Dear Washingtonians:
In Marc Fisher’s review of Marion Barry’s autobiography,
http://www.tinyurl.com/my17dg2,
Fisher lists what he calls “a quartet of pieces” that are “the essential
reading on Barry”: David Resnick and Richard Avedon, “The Situationist,”
The New Yorker, 1994,
http://www.tinyurl.com/mvkfab5; Harry Jaffe and Tom Sherwood,
Dream City: Race, Politics, and the Decline of Washington; Peter
Perl, “Struggling to Find Himself; As Barry the Mayor Labors, Barry the
Man Languishes, Associates Say,” The Washington Post,
http://www.tinyurl.com/qyjajat;
and Bella Stumbo, “Barry: He Keeps DC Guessing : Media scapegoat? Target
of a racist plot? Victim of his own excesses?” The Los Angeles Times,
http://www.tinyurl.com/navr82d. There are two more books on Barry
that are as important and useful as these four pieces: Jonathan I.Z.
Agronsky, Marion Barry: The Politics of Race, 1991; and Jonetta
Rose Barras, The Last of the Black Emperors: The Hollow Comeback of
Marion Barry in a New Age of Black Leaders, 1998. I’d say that any
of these pieces comes closer to the truth about Marion Barry’s place in
Washington history than Barry’s own Mayor for Life. That doesn’t
say much for Barry’s self-awareness.
Gary Imhoff
themail@dcwatch.com
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The Arrogant City Council, Part 2
Dorothy Brizill,
dorothy@dcwatch.com
In themail on June 4, I wrote that on Thursday, June 5, with no
advance public notice, Kenyon McDuffie, chair of the council’s
Government Operations Committee, held a confirmation hearing for two
nominations (PR20-811 for Willie Phillips and PR20-812 for Betty Ann
Kane) to the three-member Public Service Commission (PSO), which
regulates utilities in the District. Especially troubling was the fact
that within a week of their nominations by Mayor Gray on May 29,
McDuffie held a confirmation hearing on June 5. This appeared to be an
obvious attempt to put the nominations on a very fast track, with
council approval likely to come prior to the council’s summer recess in
July, and to quell any opposition or concern that, given adequate
notice, the public may have expressed regarding the nominees. The desire
to act swiftly on the two nominations was also prompted by the need to
have a fully functioning three-member Public Service Commission in place
by mid-July, as several important issues come before the board,
including plans for the undergrounding of power lines, the sale of PEPCO
to Exelon, the land swap with PEPCO in order to build a soccer stadium
at Buzzards Point, replacing the District’s aging gas infrastructure,
etc.
In the June 4 edition of themail, I posted excerpts of E-mail
correspondence that I sent to McDuffie regarding the June 5 confirmation
hearing. On June 9, four days after those E-mails, McDuffie responded
with the E-mail printed below.
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I have read your string of E-mails, and they have given me some
pause. I believe that over the years we have enjoyed a cordial
relationship, and I am certain that though we have not always agreed on
the final decision, I have not engaged in any action to subvert any
statutorily authorized ability for public comment in any of the matters
that I have presided over. The suggestion that there was some malicious
attempt to conceal nominations and discourage public participation is
patently false. In response to your E-mails there are a few very salient
points I would like to make:
1) I recommended Mr. Phillips to the Mayor because he is a young
professional resident of the District, whom I know to be eminently
qualified for the position. If you review his resume, which I have
attached, I am not sure how anyone can sincerely describe him as having
“a very limited background in public utilities.” 2) Whether Mr. Gulstone
attended law school with Mr. Phillips, is a friend of Mr. Phillips, or
did not know Mr. Phillips is of no moment. The Mayor vetted Mr. Phillips
and determined that Mr. Phillips is qualified for the position. If you
have any questions regarding the Mayor’s vetting process, which to my
understanding took several months, you should direct those questions to
the Mayor’s office. 3) As you know, DC Code Section 38-801 governs the
eligibility of members of the Public Service Commission. To be eligible
for the office a person: a) Must be a bona fide District resident for
the preceding three years; b) Must not, for the preceding year, have
been directly or indirectly interested in any public utility or other
entity appearing before the Commission or in any stock, bond, mortgage,
security, or contract of any public utility or entity, except for stocks
that are a part of a publicly listed mutual fund other than a utility
focused mutual fund; c) Must not, for the preceding five years, have
personally served as an officer, director, owner, manager, partner, or
legal representative of any public utility, affiliate, or direct
competitor of a public utility. 4) Further, DC Code 38-801 provides that
a Commissioner is “appointed by the Mayor with the advice and consent of
the Council.” There is no requirement that the Council conduct a
roundtable. 5) In the event that a committee decides to conduct a
roundtable on a confirmation resolution, Article V of the Council Rules
for Council Period 20 governs the authority and procedure to call such
roundtables. Specifically: “(c) Unless a hearing is required by law or
regulation, a committee may hold a roundtable on any matter relating to
the affairs of the District that is properly within the committee’s
jurisdiction as provided in [the] Rules. . . Committee is not required
to meet the notice requirements of section 421 to hold a roundtable. (d)
A notice of a hearing or roundtable shall be filed with the Secretary.”
