Dear Washingtonians:
Three articles to add to your must-read list: Jonetta Rose Barras,
“Mayor Gray’s Legacy Won’t Be His Budget Veto,”
http://www.tinyurl.com/k45u99t;
Eve Bratman and Adam Jadhav, in The Atlantic’s City Lab, “How Low-Income
Commuters View Cycling,”
http://www.tinyurl.com/p2ktr7s; and Sandhya Somashekhar’s “Health
Survey Gives Government Its First Large-Scale Data on Gay, Bisexual
Population CDC Survey on Sexuality,”
http://www.tinyurl.com/mtovpx7.
Barras opens her article with a blunt assessment, “What was Mayor
Vincent C. Gray (D) thinking? His decision to veto the DC Council’s 2015
spending plans was just about the lamest act of any lame-duck politician
in recent local history.” Further, “Gray called himself ‘disappointed’
by the override. That’s likely an understatement. Council members have
been riding roughshod over him and his administration since his primary
loss. The budget veto may have been his attempt to reclaim authority.
But a smart politician would have used a more effective, less
embarrassing way to reassert influence.”
Bratman and Jadhav are both bicycling enthusiasts who want to
increase the number of people who bike. But they are also honest
researchers. “With a $29 budget and a team of American University
students, we surveyed more than 260 commuters in two surveys in 2012 and
2013. Below are three of our key findings.” First, “poor respondents
spent more time commuting,” meaning that they had longer commuting
times, largely because of having to take public transportation. Second,
and most controversially among bicycling promoters, “Most people, poor
and non-poor alike, still want cars. In 2012, survey participants ranked
car ownership as the most desirable among nine transportation mode
options. In 2013, 55 percent of respondents strongly agreed with the
statement ‘I want to own my own car.’ Even increasingly popular
car-sharing was not satisfying for respondents; when asked if they would
‘rather share a car through a program like Zipcar or Car2Go than own my
own vehicle,’ 35 percent strongly disagreed. Also, 32 percent strongly
disagreed with ‘I want a lifestyle where I don’t need to own a car.’”
Third, “Cycling just isn’t popular among the urban poor (yet). In 2012,
respondents ranked cycling seventh out of nine transport modes, ahead of
only taxis and bike sharing.” The comments on the article are largely
negative, with pro-bicyling commentators insisting bicycling is the wave
of the future and the way to save the earth, and that poor people who
think they want to own a car don’t understand their own best interest.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention did the survey about
which Somashekhar reports. “The National Health Interview Survey, which
is the government’s premier tool for annually assessing Americans’
health and behaviors, found that 1.6 percent of adults self-identify as
gay or lesbian, and 0.7 percent consider themselves bisexual. The
overwhelming majority of adults, 96.6 percent, labeled themselves as
straight in the 2013 survey. An additional 1.1 percent declined to
answer, responded ‘I don’t know the answer’ or said they were ‘something
else.’” Again, the comments on this article are largely negative, with a
typical gay commentator writing that the number is much too low and
that, “I’ll trust my Gaydar over this crap any day.”
Gary Imhoff
themail@dcwatch.com
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Our Dysfunctional City Council
Dorothy Brizill,
dorothy@dcwatch.com
At Monday’s legislative session, the city council voted to approve
the nominations of Betty Ann Kane and Willie L. Phillips to the Public
Service Commission. The vote came despite requests by civic and
community leaders that the council postpone any vote on the nominations
until the fall. In an open letter all councilmembers, these leaders
cited the lack of public notice regarding the June 5 confirmation
hearing, the need to evaluate Betty Ann Kane’s seven-year tenure on the
PSC, and the need to research and determine whether Phillips, an
attorney working at a trade association for electrical utility
companies, is eligible to be a member of the PSC under DC Code 34-801.
The full text of that open letter is below.
In a July 16 article in the Washington Business Journal, Jeff
Clabaugh writes about a new J.D. Power customer satisfaction survey,
released in February, and notes that “Pepco Ranks Near Bottom in
Customer Satisfaction Survey,”
http://www.tinyurl.com/lktf3c6: “The survey, which measures customer
satisfaction based on power quality and reliability, price, billing and
payment, corporate citizenship, communications and customer service,
puts Pepco at No. 15 out of 17 East Cost utilities.”
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Civic Leaders Request Delay in Council
Consideration of PSC Nominations
Dorothy Brizill, DCWatch, dorothy@dcwatch.com; Gerri
Adams-Simmons, Federation of Civic Associations; Ann Renshaw, Federation
of Citizens Associations; Herb Harris, Consumer Utility Board; Keith
Ivey, DC for Democracy; Joslyn Williams, Metropolitan Council, AFL-CIO
On Monday, July 14, the council will hold its final legislative
session prior to the summer recess and will consider the nominations of
Betty Ann Kane (PR20-812) and Willie L. Phillips (PR20-811) to serve on
the Public Service Commission (PSC). A coalition of civic and community
leaders and organizations (including the Federation of Civic
Associations, the Federation of Citizens Associations, the Consumer
Utility Board, DCWatch, DC for Democracy, and the Metropolitan Council
AFL-CIO) is reaching out to you at this late date to inform you about
the troubling special circumstances surrounding these two nominations
and to enlist your support in getting the council to postpone any action
of the nominations until the fall.
