Elegant Density

Dear Friends:

We can learn from the mistakes of others. Two and a half years ago, I wrote about how Los Angeles provided a cautionary tale about the mistakes to be made with “medical marijuana” dispensaries (themail, December 9, 2009), and just this month the LA city council voted unanimously to close all of the 762 dispensaries that it had allowed to open in the city, http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2012/07/la-council-votes-on-pot-shops.html.

Now we learn from an article by Joel Kotkin in City Journal, “Let LA Be LA: Unrestrained High-Density Development Doesn’t Become the City of Angels,” http://www.city-journal.org/2012/22_3_snd-los-angeles.html, that the same kind of dispute between developers and their front-groups and people who represent neighborhoods and their residents is going on in LA as in DC. “Driving their rebellion is a proposal from the LA planning department that would allow greater density in the heart of Hollywood, a scruffy district that includes swaths of classic California bungalows and charming 1930s-era garden apartments. The proposal — which calls for residential towers of 50 stories or more along Hollywood Boulevard, where no building currently tops 20 stories — has been approved unanimously by the city council and will now probably be challenged in court. That proposal isn’t the only densification plan making its way through city hall. Another is a ‘wholesale revision’ of LA’s planning code that would strip single-family districts of their present status and approve the construction of rental units in backyards and of high-density housing close to what are now quiet residential neighborhoods.”

Here’s the argument, as it goes on in LA, just as in DC: “Richard Abrams, a 40-year Hollywood resident and a leader of SaveHollywood.Org, puts it differently: ‘They want to turn this into something like East Germany. This is all part of an attempt to worsen the quality of life — to leave us without backyards and with monumental traffic.’ The rebels gathered at Victor’s note that many of the density scheme’s most tenacious advocates, such as councilman and mayoral aspirant Eric Garcetti, live in leafy residential areas removed from the traffic nightmare that the new development would bring. Despite public outcry, Los Angeles’s political, labor, and real-estate elites almost unanimously support what [Mayor] Villaraigosa calls ‘elegant density,’ pushing for the transformation of the city’s low-rise, multipolar, and moderate urban form into something more like vertical, transit-oriented New York.”

The urban planners who push density on cities like LA and DC want to make those cities into second-rate versions of Manhattan, instead of allowing them to develop in the historical patterns that their residents prefer. Kotkin describes the contrast in LA terms: “LA remains overwhelmingly car-oriented, with only 11 percent of commuters using public transit, despite the $8 billion invested in rail lines over the past two decades. Los Angeles’s downtown is nowhere near as important as New York’s; just over 2 percent of LA metropolitan-area employment is downtown, compared with about 20 percent in greater New York. Instead of revolving around one mega-center, LA boasts commercial centers in each of its major neighborhoods, many of which are close to single-family homes and low-rise apartments. This dispersion creates an aesthetic rarely appreciated by density boosters, enabling residents to enjoy fully LA’s unique ambiance — its superb Mediterranean climate, lush foliage, tall trees, and, most of all, magnificent light. Even when you walk down Hollywood Boulevard, what’s most striking is not the skyline but the steep hills, framed by palms, rising toward a clear blue sky. For a glimpse of the Hollywood imagined by Villaraigosa and his confederates, take a look at the much-reviled Hollywood and Highland Center, home of the Dolby Theater, which hosts the Academy Awards. Instead of brilliant light and blue sky, visitors confront a boxy hulk that obscures the hillside views.”

Gary Imhoff
themail@dcwatch.com

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DC-Pepco Task Force Being Established
Dorothy Brizill, dorothy@dcwatch.com

Last week, at Mayor Gray’s biweekly press conference, he released his “One City Action Plan” (http://www.onecityactionplan.dc.gov). The stated purpose of the 56-page document is to provide “a comprehensive strategy that describes in specific steps how the mayor’s One City vision will be achieved.” The “One City Action Plan” is organized into three overarching goals: “1) grow and diversity the District’s Economy, 2) educate and prepare the workforce for the new economy, and 3) improve the quality of life for all.”

During the press conference, I asked the mayor how he intended to achieve his goals and objectives with regard to the District’s economy, education, and healthcare without first addressing the issue of Pepco and electrical reliability. To my surprise, the mayor indicated that he had met the previous week with Joe Rigby, chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer of Pepco Holdings, Inc. As a result of the meeting, the mayor indicated that they had agreed to establish a joint task force to be co-chaired by City Administrator Allen Lew and Rigby, focused on the issue of Pepco and electrical reliability.

On Friday, in response to my follow-up inquiry, the City Administrator’s office provided further information. It now indicates that the mayor will issue an Executive Order soon, and that the task force will focus on the narrow issue of undergrounding power lines. According to the City Administrator’s Office, the membership of the twelve-member panel will include the Director of the Department of Transportation, or the Director’s designee; the Director of the Department of the Environment, or the Director’s designee; the Director of the Department of Public Works, or the Director’s designee; the Chief Financial Officer, or the CFO Designee; the Chairman of the Public Service Commission, or the Chairman’s designee; the People’s Counsel within the Office of the Peoples’ Counsel, or the People’s Counsel’s designee; one representative of an entity owning or maintaining the largest number of overhead telephone lines in the District; one representative of an entity owning or operating the large number of overhead cable television lines in the District; and two residents of areas of the District that have traditionally been significantly impacted by storm-related power outages, to be appointed by the mayor.

