Dear Downtowners:
Jack McKay, below, asks whether DC is “becoming a traffic enforcement
police state.” This may be an overstatement, but I wouldn’t quarrel too
much with it. At a minimum, DC is becoming the big city equivalent of
the sleepy southern towns of bygone decades that gained fame as speed
traps. A speed trap town would take advantage of the highway that came
through it, erect well-hidden speed limit signs that suddenly reduced
the highway speed to twenty or twenty-five miles for the few blocks
within their jurisdiction, and station patrol cars to catch unwary
out-of-town motorists and impose outsized fines on them. Those fines
would pay for the town’s budget, or at least the police department’s
budget, and the locals could laugh at the tourists who paid their
expenses. Of course, the speed trap towns would never admit they were
targeting drivers for money. They argued that they were merely enforcing
traffic laws to promote safety, and protecting pedestrians who walked on
the sidewalks of the few downtown blocks between the Ace Hardware store
and the A&W Root Beer stand. (I was going to write “the Piggly Wiggly
store,” but most of these towns weren’t big enough to have a grocery as
large as a Piggly Wiggly.)
Tourists, even in the days before the Internet, eventually learned
about the speed trap towns, and learned to avoid them. The AAA guides
and the Mobil travel guides would print warnings about them, and the
days of financing city government with $250 fines for driving over
twenty miles an hour came to an end. In the small, sleepy towns, that
is; not in DC.
For an article on how DC is planning new ways to discourage driving
into town and to make it unattractive and expensive, read Deborah
Simmons’ article in The Washington Times, “A Hot DC Is Point of
No Return,” tinyurl.com/15pg2q3, which begins, “DC officials are
downright greedy and jealous.” And shortsighted. An urban center stays
healthy if it makes itself attractive to people from throughout the
region, not if it makes people from the suburbs think they’re better off
staying in their malls instead of coming downtown.
Gary Imhoff
themail@dcwatch.com
###############
Fixing DC’s Board of Elections
Dorothy Brizill,
dorothy@dcwatch.com
On Tuesday, April 28, the council’s Government Operations Committee
held a public oversight roundtable on the DC Board of Elections’ (BOE’s)
performance in the April 1 primary election. The video of the hearing
can be viewed at
http://208.58.1.36:8080/channel13/April2014/04_28_14_GOVOPS.mp4.
Deborah Nichols, chairman of the BOE’s board, and Clifford Tatum, the
BOE’s executive director, testified. They largely tried to deny that
there were any serious problems regarding how the board conducted the
election, both at the polls and with respect to the tabulation of
election returns. In her written testimony, Nichols argued that, “the BOE’s performance during the April 1 primary election and early voting,
although not perfect, was, in my assessment, successful and met all
statutory requirement and obligations applicable to the Board. We
achieved our statutory mission with a reasonable time. . . .”
For a more objective assessment, see the Washington Post
article by Julie Zauzmer, “A Timeline: What Went Wrong on Election Night
in the District,”
http://tinyurl.com/m19tek9. During the lengthy hearing, both Nichols
and Tatum frequently contradicted themselves and had to acknowledge
discrepancies in their testimony. Aaron Davis wrote an article on the
hearing that said that, “DC elections officials offered an entirely new
explanation Tuesday for the major vote-counting delays that plagued the
city’s April 1 Democratic primary. The issue was not five mishandled
electronic voting machines, but a broad computer network failure. . . .
Deborah Nichols, chairwoman of the elections Board, said that at least
$2 million in new electronic voting machines and server upgrades — and
perhaps another $2 million in computers and other office improvements,
would be needed to ensure timely reporting of results in future citywide
elections,”
http://tinyurl.com/k25dmu6.
In my testimony on behalf DCWatch, I stated that, “In the aftermath
of the primary, angry and frustrated District residents have demanded
that the DC Council hold an oversight hearing. . . . As a longtime
observer and monitor of elections in the District, however, I have come
to the conclusion that more is needed to investigate and fix the
long-standing problems at the DC Board of Elections. To that end, I
would like to formally inform the council Committee on Government
Relations that a small group of prominent DC residents are in the
process of establishing a Citizens Committee for Election Reform in the
District of Columbia. The group will focus on the DC Board of Elections
and Office of Campaign Finance, and will be similar to that of the
Presidential Commission on Election Administration that was established
in March 2013 to improve the conduct of federal elections (https://www.supportthevoter.gov).
