Reprinted from this week’s Loose Lips column

Two weeks ago, senior staff at the Office of the Chief Technology Officer got some fresh mountain air at taxpayer expense: 46 agency employees piled into vans and drove the approximately 80 miles to the Skyland Resort in Shenandoah National Park for a “leadership summit� hosted by agency head Vivek Kundra.

The mid-week junket, which included one night’s lodging in the resort’s quaint cabins, cost taxpayers about $23,000.

Now this isn’t quite as galling as the cohort of executives from AIG who spent some $440,000 at the St. Regis Resort in Monarch Beach, Calif., mere days after the feds granted them an $85 billion bailout. And LL doesn’t begrudge an organization—even a government agency—“team-building exercises� and a change of venue. But with a $130 million-and-rising citywide revenue gap, couldn’t the airport Ramada have sufficed? Or perhaps that swank new citywide conference center atop One Judiciary Square—you know, the building where most of OCTO’s staff is housed?

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As much local politics as humanly possible. Send your tips, releases, stories, events, etc. to lips@washingtoncitypaper.com.

Good rainy morning, LLDers. WaPo city-hall beatsters David Nakamura and Nikita Stewart are off Adrian and Vince (for the most part) until January to cover inauguration prep, city editor Marcia Davis tells LL. Fellow Metro deskers, including Hamil Harris will be filling in. Check Stewart’s piece today, with Michael E. Ruane, on parade bleachers!

IN LL WEEKLY—Education Issue! Have any doubt that Michelle Rhee is at the center of the educational world? Then what’s up with this SecEd blather? ALSO: More on the mystery election of Dorothy Douglas and why OCTO spent $23K on a mountain retreat—er, summit.

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT—”Surprise: No DCPS Waitlists for Obamas“; “AP: Obamas Talking to DCPS”

RELIABLE SOURCE: Tony Williams, crime fighter. “I said to myself, ‘Do I just stand here? No, this can’t happen.’…And I just started running.” Said thief: “You used to be the mayor.”

Rhee-WTU tenure fight gets the full NY Times treatment. Writes Sam Dillon, “The union is mobilizing to protect members, and the nation’s capital is bracing for what could be a wrenching labor struggle.” What could be? Already is! Early reaction here.

All you folks jawing about how there’s no decent restaurants in Mount Pleasant? You might get one soon: Businesses catering to Latinos are getting gentrified out of Mount Pleasant, Paul Schwartzman writes in WaPo. LL can feel the “really cool, vibey restaurant/bar” already!

Paul Strauss “fights demands to resign,” Politico reports. KILLER DETAIL FROM DWI ARRAIGNMENT: “Wearing a white French-cuff shirt, paired with a muted blue suit and his grandfather’s gold watch, Strauss looked very much like a senator until he stood up to reveal the lining hanging out of the back of his jacket. He waited, a man with no staff to inform him of this clothing gaffe.”

Petworth gets all riled over police response to shootings, WUSA-TV reports. PLUS: Your possibly only chance to see Cherita Whiting and WCP’s Ted Scheinman in the same 90 seconds of video!

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The AP has it: “D.C. officials say they are discussing public school options with President-elect Barack Obama’s family for their two young daughters.”

That’s apparently gleaned from the following statement released today—which barely, glancingly implies that there has indeed been contact between the Obama family and DCPS:

The Mayor and the Chancellor believe that every parent, including the Obamas, should make the decision on where to send their children to school based solely on what school is in the best interest of the child. We’ve gladly discussed the many educational options at DCPS, encouraged them to explore all of the alternatives and in the end will fully support whatever decision the Obamas make.

Most of that is a rehash of what’s been the DCPS party line since at least Friday. In a conversation Monday evening with LL, Rhee wouldn’t discuss the Obamas’ plans.

On Monday, Politico’s Carol E. Lee penned a where-will-the-Obama-kids-go-to-school piece what started with this fun tidbit:

Someone called Lafayette Elementary in Chevy Chase late last week, wanting to know “what the process is for enrolling children who don’t live within the school’s boundaries.

“The caller gave an address: 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue — the White House — and said there would be two children.”

Principal Lynn Main told Lee she took it as a hoax, but the anecdote does raise the question: What exactly would the enrollment process be for the Obama kids, assuming they didn’t want to attend their in-boundary elementary, Francis-Stevens Education Center in Dupont Circle the West End.

For instance, more than one person has suggested that Oyster-Adams Bilingual School—where DCPS Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee sends her kids—would be a strong choice. As would other high-performing DCPS elementaries such as Janney, Eaton, Shepherd, Murch, or, yes, Lafayette.

Would the Obamas have to go through the same out-of-boundary process as anyone else?

