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.

On the morning of Jan. 17, teachers and staff at Garnet-Patterson Middle School in Shaw thought their school remained safe from the dreaded D.C. public schools closure list. Hours later, their outlook changed.

Around 3 p.m., Ward 1 Councilmember Jim Graham placed a call to Garnet’s principal, Veda Usilton, letting her now that the plan to close Shaw Junior High School and ship its students and a gifted program over to Garnet could be in jeopardy. Schools Chancellor Michele Rhee, he said, was considering a swap: Shut down Garnet, keep Shaw open.

With a few hours to go before Rhee’s 23 simultaneous school-closure hearings—the public’s last chance to testify on the proposal—Graham wanted Garnet to stand up and show some muscle.

“I had advised her that I believed it was important that some support be established in the record,” he says.

That night, after Ward 2 Councilmember Jack Evans and a variety of other community figures testified on behalf of Shaw, a group of Garnet supporters spoke about how they were blindsided by their school’s potential closure.

“The good people of Shaw have had upwards of three months to gather support from the community. We had three hours. Here at Garnet-Patterson, we need the same time to gather our community members,” said one Garnet teacher.

Toward the end of the meeting, Rhee showed up and confirmed she was considering moving Garnet to the closure list. If the switch were to take place, she added, the Garnet community would get an opportunity for its own hearing.

OK, so that news broke roughly three years ago, followed by a breathy announcement in the Post about the grocery chain’s planned store at 17th and Kalorama, expected to open in fall 2006.

But, this just in, couresy of Jim Graham: The Teet’s actually thinking about hiring people in 2008. There’s a job fair and everything, Jan. 9, at the Columbia Heights Community Center. Can in-store sushi bars and wine shops be so very far away?

This week, Loose Lips ran his Secret Santa column, resurrecting a tradition in which LL gives back to all those who have given him so much. Problem is, LL had to skip of lot of deserving folks in the Wilson Building and elsewhere, which has made for several unhappy politicos. All this week, LL’s been going around, saying he’d make a “supplemental appropriation.”

That’s a job I’m pawning off on you, readers. Here’s a selection of folks LL didn’t have room in his stocking to bestow with gifts, but are probably deserving all the same. Let ‘em have it in the comments:

• Ward 1 Councilmember Jim Graham
• Ward 2 Councilmember Jack Evans
• Ward 3 Councilmember Mary Cheh
• Ward 4 Councilmember Muriel Bowser
• Ward 6 Councilmember Tommy Wells
• Ward 7 Councilmember Yvette Alexander
• At-Large Councilmember Kwame Brown
• At-Large Councilmember Carol Schwartz
• Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development Neil Albert
• Fire Chief Dennis Rubin
• Fenty Communications Director Carrie Brooks
• Soon-to-be-former Attorney General Linda Singer
• Legendary tax thief Harriette Walters
• And anyone else is fair game, too…

A few weeks ago, I wrote about the changing graffiti culture in the city (the gist: post 9/11 security + gentrification= a tough time for taggers). Over the summer, Ward 1 Councilmember Jim Graham kicked off a wall mural program, which would designate graffiti-targeted spaces in the city as places for murals. Over the summer, two murals were completed in Ward 1. Now, the program is going citywide, and the Department of Public Works is soliciting suggestions for good project spaces. Currently, the Murals DC program has a $100,000 budget. Coordinator Hallie Clemm says painting won’t begin until spring at the earliest. Thus far, she’s received two applications. Here’s part of the form.

The Murals DC program will replace illegal graffiti with murals inspired, designed and painted by neighborhood young people. These young artists will develop murals in consultation with professional muralists and with the approval of the business / home owner. The Department of Public Works and the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities is seeking assistance in identifying spaces that may be eligible for a mural. Criteria for the pilot year of the program include:

* Spaces that are privately owned, where the owner has expressed interest in program;
* Spaces that have chronic graffiti problems;
* Spaces that are highly visible from street

The entire form can be found here.

On Tuesday, D.C. Vote held its 7th annual “Champions of Democracy” awards reception at the Carnegie Library (né City Museum). The festivities, like at many a fundraising bash, included a silent auction of lunches with D.C. politicos, with the proceeds to benefit D.C. Vote’s general operations.