Within the District government, the Public Service Commission is
charged with regulating utilities in the city, including electric,
natural gas, and telecommunication companies. With its broad mandate,
the work of the PSC touches the life of every resident and business that
operates in Washington. Over the past few weeks, several articles have
been published in themail@dcwatch.com detailing the highly unusual
manner in which Councilmember Kenyan McDuffie, chair of the council’s
Government Operations Committee, handled the two nominations to the PSC
(http://www.dcwatch.com/themail/2014/14-06-04.htm,
http://www.dcwatch.com/themail/2014/14-06-15.htm, and
http://www.dcwatch.com/themail/2014/14-06-29.htm). In addition,
there are several other matters that raise concern:
1) The June 5 confirmation hearing of the council’s Government
Operations Committee was held without any public notice, and therefore
citizens did not attend or participate in the review of the nominees.
The timeline was that the nominations were introduced in the council on
Thursday, May 29, and referred to the Government Operations Committee on
June 3. The Government Operations Committee held the roundtable hearing
on June 5, and on Friday, June 6, the notice of the committee hearing
was published in the DC Register. Council records indicate that, for at
least the past twenty years, a public hearing has been held for all
nominees to the PSC, and that an average of 34.57 days elapsed between
the time a nomination was introduced in the council and a confirmation
hearing was held, providing adequate time for public notice. Because the
work of the PSC touches the lives of every District resident and
business, the confirmation process for appointees to the Commission must
be particularly open and transparent.
2) In addition to regulating utilities in the District, in the coming
months the PSC will have several additional important issues to review,
for example, plans for the undergrounding of power lines, the sale of
Pepco to Exelon, the city’s land swap with Pepco in order to build the
soccer stadium at Buzzards Point, and the need to replace the District’s
aged gas infrastructure.
3) At a minimum, the confirmation hearing on Betty Ann Kane must
include a review of her seven-year tenure on the PSC and the widely held
belief, for example, that she is neither fair not objective with regard
to Pepco-related matters. And the confirmation of Phillips must allow
for a review of his professional work as an attorney representing
utilities. Since 2010, Phillips has been a senior attorney at the North
American Electric Reliability Corporation, a trade association of
electric utility companies including Pepco. He has been the attorney of
record representing NERC’s membership before various regulatory bodies,
including the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). DC Code
34-801 details the criteria for appointment to the PSC. It states that
“a person shall not be eligible for appointment as a commissioner if the
person, at any time during the 5 years preceding appointment, personally
served as an officer, director, owner, manager, partner, or legal
representative of a public utility, affiliate, or direct competitor of a
public utility.” At the very least, there should be a thorough review of
Phillips’ tenure at NERC and a determination made as to whether he is
eligible to serve on the PSC under this provision of the Code.
Civic and community leaders are especially concerned regarding the
council process and review of the nominations, and ask for a
postponement of any council action on the appointments until the fall,
after the summer recess.
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InTowner
July
Issue Content Uploaded
P.L. Wolff,
intowner@intowner.com
The July issue content can be viewed at
www.intowner.com, including the issue PDF in which will be found the
primary news stories and museum exhibition reviews — plus all photos and
other images. Not included in the PDF but linked directly from the home
page is Stephen A. Hansen’s “What Once Was” feature — this month
intriguingly titled, “What Does the ‘Washington Post March’ Have to Do
with the Embassy of Peru?”
This month’s lead stories include the following: 1) “ABC Board Issues
New Rules Modifying and Extending Adams Morgan Liquor License Moratorium
by Three Years”; 2) “Dupont Circle’s Stead Park Athletic Field
Redevelopment Soon to Start, Further Plans for Park’s Rehab Endorsed by
Neighbors” — along with a special updating report that raises DC agency
competency issues; 3) “Gleaming New Safeway Store Opens in Petworth.” In
addition to the lead stories, on the Community News page will be found a
report titled “Historic Carnegie Library Redevelopment Planning
Underway.” Also to be found on the web site pages are the “Reservations
Recommended” and “Food in the ‘Hood” columns. The recent real estate
sales feature will be updated within 24 hours.
The title of our editorial, “Bicycle Riding on Neighborhood Sidewalks
and More: What Can be Done?” speaks for itself. Your thoughts will be
E-mail to newsroom[at]intowner.com. The next issue PDF will publish
early in the morning of August 8 (the second Friday of the month as
usual). For more information, either send an E-mail to
newsroom[at]intowner.com or call 234-1717.
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