LL put the question to Rhee in an e-mail: “I have the discretion to assign kids to schools during the school year,” she replied.

In other words, on the rare chance that Michelle Obama opts for DCPS, she can pick any damn school she wants.

As much local politics as humanly possible. Send your tips, releases, stories, events, etc. to lips@washingtoncitypaper.com.

Good morning, and greetings to Chancellor Michelle Rhee, who spent yesterday in Seattle at a Gates Foundation conference focusing on “how to improve high schools so that students could succeed in college.”

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT—“Things Get Messy With WaPo, Fenty, and DCPS”; “Cheh Touts Evidence of “Sleeper Glitches” in Election Results”

WaPo editorial board gives Vincent Gray and the D.C. Council a pat on the back for making the cuts the Fenty administration wouldn’t. So lemme get this straight, WaPo: taking a look at school construction contracts is too much fiscal responsibility?

Fire investigators say they were forced out of their jobs for saying Eastern Market blaze was arson, reports NC8/WJLA. “As two of the most experienced arson investigators, Pennington and Bowyer were also on a covert team searching for a person responsible for a rash of dumpster fires. Five months later, 28-year-old Joel Ramos emerged as a suspect. He was picked up by police on a malicious burning charge for setting a fire in an alley near Eastern Market….Sources said the arrest wasn’t publicized because arson didn’t fit with the department’s original theory. According to police records, Ramos never stood trial because a couple of months later, his body washed ashore in King George County, Va. After his death, which investigators deemed natural, the dumpster fires stopped.”

MPD assistant chief Winston Robinson to head up training, Bill Myers reports in the Examiner, replacing the demoted Joshua Ederheimer. Robinson has quite the history. Bonus—gratuitous Mary Cheh quote!

Is Jim Graham already dismantling the Carol Schwartz legacy? Public works committee chair floats charging for parking on Saturdays, in addition to a 50 percent across-the-board parking meter hike. Also WTTG-TV.

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It’s always something, at least when it comes to elections in the District of Columbia.

This afternoon, Ward 3 Councilmember Mary M. Cheh, who chairs a special council committee on elections, announced in a press release that her office had found several minor anomalies with the Nov. 4 results that “may indicate larger problems in the District’s election software.”

• In SMD 6B11, unofficial election results showed no precincts reporting and 5 undervotes.
• In SMD 5C09, which votes in a single precinct, 74, 15 votes were cast in Precinct 73.
• In SMD 6C09, three votes were recorded in that race in Precinct 1, when city registration records show that only two voters in that precinct should be eligible to vote in that race.

Here’s Cheh’s money quote: “We cannot afford to have these sleeper glitches, which can come to the surface unexpectedly like gremlins and damage confidence in the results the Board of Elections and Ethics reports.â€�

Cheh wants Sequoia to cough up the source code for their election-machine software, which the committee had subpoenaed after problems with the Sept. 9 primary election. Pro bono lawyers from firm Jenner & Block are helping Cheh enforce the subpoena.

The committee has a hearing scheduled for Thursday at 10 a.m.

Oh, my: Mayor Adrian M. Fenty muzzled one of his employees against her own advice.

Check Bill Turque’s D.C. Wire account for the full back story, but the short version is that Turque was working on a story about Michelle Rhee’s “Plan B” on how to get rid of bad teachers in the event that contract negotiations didn’t work out. Part of that, Turque reported at the time, involved tying teacher licensing to classroom performance—which falls under the bailiwick of State Superintendent of Education Deborah Gist.

Before commenting, Gist told Turque she’d have to check with Fenty chief of staff Carrie Brooks. No response ever came from Gist, though Brooks later denied putting the kibosh on any comment.

Rather, the kibosh came from Fenty himself, after Rhee weighed in by saying that any comment could be “very messy”: “Yes. Don’t speak with him (and please don’t tell him something like. ‘the mayor has told me not to speak with you’),” Hizzoner wrote. “Just don’t pick up the phone.”

Oof. This would be the best insight into mayoral communications strategy since LL laid bare the WaPo’s inside track on announcing Rhee’s appointment in June 2007.

Since then, the Post’s honeymoon has ended, at least on the news-reporting side. (The editorial board is still perfectly smitten.) Since Rhee’s appointment, the D.C. education beat has been fraught for Metro reporters. V. Dion Haynes and Theola Labbé-DeBose held the beat for the first portion of Rhee’s tenure, but Labbé-DeBose was taken off the beat in late March, then Haynes departed for a biz-desk job. Turque, a veteran former Newsweek reporter who had been covering the Virginia suburbs for the Post, was brought in amid rumors that Rhee was at odds with Turque’s predecessors.