The committee itself will be small, nonpartisan, diverse (eight to ten
members), and of short duration (eight to ten months). In the course of
its deliberations, the committee will receive research assistance from
law and graduate school students and also reach out and seek input from
a wide variety of individuals and organizations concerned about the
conduct of District elections (e.g., the League of Women Voters,
the NAACP, the Pew Center, the Federation of Citizens Associations, the
DC Federation of Civic Associations, the DC Bar, Rock the Vote, AARP,
Common Cause, unions, and political parties).”
###############
Is DC Becoming a Traffic Enforcement Police
State?
Jack McKay,
jack.mckay@verizon.net
For forty years my wife and I have been driving cars in DC, with not
a single moving violation citation between us. That is, until now, and
suddenly we’ve both had our perfect driving records ruined by aggressive
Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) enforcement. It’s not that our
driving has changed — like most senior citizens, we’re increasingly
cautious, being very aware of our declining physical abilities — it’s
DC’s enforcement that has, clearly, changed.
My mistake was a minor stumble at a stop sign, a consequence of this
71-year-old’s reflexes not being what they used to be. The MPD officer
who happened to be right behind me was intent on inflicting punishment,
and had no interest in explanations for why I didn’t quite come to a
full stop. My wife got nailed by the speed camera at the bottom of the K
Street underpass. The problem there isn’t the speed camera, it’s the
absurd speed limit, 25 mph at a location where there are no pedestrians,
no cross traffic, no crosswalks, no parked cars, and you’re going to
have to work very hard to bring about a collision with anything. But
there, at the very bottom of the pit, is a speed camera, adroitly
positioned for maximum ticketing. As NBC4 headlined, “DC Mayor Vincent
Gray Proposes More Speed Cameras to Balance Budget.” Can anyone claim,
with a straight face, that that K Street speed camera is about anything
but collecting cash for the District?
Believe me, my 69-year-old wife, physically disabled, is no
“aggressive speeder.” This speed-camera location fits the very
definition of “speed trap.” Between the two of us, we had eighty years
of driving in DC without a single moving violation ticket. What’s
changed? It seems that the MPD is making DC a traffic enforcement police
state, aggressively enforcing speed limits, however unreasonable, and
showing “zero tolerance” for minor mistakes by imperfect drivers.
By the way, I examined historical traffic fatality data in DC, and in
two comparable cities that have no speed cameras, namely New York City
and Philadelphia. Guess what, the decline in New York and Philadelphia,
from 1995 to 2011, is about the same as in DC, despite their having no
speed cameras, versus eighty-seven cameras in operation here. The MPD
claim that their “photo enforcement” devices are reducing traffic
fatalities here is false. Speed cameras may well save lives out on
high-speed highways, but they accomplish little in urban environments,
except to make careful drivers resent the MPD.
###############
New Group to Support DC Archives
Bill Rice,
ricebill@aol.com
At a recent meeting in historic Ben’s Chili Bowl on U Street, NW, a
group of individuals interested in DC government and history came
together to form the Friends of the District of Columbia Archives (FDCA).
The attendees shared a deep concern that the physical and digital
records of the Nation’s Capital are at risk due to the poor physical
conditions at the DC Archives and District-wide inattention to
record-keeping. The FDCA agreed to three immediate goals: 1) bring
public attention and support for the DC Archives though activism in the
District government and with the general public; 2) offer direct support
for the forty-four million dollars the District government committed
last year for a new Archives, including for more funding if needed to
create a world-class facility; and 3) spotlight the Archives’ treasures,
the dangers posed by current conditions, and the importance of saving
the digital records of the city government.
The FDCA includes archivists, historians, DC government employees,
and anyone interested in recovering and preserving the stories of the
District’s past. Participants at the founding meeting had current and
former affiliations with the Historical Society of Washington, DC, the
Society of American Archivists, the Mid-Atlantic Regional Archives
Conference, the National Archives, The George Washington University, and
the DC Archives. The FDCA plans to solicit membership from all who want
to support the Archives. One of its first actions will be to testify
before the Council’s Committee on Government Operations on May 1st.
