The Twilight Zone
Dear Zoners:
The best way to hide important news is to print it openly under a
snooze-inducing headline, like "Zoning Regulations Review." Who cares,
and even among those who care, who can sustain interest in an article
about it for more than the first three or four paragraphs? When a
"Zoning Regulations Review" article is printed on page one, don’t your
eyes immediately wander off in search of something more compelling, like
an account of Lindsay Lohan’s latest brawl in a nightclub, or her most
recent car accident as she sped off, fleeing from the paparazzi?
Which is a way of saying that there are several messages below about
the Office of Planning’s Zoning Regulations Review, and that they are
important and deserve your attention.
Gary Imhoff
themail@dcwatch.com
###############
Under the leadership of Council Chairman Phil Mendelson, the city
council is continuing its questionable practice of adopting major,
substantive legislative as emergency legislation, even hough o real
emergency exists that would warrant circumventing the normal legislative
process. At Tuesday’s upcoming legislative session of the council, the
agenda will include "emergency" and "temporary" versions of two bills —
the Board of Ethics and Government Accountability Amendment Act of 2013
(Bill 20-116) and the Prohibition on Government Employee Engagement in
Political Activity Amendment Act of 2013 (Bill 20-117). Emergency bills
go into effect immediately for a period of ninety days; temporary bills
go into effect for 225 days, or through September 2013. On the surface,
both bills would appear to be noncontroversial, and yet both could
determine the manner in which the District handles and punishes those
who violate the District’s ethics laws as detailed in the Code of
Conduct, as well as District laws against political activity as provided
for in the city’s local Hatch Act (DC Law 18-335, Prohibition on
Government Employee Engagement in Political Activity of 2010).
In many ways, the BEGA Accountability Emergency Act is intended to
address shortcomings in the ethics bill when it was rushed out and
adopted as emergency legislation in December 2011. It would allow the
Board of Ethics and Government Accountability to "issue, on its own
initiative, and advisory opinion on any matter." The legislation would
also giver the Ethics Board the ability to impose additional penalties
for violations of the Code of Conduct. These could possibly include:
"(A) Remedial action in accordance with the Merit Personnel Act; (B) A
public censure imposed by the Ethics Board; (C) A nonpublic informal
admonition imposed by the Director of Government Ethics, appealable to
the Ethics Board; (D) A finding of a violation and a period of probation
during which a respondent may seek expungement of the violation upon
successful completion of any probationary terms imposed by the Director
of Government Ethics or the Ethics Board; or (E) The Director of
Government Ethics may offer, and a respondent may accept, any negotiated
disposition of a matter subject to approval by the Ethics Board." While
it is important for the BEGA to have a wide range of actions at its
disposal to take in response to ethics violations, it is troubling to
note that three of the five new sanctions could be imposed by the
Director of the Office of Government Ethics, and would increase his role
and power, simply making him, and not the Board of Ethics, the
equivalent of an ethics czar in DC. Moreover, it is troubling that the
BEGA, which will oversee the District’s new Open Government Office, when
a director and staff are appointed, is itself likely to resort to a
secret "nonpublic information admonition" as a means of dealing with
ethics violations by government employees and officials.
The Prohibition on Government Employee Engagement in Political
Activity Emergency Amendment Act of 2013, Bill 20-117, amends Law
18-0335, the District’s Hatch Act, which the council had adopted in
January 2011, pending the passage of a revised federal Hatch Act by
Congress, the Hatch Act Modernization Act of 2012. Under B20-119,
enforcement of L18-335 would be the responsibility of the Board of
Ethics and Government Accountability, and any violation would be
investigated and treated as a breach of the District Code of Conduct.
Last Thursday, February 14, the council’s Government Operations
Committee held a hearing on Bill 20-117, and received startling
testimony from the District’s Attorney General, Irvin Nathan. He
testified that he and the Gray administration supported B20-117 "subject
to two qualifications: first, that the Political Activity Emergency Act
be amended to allow lawyers employed by the District to run for the new
elected Attorney General position; and, second, to give the elected
Attorney General the same freedom to engage in political activities as
is provided by current law to other elected public officials in the
District." Thus, while acknowledging that "the District’s local
prohibitions on political activity continue to bar [District] employees
from running for any partisan political office," Nathan wants himself
and all attorneys who work for the District government exempted from the
Hatch Act. In short, Nathan argues that an amendment would be offered by
the administration so that he and other attorneys employed by the
District government would be accorded special privileges and could run
for the new elected Attorney General position in the April 2014 primary.
In a self-serving footnote to his claim for special status of DC
government attorneys, Nathan notes in his testimony that, "I understand
that this proposal may raise for Councilmembers the question of whether
and to what extent District employees should be allowed to run for other
elected position in the District government, such as for Mayor or for
the Council. That is an important question and should be considered by
the Council and the Executive when permanent legislation is reviewed.