The task force shall 1) investigate the general causes of storm-related power outages in the District; 2) obtain and examine information related to major storm-related power outages in the District in the past ten years, including the number of customers impacted by the outages and the duration of the outages; 3) investigate the cost and feasibility of undergrounding existing overhead power line in the District, including undergrounding all power lines, undergrounding only mainline primary lines, and undergrounding targeted assets, and the impacts of undergrounding on reliability and restoration time; 4) examine other potential impacts of the undergrounding of power lines, including impacts on the environment, infrastructure, health and safety, and quality of life; 5) examine options that may be taken instead of or in addition to undergrounding power lines to reduce the number of customers impacted by power outages due to storms and to reduce the duration of such power outages; and 6) transmit to the mayor by December 31, 2012, a written report setting forth the findings and recommendations of the task force.

The first meeting of the task force will be held in mid to late August, and most meetings of the task force will be open to the public.

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Sex, Pornography, and Ethics in DC
Dorothy Brizill, dorothy@dcwatch.com

Last Wednesday, July 25, the District’s new Board of Ethics and Government Accountability (BEGA) held its first public meeting in a small conference room, with just eight chairs, at the District’s Conference Center on the eleventh floor of 1 Judiciary Square. The meeting’s agenda was rather pedestrian, and included a discussion by the three board members of BEGA’s duties and responsibility, a “status update” (e.g., office space, E-mail/telephones, web site, “matter management” systems, rules), the transition from the Board of Elections, and a discussion of board priorities and meeting dates. BEGA Chair Robert Spagnoletti, with the concurrence of his fellow board members Laura Richardson and Deborah Lathen, then moved to close the meeting to the public. While noting that the Ethics Board is subject to the District’s Open Meeting Act (DC Code 2-571, et seq.), Spagnoletti indicated that the meeting was being closed under a specific exception allowed under the law, which states that a meeting may be closed “to discuss the appointment, employment, assignment, promotion, performance evaluation, discipline, demotion, removal, or designation of government appointees, employees, or officials” (DC Code 2-575(b)(10). According to Spagnoletti, the purpose of the closed-door meeting was to discuss the temporary appointment of personnel which a number of District agencies (e.g., the Office of the Attorney General, the Office of Campaign Finance, and the Board of Elections) have offered to lend the BEGA in order to help it become operational by October 1.

After the press and the general public left the meeting, the Ethics Board met with an individual who I subsequently learned was Darrin Sobin, an Assistant Attorney General and the District’s Ethics Counselor in the Office of the Attorney General (OAG). Sobin has replaced law professor and ethics expert Kathleen Clark, who left the AG’s office in the spring. At the closed-door meeting, according to Spagnoletti, Sobin was “coordinating the personnel within OAG and BOE” (the Board of Elections), who will assist the Ethics Board in drafting its rules and regulations. Moreover, I subsequently learned that in recent weeks Sobin has played a quite substantial role in helping to establish the BEGA and has, for example, accompanied Spagnoletti to several meetings with senior government officials.

It should be noted, however, that Attorney General Irvin Nathan’s appointment of Sobin to serve as DC’s Ethics Counsel and Robert Spagnoletti’s reliance on him with regard to establishing the Board of Ethics and Government Accountability is quite curious and troubling, given Sobin’s background. Darrin Sobin is the son of Dennis Sobin, who since the 1980’s has been known as the porn or smut king of Washington (http://tinyurl.com/d36hlto/). Over the years, the senior Sobin has owned numerous strip clubs, adult bookstores, and brothels, produced pornographic films, and operated an escort service and a telephone sex line in DC. He has also been convicted and served time in prison for bankruptcy fraud, racketeering, and child pornography. His son, Darrin Sobin, worked in the family business from the age of sixteen. In 1985, while on summer break from George Washington University, he was arrested on federal charges stemming from his family’s escort service businesses in DC and his role in helping his mother and uncle establish a marijuana cultivation farm in California. After pleading guilty, Darrin Sobin received a sentence of five years probation, went on to complete college and law school, was admitted to the DC Bar in 1994, and subsequently went to work in the office of the District’s Attorney General. Now, as the District’s Ethics Counsel, he will have a lead role in shaping the future of the Ethics Board and ethics in general throughout District government. And you wonder why, when it comes to fighting corruption, nothing really changes for the better in DC.

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Give Public Financing a Chance
Shelley Tomkin, shelltomk@aol.com

The banning of corporate contributions as outlined in Initiative 70 would be a significant step in the quest for campaign finance reform. But even if the initiative were to pass, the problem would still remain — candidates need to raise the funds to pay for the mailings, brochures, polls, and staff that will allow them to get their message out. Curbing corporate contributions could even the playing field a bit, but reliance on individual contributors during hard economic times will not be enough. This leaves candidates — challengers as well as incumbents — in a bind.

There is an answer to this dilemma that gets to the root of the problem — the public financing of campaigns. Twenty-six states, including Maine, Arizona, Connecticut, and New Mexico have adopted this approach with systems where candidates who raise a minimum amount of money on their own to show viability and agree to abide by spending limits, are funded in whole or part by public dollars. A study by the National Institute on Money in State Politics, a nonpartisan, nonprofit, research institute, http://www.followthemoney.org, shows that these public financing systems increase the competitiveness of elections by reducing the financial obstacles that deter potential candidates. The experience of New York City’s small donor public matching fund program is also illustrative. (The city puts up six dollars in public matching funds for each of the first $175.00 that a city resident contributes to a candidate who is participating in the program.) This program has dramatically increased the number and diversity of small donors — an outcome which in turn has motivated their city council representatives to be more responsive to a broader cross section of constituents and to encourage their greater participation in the political process.

At very least, the DC council should conduct a feasibility study of public financing of political campaigns in DC based on models of similar programs in other cities and states.