6) I encourage you to submit your comments on the nominees for
consideration by the committee and for inclusion in the report. If you
would like to comment on either of the Mayor’s nominees, the record will
remain open until June 15, 2014, at 11:59 p.m. Please feel free to
E-mail your comments / statement to Mr. Ronan Gulstone.
My door remains open if you would like to discuss this matter any
further.
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Responding to Councilmember McDuffie
Dorothy Brizill,
dorothy@dcwatch.com
Noteworthy in Councilmember McDuffie’s E-mail are his troublng tone
and his obvious anger that anyone would dare suggest that he engaged in
an attempt “to conceal nominations and discourage public participation.”
But that is exactly what he did. In paragraph one of his E-mail, he
brags that he recommended Willie Phillips to the mayor as a member of
the PSC, and in paragraph two he writes that that was several months
ago. But in no time during that period did McDuffie ever inform any
citizens, consumer advocates, or Ward 5 constituents of Mr. Phillips’
pending PSC appointment or of the pending confirmation hearing on June 5
for both Betty Ann Kane and Phillips.
Over the past few months, PEPCO has privately been touting the close
relationship it has been able to develop with McDuffie, whose committee
has oversight over the Public Service Commission and the Office of the
Peoples Counsel. Perhaps symbolic of this close relationship is the
thousands of dollars in campaign contributions McDuffie’s 2014 primary
campaign received from PEPCO and virtually every senior corporate
executive at PEPCO Holding, Inc. Of special note, each of the
executives’ checks is written for the maximum legal amount of $500 under
the District’s campaign finance law; all of the checks, with one
exception, are dated February 25, 2014, and all, with two exceptions,
come from non-DC residents. In his E-mail, McDuffie essentially confirms
that Phillips’ nomination to the PSC came about because he was a Howard
University Law School classmate and friend of Ronan Gulstone, staff
director of McDuffie’s Government Operations Committee. Phillips is
currently an attorney at the North American Electric Reliability
Corporation (NERC), a nonprofit corporation established by the electric
utility industry to “promote the reliability and adequacy of bulk power
transmission in the electronic utility systems of North America." Prior
to joining NERC in 2010, Phillips worked for two law firms as an “Energy
Associate” who “advised electric and gas utilities on regulatory,
transactional policy and litigation matters.” Given his history as an
attorney who represented the interests of utility companies, will
Phillips be a fair, disinterested, and objective judge of cases pitting
the interests of utilities against those of consumers and the general
public? The public has been given no opportunity to weigh in on
Phillips’ nomination and to test and question his ability to be
objective.
Finally, the most disconcerting comments by McDuffie are contained in
paragraphs 2 and 4 of his E-mail. In paragraph 2, he expresses
confidence that “the Mayor vetted Phillips” and that “the Mayor’s
vetting process” took several months. Perhaps Mr. McDuffie doesn’t
recall the various appointments that the Gray administration has had to
rescind because of failures in the vetting process, including Sulaimon
Brown’s appointment to the Department of Health Case Finance, Andrea
Pringles’ selection as Deputy Chief of Staff in the Executive Office of
the Mayor, and Robert Mallett’s nomination as Chair of the Board of
Elections. McDuffie writes in paragraph 4 that “there is no requirement
that the council conduct a roundtable” on nominations. That may be
factually accurate, but it fails to acknowledge that for at least the
past twenty years the council held public hearings for all nominees to
the Public Service Commission. Moreover, council records indicate that
an average of 34.57 days elapsed between the time a nomination to the
PSC was introduced in the council and a public hearing was held,
providing adequate time to give public notice of the hearing. In an age
of open government, every councilmember should understand the need to
inform and involve the public via a public hearing on critical public
policy issues.
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CLASSIFIEDS — EVENTS
Citizens Federation Meets on Public Safety,
June 24
Anne Renshaw,
milrddc@aol.com
The DC Federation of Citizens Associations will devote its June 24
public meeting to an analysis of the city’s public safety response by
popular guest speakers Kristopher Baumann and Kenneth Lyons,
representing the DC Police Union and EMS labor organization
respectively. Kristopher Baumann, eight-year chairman of the DC Police
Union, is the current chair of its Legal and Political Affairs
Committee. Kenneth Lyons is president of the union that speaks for the
city’s emergency medical services workforce. Both union officials will
address continuing public safety concerns confronting not only DC
citizens, but MPD and EMS personnel as well. Delroy Burton, DC Police
Union Chairman, will also be in attendance.
The Citizens Federation’s Assembly, which is open to the public, will
be held at One Judiciary Square, 441 4th Street, NW, 11th Floor South
(Room 1114) from 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. Presentations, to include
audience Q&A, will begin at 6:40 p.m., following opening announcements.
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