Such a fundraising tactic has always held a certain appeal for LL because it’s about as close as one can get to a free-market determination of a councilmember’s relative clout. After all, who shells out big bucks to have lunch with a politico who can’t get things done? Herewith, an accounting:

$275 - Ward 3 Councilmember Mary Cheh*
$250 - At-Large Councilmember Kwame Brown
$200 - Ward 8 Councilmember Marion S. Barry Jr.
$105 - Ward 1 Councilmember Jim Graham
$90 - Ward 6 Councilmember Tommy Wells
$70 - Ward 4 Councilmember Muriel Bowser
$60 - Ward 7 Councilmember Yvette Alexander
$60 - Ward 5 Councilmember Harry Thomas Jr.

Now to be fair: Cheh’s number is inflated, considering a bid gave you a shot at an eight-person dinner with the councilmember at the home of local filmmaker and D.C. Vote board member Aviva Kempner, rather than the usual restaurant lunch for two.

The true champion of clout, though, was Council Chairman Vincent C. Gray, who got $500 for his offering. That, however, was a little bit more than just lunch: four spots in the city’s Verizon Center luxury box for a Wizards game.

For as long as I can remember, Jonetta Rose Barras, WAMU’s killer political analyst, has been taking names at the John A. Wilson building. And in the latest installment of her highly successful Barras Report, she slams Mayor Adrian Fenty for wanting to spend too much money. Yeah, pretty predictable stuff, but Barras brings it. She details how much cash Fenty is looking for and where he’s looking to sprinkle it. One beneficiary: The D.C. Department of Transportation, or “d.” Barras notes that this department is slated for a funding bump of $332,000 and provides this analysis as to why the money’s coming through: “It helps when the city administrator is the former DDOT director, and the current DDOT director is the protégé of the past director, who is the city administrator.” OK, that’s a bit circular, but, hey, it’s the Web!

Then, when discussing the ambitions of current D.C. councilmembers, Barras makes this point: “There is still talk that Ward 1’s Jim Graham wants to spread his wings.”

Like, duh, girl! I mean, Graham wants more power? More visibility? More quotes in every news outlet? Jeez, you don’t say! You wanna know why there’s still talk that this guy wants more? Because it’s true. His nickname should be “More.” He’s the most nakedly ambitious guys in this city. In fact, if you compare size of ambition against actual level of power, Jim Graham may well be one of the most out-of-whack people in town. He wants it all, yet he represents only a sliver of the puny, disenfranchised District. He wants to play on the biggest of stages, yet he has to respond to pothole-filling requests on Ingleside Terrace. He wants it all, yet he has to bother with “consent agenda” items every time he turns around. Get this guy, at least, an at-large seat, or perhaps Eleanor’s seat. Otherwise, he’s gonna explode!

This photo, from Wednesday’s announcement that the city will be spending a portion of a budget surplus on the D.C. Schools, is currently in rotation on the front page of dc.gov:

I know the Mayor & Co. don’t want to look too gleeful when spending taxpayer money, but jeez–turn those frowns upside down!

Look up, guys–you got a $155 million surplus! It’s not so bad!

Two D.C. firefighters were injured when the roof collapsed in a raging fire at 2627 Adams Mill Road, a condo building that was almost certainly destroyed this morning. Things could have gone worse, of course, since no residents were hurt or killed, but things could have decidedly gone better. But don’t worry, folks. Jim Graham is on it.

The councilmember, who lives around the corner at the Ontario, got the call around 2:30 a.m., about an hour after D.C. Fire and EMS got it, and, per his usual, was at the scene shortly thereafter to assess things. By 10 a.m. he was ready to sum up: D.C. has crappy infrastructure. Well, to be fair, he did not say “crappy.” What he said to me this morning was “ancient,” but what he meant is crappy. To fight a four-alarm fire, you need a good amount of water pressure, something the 8- and 12-inch lines running under Adams Morgan can’t really provide. So firefighters were forced to line hose all the way from Connecticut Avenue, where hydrants are hooked into 20-inch lines, across Ellington Bridge, down the length of Calvert Street and around the corner to Adams Mill–some 2,000 feet of hose–which consequently closed all those well-traveled streets, as well as the intersection at 18th and Columbia.

While that was happening, flames powered through the red-tiled roof of the building, which has roughly 30 units, according to Graham. Residents of 2627 Adams Mill and those in the buildings on either side were evacuated; the Red Cross was called in. The two injured firefighters were hit by falling debris and possibly went though roof; at least one, says Graham, had to pass directly through the fire in order to get out. Another one had to climb down two strung-together ladders: The 45-foot one firefighters had on hand wasn’t long enough.

“A four-alarm fire is unusual,” Graham said, “but we have to be prepared for the unusual. This is a warning for us.” Next up: Graham vs. WASA.

It’s all over but the Grahamstanding.

