On Saturday afternoon, LL was watching the weather report with bated breath, as a line of thunderstorms threatened to put the kibosh on this year’s Capital Pride Parade, the centerpiece of the yearly gay-community celebration and the first chance for the players in this year’s campaign season to truly come out. (Yes, pun intended.)

Luckily, the show went on. The big news of the parade were the mystery signs:

All along the parade route, posted on lampposts were signs reading “Ask Carol Schwartz why she OPPOSES marriage equality” in Schwartz’ trademark yellow-and-white. The signs carried absolutely no indication of where they might have come from. Shady!

Gay activist Peter Rosenstein told LL he had seen folks on stepladders posting the signs earlier in the afternoon, but neither he nor anyone else LL consulted had any idea who they were. The challengers who marched in the parade—Adam Clampitt, Dee Hunter, and Patrick Mara—all denied having anything to do with the signs. (A Clampitt aide, in fact, phoned in a preemptive denial, before LL even showed up for the parade.)

Schwartz called it “the work of a cowardly liar” and furthermore implored LL not to “rain on my parade” (har har) by giving the cowards any ink—sorry, Carol! (For more on the does-Carol-support-gay-marriage theme, read Washington Blade articles by Rosenstein and by Schwartz.)

LL thought he might have solved the mystery when, right on the middle of the 17th Street NW commercial strip, a spectator holding one of the signs in one hand and a drink in the other marched right out to confront Schwartz, who was walking behind her yellow Pontiac Firebird. From a distance, LL seemed to see Schwartz saying to the interloper, “I do! I do!” in response to the sign’s query.

After Schwartz passed, LL asked the man, Andrew Campbell of Dupont Circle, whether he’d been involved in the signmaking. Nope, he said—”I pulled it off the lamppost.”

LL quizzed him further on the reasoning behind his anti-Schwartz stance. “I dunno,” he said. “Look at what the sign says!”

The crowd rest of the crowd seemed not to care much. Take this spectator reaction to the confrontation: “Tell him to fuck off, Carol!”

Many more pix after the jump! Read the rest of this entry »

Greater Southeast Community Hospital, the long-troubled Ward 8 facility, is no more—in name, anyway. This morning, hospital leaders, along with a gaggle of dignitaries, announced the hospital will be “rebranded” as United Medical Center. By the time LL left the press conference, workers outside were stringing up new temporary signs over the old ones.

The hospital is six months into an overhaul started by new owners Specialty Hospitals of America and financed in part by a $79 million bailout by the city. About $20 million of that is to be paid back, and the hospital took the opportunity today to present the city with the requisite “big check” representing its first $1 million payment.

Among the boldface names in the house for the show: Mayor Adrian M. Fenty, At-Large Councilmember and health committee chair David A. Catania, health department head Pierre Vigilance, former Ward 8 councilmembers Sandy Allen of Ward 8 and Nadine Winter of Ward 6, interim attorney general Peter Nickles, and former Redskin great George Starke, who will be serving a community liaison for the hospital. Ward 8 Councilmember Marion Barry strolled in about 50 minutes after the scheduled starting time, to the wildest applause of the day—outstripping even Catania, who did the actual heavy lifting to keep the hospital open.

“Some of you may ask, what’s in a name?” said Specialty President Eric Rieseberg. “Not a whole lot actually.” Instead, he and colleagues pointed to a gaggle of new equipment being installed in the facility as evidence of progress, everything from radiology equipment to fetal heart monitors and sterilization machines. Improvements to the building’s physical plant continue, as well—a blue tarp covers one side of the hospital tower where windows and walls are being repaired. Said Rieseberg, to a nervous laugh, “this building in the future will not only be windtight but also waterproof!”

But, said hospital CEO Gary Lowe, “we’re not out of the woods….We have a long time before we can begin to feel comfortable.”

Perhaps the biggest issue for the hospital going forward will be to establish its accreditation, which it lost late last year based on evaluations done before the Specialty takeover. After the loss of accreditation, several private insurers have refused to pay for care at the facility.

Rowe says the hospital could have appealed that ruling earlier this year, but chose not to. “I didn’t think we deserved to be accredited,” he says. Losing that appeal would have meant a two-year wait before another application could be submitted. Rowe says a new application will be submitted next month, in the hopes of having accreditation back in place by early 2009.