But because the Attorney General position is unique among elected
offices, and because there is some reason to act quickly here with the
first Attorney General primary election scheduled to take place in about
a year, the Council should amend the law now to allow lawyers employed
by the District to run for Attorney General, consistent with the federal
reform recently secured."
###############
Many recent articles in themail have been devoted to the Office of
Planning’s Zoning Regulations Review (OP ZRR) process and attendant
public outreach meetings. I too am concerned by some of the points
raised in the OP ZRR and by the character of the outreach meetings.
Specifically, I did not move here and carefully work with all the
community and neighborhood residents and interests to see
"matter-of-right" trailer parks and garage apartment conversions spring
up without the benefit of zoning hearings, and I am not interested at
all in the "matter-of-right" possibility of corner shops popping up in
our entirely R3-zoned neighborhood. I don’t see that a simple review of
the zoning rules could produce such suggestions, but OP sees this
otherwise. When I occasionally visit Blagden Alley and Naylor Court, I
appreciate why that location was "grandfathered" for such Auxiliary
Dwelling Units, but also see that it’s not for everyone. There’s almost
nothing unbuilt in those neighborhoods: it’s all bricks and streets, no
green. Among the highest values of my neighborhood is some little space
for a garden or whatnot, not crowded out by intense residency, and
comfortable distance from (or to) various transportation and stores. I
personally would not want to be any closer to those things than I have
chosen to be, and thought that the R3 zoning and the zoning hearing
process would help keep it that way.
There are problems with unwieldy aspects to the current zoning
process, and there are illegal ADUs which I think we have sufficient
bureaucracy to address, but we seemingly lack the willpower to enforce
regulations now on the books. The answer to a littering problem is not
to abolish the littering law but to enforce it. Which is perhaps a bad
analogy because in our lovely city we have no littering law. Why aren’t
we hearing recommendations from BZA and DCRA which have both experience
and authority in these matters, rather than OP?
I wrote to the mayor about my concerns, and about the rather glib, I
thought, dismissal of some of the questions raised during the outreach
meeting, and also about the lack of community information about the
meetings. About 70 percent of our neighborhood does not have or use
E-mail or the web, and so I suggested that flyers and mail are the only
way to reach this neighborhood, which was not represented at all at the
Ward 5 meeting but for myself. Apparently home equity and responsible
stewarding of community resources are not considered important in the
face of utopian change, so flyers and direct mailings to solid citizens
is unnecessary? The omniscient OP knows what is best for me? Brave New
District.
###############
DC Agencies Ignore Challenges Facing the City
Alma Gates,
ahg71139@aol.com
Some may recall a forward-thinking planning document entitled "A
Vision for Growing an Inclusive City," which provides a framework for
the Comprehensive Plan revision and identifies three challenges the city
must address if it is to succeed in its plans for the future: create
successful neighborhoods; increase access to education and jobs; and
connect the whole city.
In a recent Post op-ed,
http://tinyurl.com/bdrwvpg, Harriet Tregoning
and Terry Bellamy say that "few proposals in the [Zoning Regulation
Revision] ZRR have generated as much interest as parking." That’s
because OP’s proposals are completely disconnected with the way our city
lives and breathes and because the proposed zoning changes do little to
preserve or protect the city’s one hundred thirty diverse neighborhoods.
Absent are references to the Comprehensive Plan, a legally required
document, which guides the city’s zoning laws, which in turn affect how
property and surrounding properties may be used; the types of uses
allowed in residential and commercial areas; and the amount of parking
that must be provided. Instead, the Office of Planning has substituted a
different planning rationale for the sound policies and guidance
outlined in the Comprehensive Plan, while simultaneously tossing the
current zoning regulations into the trash.
The op-ed uses a new DDOT initiative, Move DC, to justify some of the
more controversial proposed parking regulations in the ZRR that suggest
"in limited areas of the city, including downtown and other
higher-density, mixed-use settings with plentiful access to mass
transit, the minimum-parking requirements should be lifted. The draft
changes also include allowing shared parking between buildings and
requiring set-asides for car-share spaces. We view this as a highly
tailored, "go slow" approach to simplifying and right-sizing parking
requirements after decades of assuming a car-centered city very
different from the one we now plan for." The two agency heads also used
the op-ed to respond to a recent Washington Post Local Opinion by
Sue Hemberger and Lon Anderson, which points to the faulty premises and
data upon which OP is basing ZRR parking regulations,
http://tinyurl.com/bdrwvpg. OP and DDOT
initiatives should be framed within approved guidelines and oriented to
meeting the challenges the city must address if it is to succeed in its
plans for the future. Unfortunately that does not appear to be the
approach that is being pursued.
###############
Parking Rules for a 21st-Century DC
Gabe Goldberg, gabe at gabegold dot com
From an article by Harriet Tregoning, director of the DC Office of
Planning, and Terry Bellamy, director of the DC Department of
Transportation,
http://tinyurl.com/bdrwvpg:
"Few proposals in the comprehensive overhaul being considered for the
District’s 50-year-old zoning code have generated more public interest
than proposed changes to parking requirements. Let’s consider what’s
been proposed and why. Current zoning regulations include a laundry list
of parking minimums (the minimum number of spaces that must be provided)
for each land use. But the same use is treated differently in different
zones, and requirements are calculated on the basis of different
criteria — such as the length of a church pew, the number of employees
or dwelling units, or whether a fast-food building has a side yard.
