large DC Council and Shadow Senate contests
in the April 3 Democratic primary election.
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DC Taxes: What You Get for What You Give,
March 27
Anne Renshaw, milrddc@aol.com
The Federation of Citizens Associations of the District of Columbia
will hold a citywide meeting on “DC Taxes: What You Get for What You
Give” on Tuesday, March 27, 6:45-9:00 p.m., at All Souls Memorial
Episcopal Church, 2300 Cathedral Avenue, NW. (Entrance off the church
parking lot on Woodley Place, NW; closest Metro stop, Woodley Park-Red
Line.) Speakers will include Eric Goulet, DC mayor’s budget director;
Elissa Silverman, DC budget analyst, DC Fiscal Policy Institute; and
Jennifer Budoff, city council budget director (invited).
“No New Taxes,” the Citizens Federation’s official position on
DC taxes, has been largely ignored by city officials. DC residents face
three important tax dates: March 23, release of the Mayor’s 2013
budget with likely service cuts and/or tax increases; March 31, due date
for DC’s 2012 First Half Real Property Tax; and April 15, filing
deadline for DC and federal 2011 income taxes. Many DC residents,
already pinched by escalating city parking meter and ticket fees, cannot
help but feel squeezed by their government which, as of January 2012,
will also tax non-DC municipal bond income. On March 27, four days after
the mayor’s budget is made public, city fiscal experts will discuss
what DC taxpayers receive for the taxes they pay; whether local tax
relief is on the horizon; or if, as is expected, higher DC taxes will be
inevitable in 2013.
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Woman’s National Democratic Club Meetings,
March 27
Patricia Bitondo, pbitondo@aol.com
Tuesday, March 27, luncheon with Mark Updegrove, “Indomitable Will:
LBJ in the Presidency.” Mark Updegrove is the director of the LBJ
Library in Austin, Texas. He is the author of several books and a
sought-after commentator on matters relating to politics and the
presidency. He has appeared on most national TV stations and has been
interviewed by many newspapers and magazines. Mr. Updegrove will speak
on Medicare, Head Start, PBS, NPR, and the Voting Right Act, all of
which were signed into law by President Lyndon Baines Johnson . . . and
all of which are coming under fire during this election cycle. What was
the original intent of these laws? What will happen and who will be
affected if these programs are taken away?
March 31 will be the anniversary of when President Johnson announced
that he would not seek reelection so he could more closely guide the
legislation. This is an opportunity to learn or to recall what happened
under this President. Books will be for sale. At the Woman’s National
Democratic Club, 1526 New Hampshire Avenue, NW. Bar opens at 11:30 a.m.;
lunch 12:15 p.m.; lecture, presentation, Q&A: 1:00-2:00 p.m. Members
$25, nonmembers $30; lecture only $10. Register at https://salsa.wiredforchange.com/o/5880/p/salsa/event/common/public/?event_KEY=34946
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