Klingle Road Is Dead: The D.C. Council just voted 10-3 to keep language in the city budget that would close Klingle Road and replace it with a hiker/biker trail, perhaps, just maybe bringing a 17-year saga close to its end. LL’s tally of votes held up with one exception: At-Large Councilmember David A. Catania, who voted to open the road in 2003, voted today to close it, citing the federal government’s failure to approve funding for the reconstruction. In his comments on the matter, Catania adopted LL’s point of view: enough of this shit already. “I believe the majority of the citizens of the city wouldn’t be able to find Klingle Road if you put a gun to their head,” he said. “I hope that once and for all we can put this issue to rest.” —Mike DeBonis

The battle over the noise bill, recently brought back from the dead, comes to a head today at the D.C. Council’s legislative meeting.

Actually, the battle is well underway: At this morning’s council breakfast meeting, councilmembers got pretty huffy over the bill’s prospects. Ward 2 Councilmember Jack Evans described an amendment he plans to introduce that would distinguish between amplified noise in residential areas, where it would be limited to 80 decibels as measured inside a residence, and commercial areas, where there would be no limits. The distinction, he explained, was necessary to protect the interests of unions (Local 25 of the Hotel and Restaurant Employees was specifically mentioned) who want to hold protests—including protests outside three large hotels located inside residential zones (the Washington Hilton, the Wardman Park Marriott, and the Omni Shoreham).

Also, rather than empowering police officers to enforce the law as originally proposed, the amendment would require readings to be taken by noise inspectors from the Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs. That, Evans explains, is because the unions “have an enormous distrust of the Metropolitan Police Department.”

Ward 6 Councilmember and bill cosponsor Tommy Wells initially suggested a compromise amendment that would keep the residential/commercial distinction, but lower the threshold to 70 decibels, as measured outside a residence. To placate the unions, Wells proposed allowing amplified speech within 100 feet of a hotel with 50 rooms or more.

So what does 70 decibels sound like? Some said “freight train”; Evans likened it to one of his favorite hangouts: “It’s Cafe Milano on a busy night,” he said.

Wells took a dig at Evans, who had loudspeaker-equipped protesters outside his Georgetown home early on a Sunday morning earlier this year: “As Jack learned, noise is used…as a weapon.”

Then At-Large Councilmember David A. Catania said, essentially, screw this union shit: “What offends me about this is in the effort to pander to one constituency…we’ve basically said to the community, ‘Good luck!’” After Catania’s spiel, At-Large Councilmember Carol Schwartz also spoke again the union pander, and Ward 3 Councilmember Mary M. Cheh stood up for the provisions in the original bill, which she cosponsored. The hotel exception, she says, is “beyond pandering.”

The meeting broke up when Evans stalked out shortly before 10 a.m.; Cheh, Wells, and others huddled to discuss strategy.

Shortly before the start of the meeting, Wells told LL that he and his allies would offer no amendment unless Evans’ amendment passes.

“Healthy DC,” the plan put forth in March by At-Large Councilmember David A. Catania that aimed to insure every District resident, looks to be dead.

In its place, Catania announced at the D.C. Council’s pre-legislative meeting press conference this morning, the D.C. Healthcare Alliance—which covers the District’s poorest residents—will be expanded so that uninsured folks who earn more than the Alliance’s ceiling of about $21,000 can buy in for a premium that would be no more than 3 percent of their income.

There are a few catches: One, the requirement that all District residents carry some form of insurance goes away in the new proposal; two, the proposed funding level will only support about 15,000 of the 25,000 estimated uninsured originally targeted; and three, the benefits won’t include any mental-health or substance abuse treatment. The program is still proposed to be funded out of a $1-per-pack hike on cigarette taxes and new taxes on HMOs.

Catania hinted that the reason for the collapse of the orginal plan was a failure to get CareFirst, the District’s Blue Cross Blue Shield licensee and largest health insurer, to buy in to the plan. The company—which, in the original Healthy DC plan essentially administered the program—was unwilling to move forward unless the District assumed all of the risk on the deal. CareFirst had also come into some criticism for essentially getting handed the program on a no-bid basis.

“CareFirst has had, the best way to characterize it, a change of heart,” he said. Catania did say the new plan “doesn’t let them off the hook,” in that CareFirst is still required by law to engage in a substantial community benefits program.