At 10:30 a.m., there were two reams of police tape blocking the Safeway on Columbia Road NW. One set blocks off the street, quarantining huge chunks of road. The other forms a box around the Safeway entrance. Police cruisers idle at the edges of the tape. The crime scene had been cleaned up if it was indeed right outside the grocery.

By the time City Desk got around to it–with notebook, pen, and stuff–the police tape and cruisers had disappeared. A TV truck remained; it’s the only indication that a woman had shot another woman in the head, possibly just outside the store. The Safeway had opened late, but it opened. There were two cashiers just doing their job, smiling as they waved food past the scanner. As if the events shortly after midnight had not happened.

At the edge of the diary aisle, a clutch of seniors could be heard talking about the shooting. The word “lesbians” was tossed out. Must be.

Down the street, a woman and her kids, as well as three or four dudes, were just standing outside the Popeyes. Popeyes was opening late. The shooting had turned Popeye’s into Pasta Mia. A boon for Popeyes, I guess.

The woman scrunched up her face. Her kids were getting crabby. Another woman tried to explain to her about the shooting, that the street had been blocked off. But her Spanish just isn’t that good. What’s Spanish for lesbian?

Earlier–way earlier, it seems–Councilmember Jim Graham had sent out a message to one of the neighborhood message boards. It states:

Dear Friends:

I must sadly inform you that a woman shot another woman right in front of Safeway on Columbia Road early this morning at about 12:15 AM. Details are still sketchy at this point, but I want to share what is known from information provided by MPD.

The victim is in grave condition due to the wound to the head. Her name has not been released as yet.

A suspect is known and sought at this hour.

The two women knew each other, and this has all the earmarks of a targeted shooting. It may have been a domestic quarrel. The victim may have been a Safeway employee. Both women are African American. One shot was fired.

No further details are available at this time. More will be provided as the day proceeds.

As the Washington Post reported Sunday, a collection of Adams Morgan residents are lobbying to cap the number of restaurants able to acquire tavern licenses in their neighborhood.

These licenses are coveted along 18th Street NW, where restaurants like Madam’s Organ, according to the Post, are having trouble meeting the 45 percent in food sales that is required of restaurants. Taverns have no such requirement.

And time is running out. The retooled food-sales requirement for restaurants went into effect in 2004, but the council built in a two-year grace period before auditors could begin checking on compliance. In December 2006, auditors arrived at the Alcoholic Beverage Regulation Administration to begin tabulating food sale receipts, and enforcement could begin sometime early in 2008, agency director Maria Delaney says.

But, despite the proposed moratorium on tavern licenses, scheduled to come before Council today, the struggling restaurants might have reason to be hopeful. Ward 1 Councilmember Jim Graham is introducing emergency legislation, the “Restaurant Audit Sufficiency Emergency Declaration Resolution of 2007,” that would delay enforcement of restaurants’ food sales requirements for another six months.

Rob Halligan, president of the Dupont Circle Citizens Association, says that any delay would be “another step in the wrong direction.”

“We spent 4 years coming up with a compromise law to stop this,” he says in a statement. “We don’t need to push that enforcement out any further….They’ve known since 2004 that this was coming. The law is not designed to protect failed business models. If a restaurant can’t make 45% of its sales in food or $2000 per seat, they are not a restaurant.”

Ward 2 Councilmember Jack Evans motioned to table the Taleshia Ford Memorial Amendment Act of 2007 today so that the Committee on Public Works and the Environment could continue to revise it.

Ward 1 Councilmember Jim Graham introduced the bill shortly after 17-year-old Taleshia Ford was killed by a stray bullet at Smarta/Broadway on 9th Street NW in January. The bill, which has been controversial, would prohibit unaccompanied minors under age 18 from hanging out at alcohol-licensed establishments that provide entertainment after 11 p.m. on school nights and after 12 a.m. on weekends or during the summer. Kids could still attend events at alcohol-licensed establishments that provide entertainment if all the alcohol was locked up at the time.

According to Jeff Coudriet, committee clerk for the Committee on Finance and Revenue, Evans “had a variety of concerns” about the bill. “He definitely had a big concern with the prospect of allowing MPD to work [for] establishments again.”

It was a concern Evans shared with police chief Cathy Lanier. On June 1, council members received a letter from Lanier praising Graham’s efforts but raising questions about a provision in the bill that would allow liquor licensees to contract with overtime police officers to patrol their establishments.

“Jack was on the Special Committee on Police Misconduct and Personnel Management in 1998, so he knows this issue,” Coudriet says.

