What Is Permitted

Dear Friends:

Here are two of the many divisions the city faces because of Mayor Gray’s predicament. First, will this cause a revival of the Gray-Fenty split in the city? The finances and management of Fenty’s mayoral campaign has not received any of the in-depth investigation that Gray’s campaign is getting — even though over the years Fenty (like most elected officials in DC) got major campaign contributions from Jeffrey Thompson and his businesses and business associates. Moreover, Fenty’s mayoral campaign received nearly twice as much in total reported donations as Gray did, and Fenty took over the day-to-day management of his campaign personally, cutting off the longtime political professionals had had hired to run his campaign and rejecting their campaign supervision and even advice. Could the Fenty 2010 campaign survive the same scrutiny as the Gray 2010 campaign? Second, will the effort to force Gray to resign be perceived as racially motivated, as a campaign by whites to drive black politicians out of office and out of power? Of course that is not an entirely rational response, given that blacks and whites were for both Gray and Fenty, that both men are black, and that the investigators and prosecutors in the Gray case are racially mixed and are being led by a black US Attorney. But that irrationality works in national politics, where Democrats charge that all opposition to President Obama is based on racial hostility. Why should it not work in local politics?

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Alpert wrote, “there are two ways of thinking about how business meets law: the permission model and the innovation model. In one, there's some gatekeeper that has set out a list of things you can do and things you can't. If you want to do something different that nobody has done, you can get permission from that gatekeeper to allow it, if it has enough merit and/or you have enough influence. In the other, you can do what you want, unless it's so harmful that someone takes action to stop you.” Cheh is firmly in the permission camp. She, along with all DC councilmembers (does anyone know of an exception), believes that politicians know better than business owners how they should run their businesses and better than citizens how they should run their private lives. Politicians, therefore, should write the rules determining how businesses should be run and which choices people should make in their lives. The more strictly and comprehensively those rules cover our businesses and our lives, the better, and the fewer chances we will have to make mistakes, which is to say make different choices from those the politicians would. Alpert is also quite right that how strictly those rules impinges on our lives depends on how much influence we have with politicians.

Gary Imhoff
themail@dcwatch.com

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Special Elections and Candidates
Dorothy Brizill, dorothy@dcwatch.com

In its brief history of home rule, the District has always done a poor job of developing and nurturing political leaders. Given the ongoing scandals that have resulted in the resignation of two sitting councilmembers, many DC residents are displeased with the District’s current elected leadership, and believe that an infusion of new blood is needed. Given the likely political scenario that is likely to unfold in the coming months, DC residents need to begin the public discussion regarding the District’s political leadership and recruit and nurture viable alternate candidates for mayor, delegate, attorney general, and councilmember. Here, in no particular order, are some of the names on my list as well as others that have been floated in recent weeks. Please add your own suggestions. Robert Bobb, former city administrator during the Williams administration; Kurt Schmoke, former mayor of Baltimore and current president of the Howard University School of Law; former mayor Anthony Williams, the current president of the Federal City Council; R. Donahue Peeples, Miami and DC real estate developer; Nathan Saunders, President, Washington Teachers Union; Stanley Jackson, former Deputy President of UDC and former Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development; Vincent Cohen, Principal Assistant US Attorney; Parisa Norouzi, director of Empower DC; Deborah Royster, chair of the Ward 4 Democrats and former legal counsel at Pepco; John Hill, former CEO of the Federal City Council and Executive Director of the Financial Control Board; US Attorney Ronald Machen; Janine Jackson, director of the DC Office of Policy and Legislative Affairs; Patricia McGuire, president of Trinity College; Herbert Harris, chairman of the DC Consumer Utility Board; and Tom Brown, founder of Training Grounds, Inc.

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DC Water Board Votes to Raise Retail Rates
David Jonas Bardin, davidbardin@aol.com

RDC Water's retail rates are in line with rates of many similar utilities and continue to go up. On July 5, District of Columbia members of DC Water's Board of Directors trimmed back and adopted proposed increases in retail rates which had been the subject of its May 9 public hearing. Rate increases, which will go into effect October 1, 2012, the start of Fiscal Year 2013, will not distinguish rate levels for nonresidential customers, who provide most of the revenues, from rate levels for residential customers, who are far more numerous. ("Non-residential" includes commercial, government, and multi-family.) The possibility of rate differentials favoring residential customers must await customer segmentation discussions to be incorporated into a forthcoming cost of service study.

The Board agreed with management's recommendations on rate increases and on a one-time rebate of $4.2 million during FY2013 to retail customers out of an anticipated $20.5 million cash surplus for FY2012. The newly raised retail rates per one thousand gallons of water purchase will be $0.21 for DC Right of Way Fee pass through charge (for running pipes under streets), $0.67 for Payments in Lieu of Taxes Fee, $4.37 for retail water services, $5.59 for residential sewer services (not including Clean Rivers IACs). The newly raised Clean Rivers Impervious Area Charges (IACs) will be $9.57 per month per Equivalent Residential Unit (ERU).

No changes were made in metering fees, which vary with meter size ($3.86 per month is deemed typical for residential customers). And the DC Stormwater Fee adds an unchanged $0.53 per one thousand gallons. Most residential customers are billed for one ERU of IACs. Many retail customers use three thousand gallons (although big users pull up the average bill to 5004 gallons).

DC Water is the largest single consumer of electricity in DC. DC Water charges for all the electricity needed to bring water to your home and to deal with wastewater that leaves your home. If you held your usage down to three thousand gallons ( or less) your monthly water/sewer bill would be $47.54 (or less). And, with less water to pump, DC Water could hold down its use of electricity, reducing DC's carbon footprint. Can you pursue happiness with less water consumption?