Now today’s revelation, plus the string of Rhee no-comments in recent Turque stories, can only be taken as a sign that the Chancellor isn’t a whole lot happier with Turque’s reporting.

As much local politics as humanly possible. Send your tips, releases, stories, events, etc. to lips@washingtoncitypaper.com.

Good morning and a HAPPY VETERANS DAY to all you LLDers. Anyone out there seen Carol Schwartz?

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT—“Va. GOP Uses ‘Senator’ Marion Barry in Fundraising Pitch”

Council passes budget gap-closing plam, with nearly $50 million in cuts over and above what Mayor Adrian M. Fenty had proposed. Housing advocates and WIN not so happy about that. Marion Barry raises a fuss and gets applause from the crowd, but ends up voting for the plan anyway. Lame duck Schwartz is a no-show (she did attend a Thursday closed-door meeting on the plan). WaPo story; Examiner story; WaTimes story

WaTimes: “D.C. residents trying to see President-elect Barack Obama’s inauguration are worried that they will be left without tickets because the distribution system favors states with full voting rights….States with a smaller population than the District, including Wyoming, would conceivably get three times as many tickets.”

After reports of a school out of control, Hart MS principal is fired. Kisha Webster tells Bill Turque in the WaPo that “she had been ’set up’ by District officials. She said she was put in charge of the Anacostia middle school without the resources made available to other struggling schools.”

GODDAMN MEDIA—Said Webster, “If I had been able to keep things quiet, I’d still be there.”

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Washingtonian’s Garrett Graff files the latest dispatch in the ongoing Malia-and-Sasha watch.

He’s betting on Maret—not Sidwell, not GDS. (How come NCS never makes any of these shortlists? The Episcopalians need some PR help!)

Within Graff’s CW rehash, with a dash of circumstantial insight sprinkled atop, is a vomit-inducing abuse of anonymity:

“The school is a warm, diverse, caring environment where everyone is treated the same,� says one Maret parent who begged anonymity. “The kids are fiercely loyal to the school and each other. Students are valued for themselves and not for their parents occupations or bank accounts.�

Lemme get this straight: First, someone would “beg” for anonymity while delivering a rah-rah, self-serving, anodyne quote pumping up how wonderful and diverse their kids’ school is, and second, Graff would actually cave?

How hard is it to get a parent to say nice things about their kids’ school on the record?

Via WaPo’s Virginia Politics blog, we learn that Virginia Republican Party chair Jeffrey M. Frederick, the guy who couldn’t keep his state from voting for a Democratic president for the first time since 1964, has a new fundraising message out. Reports Tim Craig:

In another inflammatory barb, Frederick says Obama will push for voting rights for the District of Columbia and council member Marion Barry will become a United States senator.

“We beat back radical liberalism in the past and we can do it again,” Frederick wrote. “We must.”

As much local politics as humanly possible. Send your tips, releases, stories, events, etc. to lips@washingtoncitypaper.com.

Good morning, all. And HAPPY BELATED BIRTHDAYS to Phil Mendelson and Vincent Gray, both of whom marked another year on Saturday. The chairman celebrated his 66th Friday evening at F. Scott’s in Georgetown. Put party reports in the comments!

“What D.C. should expect from Obama administration?” asks Michael Neibauer in the Examiner. Voting rights? Budget autonomy? Federal payment? All of the above?

David Nakamura writes up the latest voting-rights feud in the WaPo. With a solid Democratic congressional majority and a Democratic president, should we be aiming for a House vote (likely) or full statehood (not so likely)? Don’t look to Hizzoner for answers: “Fenty declined to take a position on what route the city should pursue, saying he wants to work with the Obama administration, congressional leaders and other city officials to develop a game plan that has the best chance for success.”

Hart Middle School, in Congress Heights, is overrun with violence, reports Bill Turque in the WaPo. “D.C. Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee has dispatched a team of administrators and extra security to an Anacostia middle school where three teachers have been assaulted, a 14-year-old was charged with carrying a shotgun and students have run the hallways discharging fire extinguishers.”

HERE’S THE MONEY SENTENCE: “While Woodard was speaking, he and a Washington Post reporter observed a security guard stand by and watch as a boy with a bandage on his left ear was pummeled on the head by a larger girl swinging her book bag.”

Council looks to go $50 million deeper with cuts than Mayor Fenty’s proposal, reports WaPo. And “the Examiner has learned” that it was all Vince Gray’s idea! The protesters are out at the Wilson Building.

MALIA AND SASHA WATCH—From Gotham Schools; RedState.com; from Jay Mathews in the WaPo; and a fab piece from Gabriel Sherman in the Atlantic

Fred Hiatt in the WaPo: Rhee “may not be able to succeed without at least the tacit support of Barack Obama.”