These use-based parking standards interfere with the adaptive reuse of
buildings and make no distinction between a development with great
access to mass transit and one along an automobile-oriented commuter
corridor."
Tregoning and Bellamy write that, "Concerns about competition for
curbside spaces are understandable, but this is precisely why the DC
Department of Transportation (DDOT) has embarked on a vigorous effort to
examine and update its own regulations, covering everything from the
residential parking permit system to the pricing and management of
parking meters. DDOT has also recently launched the MoveDC effort, a
participatory, long-range plan that will guide future transportation
investments to make it easier for everyone to get around."
Blah, blah, blah, I don’t have much faith that the revisions will do
anything to address ongoing street parking follies that prevent easy
street-parking evening access. Nor do I expect rationalization of
regulations requiring multiple signs and meter stickers governing
individual parking spaces.
###############
Costs of Transportation
Lars H. Hydle,
larshhydle@aol.com
Does anyone know whether DC has a good system for collecting traffic
ticket fines from residents of VA and MD?
And do the Circulator and Bikeshare break even?
###############
Last December over 75 percent of the DC Democratic State Committee
voted for me to fill the District’s at-large council position.
Throughout my life I have worked tirelessly to bring people, ideas, and
resources together to get work done to improve the lives of the people
of the District of Columbia. Since joining the council, I’ve been hard
at work meeting with people across the District to learn how government
can better serve our communities.
On April 23, voters will go to the polls to fill the remaining term
of the at-large council position. I need your support to continue the
work of getting jobs for District residents, increasing the availability
of affordable housing units, developing a quality education system,
addressing health disparities, and giving attention to the needs of
those less fortunate in our communities.
Your help will allow us to have the resources we need to reach out
and secure the support of voters in every neighborhood across the
District. Can you please contribute today to help us build the team we
need to win? Any help is greatly appreciated.
###############
Despite Redskins’ Claims, Concern Over Name
Isn’t Political Correctness Run Wild
Gabe Goldberg, gabe at gabegold dot com
Quoting Robert McCartney’s column,
http://tinyurl.com/b5bqm79: "The only morally
defensible argument for keeping the name of Washington’s professional
football team is that people (like me) who wish to replace ‘Redskins’
are supposedly exaggerating the problem because of political correctness
run wild. In this view, the name’s critics are just a small group of
overly vocal, overly sensitive Native Americans backed by a knee-jerk
chorus of guilt-ridden, non-Indian liberals. . . . ‘There’s nothing that
we feel is offensive,’ Allen said. ‘It’s ludicrous to think that in any
way we’re trying to upset anybody.’ The second half of that quote is
fine. Many Indian advocates concede the team is not consciously ‘trying’
to antagonize them. The wording of the first half is damning, however.
Allen doesn’t understand (or won’t acknowledge) that it’s not up to him,
a white man, to decide what offends Native Americans."
Last point there seems most important, hmmm?
[The problem is that it’s McCartney, a white man, who has decided,
against the available evidence, what he thinks should offend Native
Americans. As I wrote in themail on February 10, the National Annenberg
Election Survey found that 90 percent of American Indians had no problem
with the name of the Washington Redskins, and only 9 percent of American
Indians said that it was offensive. Is it possible that the portion of
American Indians who are offended by the name has increased since the
Annenberg Survey was taken in 2004? It’s entirely possible, since the 9
percent of American Indian activists has been joined by "a knee-jerk
chorus of guilt-ridden, non-Indian liberals" to convince them that they
should be offended. But there has to be better proof than quoting
anti-Redskin activists to prove that a majority of Indians are actually
offended by naming sports teams after Indians. — Gary Imhoff]
###############
Thanks to Mr. Lief who accurately described [themail, February 14]
the Anacostia Indians, Newspaper and Yearbook names. I was a teacher of
Spanish there for 32 years (1967-1999). No one ever thought any less of
the name nor from the "tribe" from which it was derived. The current
diatribes about the Redskin name is only an attention-grabbing exercise
for a few who need their own publicity. Real Redskin fans are proud of
the team and the name.
###############
themail@dcwatch is an E-mail discussion forum that is published
every Wednesday and Sunday. To change the E-mail address for your
subscription to themail, use the Update Profile/Email address link
below in the E-mail edition. To unsubscribe, use the Safe Unsubscribe
link in the E-mail edition. An archive of all past issues is available
at http://www.dcwatch.com/themail.
All postings should be submitted to themail@dcwatch.com, and should
be about life, government, or politics in the District of Columbia in
one way or another. All postings must be signed in order to be
printed, and messages should be reasonably short — one or two brief
paragraphs would be ideal — so that as many messages as possible can
be put into each mailing.
|