[UPDATE, 3:40 P.M.: Catania's chief of staff, Ben Young, disagrees with LL's choice of words: “Healthy DC is not dead. However, we may need to take a different approach.”]

Other notes from the presser:

• Vince Gray Punctuality Watch: Things kicked off at 10:14 a.m.—14 minutes late and 2 minutes worse than last month. But that’s OK, ’cause LL was 10 minutes late.
• Ward 6 Councilmember Tommy Wells introduced a suite of improvements to child-welfare services contained in the fiscal 2009 budget, plus a couple of as-yet-unfunded proposals. The sexiest of them is a proposal for a tax credit of up to $2,000 for folks who mentor youth; employers who let their employees do mentoring would get a tax credit toward the costs. Wells said he’s yet to get a fiscal impact statement on his proposals, saying, “We certainly know what it costs in terms of losing our youth.” That comment drew an audible sigh from Ward 2 Councilmember and fiscal watchdog Jack Evans.
• The council’s investigation into the OTR tax scandal continues, led by the pro bono efforts of the Wilmer Hale law firm. Gray says the probe “is not at the stage where we’re ready to release any findings.” Investigators are looking to interview “30 to 35″ persons about the scandal, Gray says. Discussion of the tax scandal led to a withering line of questioning from the Examiner tag team of Jonetta Rose Barras, Michael Neibauer, and Bill Myers, all of whom asked about an audit of the District’s tax system commissioned by the CFO’s office. Gray said he hadn’t read the report; though Evans had reviewed the report, he declined to comment.
• Gray will be introducing a “Sense of the Council” resolution in opposition to hate crimes. Talk about something everyone can get behind.
• The single-sales bans in Wards 7 and 8 are moving forward, and the ban in Ward 4 is likely to be made permanent.
• The noise bill will be back before the council tomorrow. Evans, who had said he would likely introduce amendments to the bill, declined to say whether he would do so.
• Ceremonial resolutions galore tomorrow, including one for your playoff-qualifying Washington Capitals. Owner Ted Leonsis will be on hand for the occasion.

Tomorrow’s the monthly D.C. Council legislative meeting. This morning, Council Chairman Vincent C. Gray held his usual preview press conference. Here’s the rundown:

• Vince Gray Punctuality Watch: The presser kicked off at 9:42 a.m.—12 minutes late. Getting better, Mr. Chairman!
• Things kicked off with a presentation from At-Large Councilmember David A. Catania on his “Healthy DC” universal-health-care plan. The meat of the policy proposal is to provide an affordable health insurance option for a relatively small part of the city populace: the approximately 25,000 uninsured folks who make too much to be eligible for Medicaid or the D.C. Healthcare Alliance program. Will spare the details, but the costs are intended to be no more than 3 percent of annual income for participants, with a District subsidy covering the rest.

  Along with the bridge insurance program comes a requirement that all District residents over 18 years of age be continuously insured. Anyone filing a D.C. tax return will be required to check a box attesting they’re insured. Enforcement is still vague; Catania said liars could be prosecuted for tax fraud—another option, he says, would be to cross-reference all emergency-room visitors with their tax returns.

  How is it being paid for? Under Catania’s proposal, the individuals are expected to bear a little more than half of the cost through monthly premiums. As for the remainder, a new 2 percent premium tax on HMOs raises a chunk, and taxes paid by CareFirst, the local Blue Cross licensee, takes care of most of the rest. Also kicking in, but not directly: A doubling of the District’s excise tax on cigarettes, from $1 to $2.

  The plan is scheduled to kick in on July 1, 2009; Gray said he hopes to hold a hearing on the plan before the end of the budget season.

• Looks like Ward 8 Councilmember Marion Barry’s plan to rename the Southeast-Southwest Freeway and part of Maine Avenue SW after Martin Luther King isn’t going anywhere fast. Said Gray: “I have a number of concerns about that…as well as a number of my colleagues….I think this is one of those where I think I will have a hearing.”

Read the rest of this entry »

Presently, At-Large Councilmember David A. Catania is introducing a bill that would allow the city’s political parties to allow independents to vote in city primary elections. Currently, city law prohibits independents from voting in primaries; Catania holds that this in unconstitutional based on Supreme Court precedent.

To be sure, Catania’s bill would not mandate that independents could automatically vote in any race they chose; the decision on whether to allow independents the vote would still fall to each political party. The law that Catania cites says only that the government may not explicitly prohibit (or explicitly mandate) parties from allowing the unaligned to vote in their primaries.