Lanier’s letter is after the jump.

Read the rest of this entry »

There’s a new restaurant in Foggy Bottom: Tonic opened May 29 at 2036 G St. NW and occupies three floors of what was once Quigley’s Pharmacy, a drug store and soda fountain that opened in 1891. Co-owner Jeremy Pollok describes the place as “casual,” “homey,” and similar to the Mount Pleasant outpost. He adds that the restaurant’s shiny, wooden bar is absolutely “beautiful.”

Just don’t try to get any booze at that beautiful bar. The new Tonic is nestled within George Washington University’s campus, in a university-owned building, and the area is zoned as residential. That’s a problem for Tonic. On Feb. 21, the ABC Board denied Tonic’s liquor-license application, stating that D.C. Code prohibits liquor licenses in residential areas.

So why is there a bar at Tonic? “I’m hoping,” Pollok says. “I’m an optimistic person.” And he has reason to be. Ward 1 Councilmember Jim Graham has introduced a bill that would permit Tonic’s owners to acquire a liquor license for their GWU restaurant, even though code forbids it. By striking just two words, “type and,” from the code, Graham’s bill, the Retail Class Exemption Clarification Amendment Act of 2007, would make it possible for Tonic to acquire a license.

Why? As it’s currently written, D.C. Code prohibits retail licenses in residentially-zoned areas unless there’s a license of the same “type and class” within 400 feet. The Lisner Auditorium, which holds a CX multipurpose license, happens to be less than 400 feet away. The board considers Lisner the same class as Tonic, but not the same type.

Vince Micone, chair of the Foggy Bottom–West End advisory neighborhood commission, worries the Graham bill could pave the way for other liquor-licensed establishments to open in residential areas. The commission originally supported some university-sponsored food service establishment at the site, he says, but opposed Tonic’s liquor-license application. “Basically, what they want to do is change the entire law for this specific business,” he says. “I think it’s ridiculous.” Micone worries it “could impact on other parts of the city.”

Jeff Coudriet, who assisted then-Ward 6 Councilmember Sharon Ambrose in rewriting the liquor law in 2001, says the law is strict when it comes to residential areas for a reason. Ambrose didn’t want a proliferation of additional liquor licensees operating in residential zones, he says.

Graham declined to discuss details of the proposal, saying he has yet to officially endorse it. A hearing is scheduled for June 13.

The District of Columbia Court of Appeals yesterday handed down a ruling affirming the revocation of Club U’s liquor license.

Terrence Brown, 31, died after a fight in the lobby outside the club, which was located in the government-owned Reeves Center at 2000 14th St. NW, in February 2005. The Alcoholic Beverage Control Board revoked Club U’s liquor license in June of that year.

But Levelle Inc., which had operated the club, appealed the ABC Board’s decision to revoke the license, claiming it was “not supported by substantial evidence,” among other complaints.

The court disagreed. “Based on our review of the record, we conclude that there was substantial evidence to support the Board’s conclusion,” the court’s decision reads. Ward 1 Councilmember Jim Graham circulated an e-mail to neighborhood listservs today calling the appeals court decision a “vindication.”

Call them adult entertainment. Call them nude dancing clubs. Just, whatever you do, don’t call them strip clubs.

“I am not a strip club,” declared Nexus Gold Club owner Ron Hunt in an impassioned speech before Ward 5 residents at Bethesda Baptist Church last night. Hunt prefers the term “gentlemen’s club” to describe Nexus, a glitzy nightclub that offered nude dancing until it was closed by the city last fall. Nexus was one of a series of clubs shuttered to make way for new stadium development.

In a lengthy oration that elicited intermittent boos from the audience, Hunt made grand claims, saying his club “was known as the largest on the East Coast,” and that 80 percent of its patrons arrived via limousine. “This was for the upper-echelon people,” he said, adding, “This club looked like a living room. We cater[ed] to husbands and wives.”

But the neighbors who packed the pews at Bethesda last night wouldn’t hear it. “If these clubs are so wonderful, why don’t they put some kind of subsidy to put them by the [new] stadium,” one resident said.

Others suggested the clubs should be evenly distributed throughout the wards, or perhaps clustered in Ward 1. Ward 1 Councilmember Jim Graham has introduced legislation designed to permit one-time relocation of the clubs to similarly zoned locations—all of which are in Ward 5. “The issue before us is a simple issue. It’s a zoning issue,” said Ward 5 Councilmember Harry Thomas Jr., who convened the meeting. “No ward wants to be inundated with one type of business.”