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BREAKING FROM OBAMA PRESSER: President-Elect Barack Obama, in response to a question from Chicago Sun-Times reporter Lynn Sweet, says, “Michelle will be scouting out some schools. We’ll make a decision on that in the future.”

Also a note to national reporters: Stop asking Michelle Rhee to shill for D.C. Public Schools! Rhee spokesperon Dena Iverson says she’s taken numerous phone calls from reporters asking her boss to make a case for sending young Sasha and Malia to a DCPS school. “She isn’t going to do that,” she says. “Parents should make their decision on whatever is best for their kids. It shouldn’t be a political decision.”

Earlier this week, LL first reported, the city’s Contract Appeals Board ruled that the Office of the Chief Financial Officer had properly awarded the controversial lottery contract to W2I, the partnership between Greek firm Intralot and locals W2Tech, over the previous contract holders, Lottery Technology Enterprises.

The panel’s ruling isn’t the end of the saga, however: In a letter sent to councilmembers yesterday, LTE head Leonard Manning wrote that his outfit intends to appeal the CAB decision in D.C. Superior Court. Such a move further draws out the process that has become a political flashpoint, with the D.C. Council refusing to take action to approve the contract, which stands to save the District $40 million over 10 years.

Mayor Adrian M. Fenty told LL on Wednesday he intends to resubmit the contract—again—in hopes that the council will vote to approve. Yesterday, in comments to LL, Interim Attorney General Peter J. Nickles amplified that stance: “We trust that the council will now schedule the matter for an up-or-down vote.”

LTE’s decision to pursue an appeal could provide political cover to Council Chairman Vincent C. Gray—who has not gone out of his way to move the contract, to say the least—by allowing him to refuse action on the grounds of a pending court proceeding. And come January, with the election of Michael A. Brown, the chances of the contract passing don’t get any better.

Meanwhile, the CFO’s office has taken steps to prepare for a rebid—a process that’s expected to result in a much worse deal for the District.

UPDATE, 2:54 P.M.: W2I spokesperson Crystal Wright points out that LTE partner GTECH has pursued a similar strategy in Ohio. “This is what they do. They don’t want to accept the reality that they lost this RFP….at a time, I might add, when there’s a $130 million shortfall in the District of Columbia….It’s time for the D.C. Council to do the right thing.”

As much local politics as humanly possible. Send your tips, releases, stories, events, etc. to lips@washingtoncitypaper.com.

Good morning, all. Yesterday was local politician day at the H. Carl Moultrie I Courthouse.

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT—Report: Brazil Punched Guy “in the Back [of] the Head With a Closed Fist”; Brazil Pleads Not Guilty; Strauss Pleads Not Guilty!

Your new head of Employment Services is Joseph P. Walsh, former director of policy and planning for the Massachusetts Executive Office of Labor and Workforce Development. Mayor Adrian M. Fenty plucks one off of Mass Gov. Deval Patrick’s bench. David Nakamaura reports in the WaPo. Also Jonathan O’Connell in the Biz Journal.

HMMM—So what’s next for Tene Dolphin? Fenty’s confidante and first chief of staff left the third-floor bullpen to get DOES back in line after Summer Spencer’s firing. Now, says Fenty spokesperson Mafara Hobson, Dolphin will be sticking around for a bit to help Walsh with the transition. But after that? Hobson could not confirm that Dolphin would be remaining with the administration. Nakamura has more at D.C. Wire., inclufing this: “One administration official speculated the Dolphin, who has worked with the Democratic National Committee, might be angling for a job in an Obama administration.”

MALIA AND SASHA WATCH CONT.—Examiner: “Presidential children have eschewed D.C. Public Schools since Amy Carter’s four-year stint in the late 1970s, but recent reforms to the district could lure back the nation’s new first family….However, the odds aren’t great.” Also DCist; bloggers Joanne Jacobs, Ed in the Apple, Dee Does the District

Harry Jaffe has a D.C. wish list for Barack Obama.

ALSO FROM JAFFE—In Washingtonian: Fenty’s midterm report card; “Born to Run,” a lengthy profile of Hizzoner

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A tattoo-shop employee told police that former At-Large Councilmember Harold Brazil cursed at him, pushed him into a wall, then began punching him “with a closed fist” in the back of the head, according to documents filed by prosecutors [PDF]. This went down at Jinx Proof Tattoo in Georgetown at about 7:20 p.m. on Oct. 9, after a female companion of Brazil’s was told that she couldn’t watch another female companion get inked in the back of the shop.

According to the report, one of the women also told police that Brazil had pushed the shop employee. The full text of the report is after the jump.

This morning, Brazil pleaded not guilty to misdemeanor assault charges.

Also of note: Today is Brazil’s 60th birthday.

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