At this morning’s council breakfast meeting, Catania’s measure didn’t seem to garner a whole lot of support. Certainly there’s not a lot in it for the city’s most established party, which Ward 7 Councilmember Yvette Alexander pointed out. “I can speak for the Democratic party,” she said. “We’re not going to go for that.” The bill’s drawn three cosponsors thus far: Ward 3’s Mary Cheh, Ward 6’s Tommy Wells, and At-Large member Kwame R. Brown.

When explaining the bill to his colleagues, Catania mentioned his own experiences with the District’s primary last month. “Last month, for the first time, I didn’t vote in an election because I was not eligible,” he said, “and it really bothers me.” If his legislation fails, Catania says he’ll think about filing a lawsuit challenging the law, though he’s not sure whether, as a registered independent, he would have standing to do so. His introductory statement after the jump.

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

Read the rest of this entry »

Loose Lips queries D.C. Councilmembers about The Real Super Tuesday, the Potomac Primary on Feb. 12.

Every month (sometimes more often) the D.C. Council meets on a Tuesday for its legislative meeting, where the full body sits in the chamber all day and actually passes bills and things like that. There’s usually some fairly interesting stuff, but there’s usually even more not-so-interesting stuff. Of late, Chairman Vincent C. Gray’s started doing a press conference the day before to get reporters acquainted with the concil’s business. LL goes to these things so you don’t have to, and he will now be rounding them up in convenient bullet form:

• The tally this morning: Four reporters (myself, the Examiner’s Michael Neibauer and Jonetta Rose Barras, and the Post’s Nikita Stewart), eight of 13 councilmembers (Gray, Ward 1’s Jim Graham, Ward 3’s Mary Cheh, Ward 6’s Tommy Wells, Ward 7’s Yvette Alexander, and At-Large members David A. Catania, Carol Schwartz, and Phil Mendelson), and approximately three dozen staffers and randoms. In other words, about a 10-to-1 nonpress-to-press ratio.
• Gray announced that he’s hired a new communications director to replace Denise Reed, a longtime Wilson Building fixture who left Gray’s office in December for a job with the Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency. Her replacement is familiar face: Doxie McCoy, who’s served as the press aide to congressional Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton since October 2001. She starts next week.
• Graham announced emergency legislation to force the mayor to issue rules implementing mandatory inclusionary zoning. (Here’s the whole complicated background on “IZ”—long story short, the rulemaking’s been delayed to give the development community a chance to weigh in.) Graham had introduced a nonemergency bill last month that would have given the mayor 30 days after enactment to issue the regs. This bill gives him until April 1.
• While we’re talking emergency legislation, there’s 10 emergency bills on the agenda coming out of the mayor’s office, all of which are contract approvals (the Council has to approve any contract greater than $1 million). Barras questioned Gray on why this stuff’s being done by emergency legislation. Blame, naturally, went to the mayor’s office and a blown contracting and procurement system. Good question, Jonetta!
• Mendelson announced a pair of bills coming out of his committee. One will require the sale of “fire-safe” cigarettes in the District by July 1. (Fire-safe cigs use a different type of paper that cause them to extinguish themselves if not actively puffed.) The other is the Motor Vehicle Theft Prevention Act of 2007, which creates a fund dedicated to fighting, yes, auto theft, funded mainly by a $5 hike in the yearly car registration fee. The money’s overseen by a mayoral-appointed board and can be spent on more cops, bait cars, public-awareness campaigns, and things like that.
• Schwartz got up to talk about her “Paid Sick and Safe Days Act of 2007,” which is now the “Accrued Sick and Safe Days Act of 2007.” The new name reflects the fact that the bill stands to be heavily amended, mostly to make it more palatable to folks who do the hiring. “We have really worked hard to win a buy-in from the business community,” Schwartz said. Despite the changes, the votes haven’t been counted yet (members of the Service Employees union rallied at the Wilson Building this afternoon, citing “wavering as Tuesday’s vote nears” in a press release) and there’s rumors of mayoral veto being bandied about.
• Gray gave some early, rough numbers on the budget surplus from FY07: Total surplus is about $248 million. About $50 million of that has been earmarked for spending, and another approximately $100 million was allocated in a December supplemental appropriations bill. Of the remainder, Gray indicated he’d hoped to put that money away for a rainy day, and given the economic outlook right now, looks like things could get rainy indeed. Revenue projections won’t be in from the CFO’s office for another few weeks—but LL did get this fun tidbit from Gray: “Dr. [Natwar M.] Gandhi has informed us it will not be like we’ve seen in the recent past.”
• The Fenty steamroll on school closings is all but complete. Last month, Ward 8 Councilmember Marion Barry and Ward 5’s Harry Thomas Jr. introduced their “School Closing Fairness and Accountability Emergency Act of 2008,” which would have given the Council a chance to vote on the proposed school shutterings. On Friday, both Barry and Thomas stood behind Fenty as he announced the final closings list (as Marc Fisher pointed out in his column over the weekend). And today, Gray quiety announced that Barry and Thomas had withdrawn their bill.