###############
One City of Neighborhood
Schools or School Choice and Chance “Roulette”?
Erich Martel, ehmartel at starpower dot net
I attended the Round 2 community meetings on DCPS school boundaries,
feeder patterns, and student assignment at Coolidge High School on April
24 and at Dunbar High School on April 26 that were called by Deputy
Mayor for Education (DME) Abigail Smith. The general sentiment at both
meetings favored neighborhood schools with predictable access. Some
criticized the lack of a cap on charter expansion, including a few angry
comments at charters for drawing off more proficient students. When it
became obvious to Smith that predominantly white participants at Dunbar
were not in favor of “choice” and chance, she pulled out the race card —
of course, speaking in euphemisms and abstractions: Since these meetings
have not represented the city’s population, she’s going to organize more
meetings in unrepresented neighborhoods.
With these proposals, Deputy Mayor Smith and Mayor Gray have given
residents of all eight wards a taste of the uncertainty and disregard
for community building that, till now, have been reserved for wards 5,
7, and 8 and parts of wards 1, 2, 4, and 6. All three “Policy Examples”
(A, B, C) would assure uncapped charter school growth and more DCPS
closures through “set asides for children from low quality neighborhood
schools, in an effort to increase equitable access.” Consider what this
really means. What happens to a school and the children left behind,
when the more engaged parents pull their children out? Mayor Gray and
Deputy Mayor for Education Smith want us to imagine that they don’t
exist. “Low quality school” in reform-speak really means “low quality
children” and “low quality teachers.” It’s easier to marginalize people
if they are first turned into statistics or abstractions; after that,
their disappearance will be welcomed. And how would the “high quality
schools” set aside 10 percent or 15 percent of their slots for students
from “low quality schools”? More overcrowding and more temporary
classrooms — and more charter growth — as “low quality schools” are shut
down.
The mayor and chancellor will close more schools, blame (or praise)
“choice,” and transfer buildings to waiting charter operators. Instead
of ensuring that each school is safe and orderly with a range of
engaging subjects beyond core requirements and staffed to meet the range
of readiness that students bring, DME Smith’s options will skim off the
more engaged families, causing further enrollment decline.
The dismantling of DCPS schools and promotion of charters is
facilitated by “Big Lie” euphemisms: “quality school,” “low-performing
school,” etc. Since a school is a building where teachers teach and
students learn, how does a “school” “perform” or be “a quality school”?
For example, how is Deal Middle School (Ward 3) a “high performing
school,” when 197 students (104 African American, 47 Hispanic) were not
proficient in reading in 2013? How is Hart Middle School (Ward 8) a “low
performing school” when 139 students tested proficient in reading”? Is
the school’s percentage of all students in all grades that tested
proficient (Deal, 83 percent; Hart, 30 percent) a true measure of each
teacher’s effectiveness and each student’s mastery? By using the
“school” as a measurable performance unit, mayor and chancellor abdicate
their responsibility for failure, passing it on to the teachers,
principals and, ultimately, students and communities.
As Chief of Transformation for Chancellors Rhee and Henderson
(2007-2011), DME Smith oversaw the 2008 closure of twenty-three schools
and helped institute policies based on untested management theories that
students and teachers will improve, if paid for behavior and grades. Her
“Capital Gains” fiasco quietly died, but the failed teacher bonus and
excessing policies tied to IMPACT evaluations continue. They were funded
by a three-year 64.5 million-dollar grant from the Arnold, Broad,
Robertson, and Walton foundations through the DC Public Education Fund (DCPEF),
which she helped set up and manage. Despite their failure to improve
student learning or even show a correlation to student test results,
their considerable costs were moved to the tax revenue supported budget
(an example of how foundation grants “buy” DCPS policy).
Not only are taxpayers expected to fund bonuses, excessing, IMPACT,
and their staff, the chancellor and mayor also inflated the FY15 teacher
cost, $94,626, by over $5200. When multiplied by over 4000 teachers, it
represents approximately 235 lost teaching positions, 2 or 3 per school.
A genuine One City sees our children’s futures tied to the futures of
children across the city, not misled by Orwellian language that labels
the chancellor’s loss of students as evidence of the success of choice.
###############
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