Now for the battle of the Republican v. the Lapsed Republican.

The briefing: Last week, Mike DeBonis, your friendly Loose Lips columnist, wrote a piece about how Republican At-Large Councilmember Carol Schwartz had opted out of a trip to New Hampshire to further the cause of D.C. voting rights. Mayor Adrian Fenty and several councilmembers went up there to lobby for a resolution scolding the state’s two Republican senators for voting against a D.C. voting rights bill last year.

Schwartz’s reason for opting out was that the move was too partisan, too shrill.

Fellow At-Large Councilmember David Catania, who used to be a Republican, organized the trip and snapped at Schwartz in the column: “Has Mrs. Schwartz gone to visit [Kentucky Sen. Mitch] McConnell? How many times has she gone to visit the Republican leadership? I know it’s uncomfortable for her…but she has to choose. Does she want to be a citizen of this city or a partisan?”

So how does all this make Schwartz feel?

Click here for her letter to the editor.

As you may have heard, the Examiner reported earlier this month that At-Large Councilmember David Catania had woken up to the sounds of a woman being attacked right outside his home. When he called 911, he claimed that the operator was rude.

WTOP offers the play-by-play here.

DCist provides the commentary here. DCist sides with the 911 operator. After reading the abridged transcript, we’d have to agree.

Hilda Mason, who served more than 20 years on the D.C. Council, died Sunday morning at Washington Hospital Center. She was 91.

Mason was a longtime DCPS teacher, counselor, and administrator before gaining the Ward 4 school board seat in 1972. When At-Large Councilmember Julius W. Hobson died in 1977, Mason was appointed to finish his term. As a Statehood party member, Mason was elected to five additional full terms. She ran for a sixth, but was defeated by David A. Catania in 1998.

Here’s a couple of the tributes now rolling in. From DC Vote:

…Mason, who dedicated her life to the civil rights movement, was a staunch supporter of congressional voting representation and statehood for the District of Columbia.

Her ceaseless support for progressive issues, including human and civil rights, socio-economic opportunity, quality education, affordable and accessible housing, public transportation, and health care, had enormous impact of the residents of the District….

Hilda Mason and her late husband Charles were recently recognized as DC Vote Champions of Democracy, and her grandson, Stefan Nicholas, serves on the Board of Directors of DC Vote. He and his family are in our prayers.

From Council Chairman Vincent C. Gray’s office:

“Hilda Mason was the kind of champion for education in her time that drives people like me today,” said Chairman Gray. “Her brand of fortitude and tenacity is what we all aspire to in our public service.”

At-Large Councilmember David A. Catania has done plenty over the past few years to piss off the pharmaceutical industry. He’s essentially declared war on high drug prices and fought for legislation to make drugs more affordable in the District. And more recently, the D.C. Council on Tuesday voted to proceed with his legislation that would tightly regulate drug sales representatives in the District.

Now Big Pharma is fighting back. Online and anonymously, anyway.

A Web site recently posted at bigpharmarealpeople.org names Catania “Big Pharma Enemy #1″ and attributes to him the following:

• “I want to ’shake the pharmaceutical industry to its core.’”
• “I am a Washington Lawyer whose sole purpose is to invent solutions to problems that don’t exist.”
• “If I am successful, hundreds of DC area residents will loose [sic] their jobs.”
• “I am an enemy to Big Pharma, big business and capitalism.”

Who’s behind the site? Good question: The site’s domain name was registered by a proxy service, making it impossible to trace who runs the site. The “Big Pharma Team” is listed as Managing Editor John Galt, Associate Editor Dagney Taggart, Editor Hugh Akston, and Editor Hank Reardon.

Those names should be familiar to anyone who went through an adolescent Ayn Rand phase: Those are the names of characters from that author’s Atlas Shrugged. (Note, however, that they misspelled “Dagny Taggart” and “Hank Rearden.”) E-mails to members of the “Big Pharma Team” were not immediately returned.

“It’s par for the course,” Catania says. “It’s the way the pharmaceutical industry, much like the the tobacco industry, chooses to engage in the arena of ideas. It’s name-calling.”

The site’s tagline is “Big Pharma is Real People, Saving Lives Is Our Business,” and it features sympathetic profiles of several drug company employees, none identified by their full name. A passage on the site says its purpose is to “point out how the news media, movie and entertainment industries lie and distort the facts when it comes to Big Pharma,” to “fight ridiculous Government rules and regulation that hamper Big Pharma from acting in the best interest of customers, patients and pharmacies,” and to “point out that corporations are not faceless, evil giants that take advantage of the individual.”

Have to say, guys—this anonymous Web site isn’t doing much to combat that whole “faceless” thing.

Catania does offer his kudos to the site’s creators in one respect: their taste in photography. The Web page features a photo of the councilmember dating back at least five years. “I’m flattered that they chose to use a picture that makes me look younger and more handsome,” he says.

Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee just took the mike at today’s D.C. Council school-system oversight hearing. Council Chairman Vincent Gray’s preamble, of course, took Rhee & Co. to task for the school-closings plan but started a line of questioning on the DCPS budget.

What came out early: The schools are facing an approximately $100 million shortfall on their nearly $1 billion budget just two months into the fiscal year. About $81 million of that would be covered by a supplemental appropriation asked for earlier in the fall (assuming the council grants it). The rest of the $20 million, however, is going to be harder to find. Between $5 million and $8 million, Rhee said, will likely come from taking currently vacant job positions off the books. For the rest, she said, her people are “looking at sort of supplies, furniture, that sort of thing.”

At-Large Councilmember David A. Catania picked up on Gray’s line of questioning and noted that this is nothing new for DCPS budgeting: “Almost every year, we seem there is a 10 percent ‘ask’ after the budget is passed,” he said. And, like only Catania can, he found a way to get a dig in at the Office of the Chief Financial Officer and its beleaguered chief, Natwar M. Gandhi. He noted that a CFO worth his salt would point out as soon as possible that the school system was outspending its budget. Not happening in this case, Catania alleges.

Now Ward 8 Councilmember Marion Barry’s putting Rhee through the paces: “She is doing some of the same things that got us in trouble before.”

I guess we can call the Rhee honeymoon officially over. Five months—not bad!

UPDATE, 2:10: Weak defense from Rhee on the botched school-closings announcement: “If I could control what the Washington Post writes, than we wouldn’t be in this position.”

Barry lays into her (rightly), pointing out the leak must have come from someone in her office. The Mayor-for-Life seems especially lucid today.

Gray’s point on finding the closings plan in the Post: “It’s simply become a symbol of the lack of communication with [council] members.”

If only Natwar M. Gandhi had been more of a train buff.

If so, his financial security might be in better shape right now: In April, Amtrak tried to lure Gandhi, the city’s chief financial officer, with a $250,000 salary plus a $100,000 signing bonus. In order to keep the man widely credited with restoring the District’s fiscal health over the past decade, Mayor Adrian M. Fenty decided to up Gandhi’s salary from $186,000 to $279,000.

Now, in the wake of the quickly expanding property-tax scandal, the bloom has come off Gandhi’s rose for the first time in his 10 years of District service. And his most persistent critic, At-Large Councilmember David Catania, now suggests that the raise needs to be rolled back.

“He should go without this recently approved pay increase,” Catania said in an interview this afternoon. “I think that would be in bad form….I’m at the point where that should be rescinded.”

Gandhi was not immediately available for comment.

On Thursday, the council’s committee on finance and revenue will hold hearings on the scandal. Catania, who has clashed with Gandhi repeatedly, most notably on baseball-stadium financing, says he plans to focus on improving oversight for disbursements across the District government.

“I don’t want to pile on with Nat,” he says. “This is not a time to be engaged in that. This is about how quickly we can put a plan in to restore confidence in this government.”