On Wednesday, At-Large Councilmember Phil Mendelson issued a press release, criticizing Mayor Adrian M. Fenty for deciding not to relocate police facilities to an old warehouse the District rents on Virginia Avenue SE, thus wasting loads of cash: “The District has now paid over $6.5 million for the vacant structure, and continues to hand over taxpayer dollars with no clear end in sight,” the release read. “’It was evident at the time that the administration was acting without an alternative plan in place,’ stated Mendelson. ‘After a year, there is still no plan. The government is simply wasting money.’”

The next day, the Examiner went with the story, quoting mayoral development spokesperson Sean Madigan saying that the city was going to seek proposals for the property “by the end of this week.”

Now, Friday at 5:14 p.m., comes this nugget from the Office of Property Management:

DISTRICT SEEKS OFFERS FOR 225 VIRGINIA AVE SE

(Washington DC) - The District Office of Property Management (OPM) today released a Request for Expressions of Interest (RFEI) seeking offers for the sublease, with option to purchase, for 225 Virginia Avenue, SE, just south of the Southeast Expressway within walking distance of the new Nationals Park. The lease was negotiated by the previous administration to house various relocated functions of the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD), including the First District Headquarters and evidence warehouse.

“This is a very attractive opportunity,” said Robin-Eve Jasper, Acting Director of the Office of Property Management. “The property sits at the head of Canal Block Park in the heart of the exciting new Capitol Riverfront neighborhood, close to Capitol Hill.” The site, about 97,000 sq. ft., is also within walking distance to two Metro stations with great visibility from I-395, Director Jasper added.

Says OPM spokesperson Bill Rice, “We’re not trying to hide this. We want to get as much distribution as possible.”

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 »

Right now, At-Large Councilmember Phil Mendelson is giving the business to fire chief Dennis Rubin over Fenty administration plans to seriously hike ambulance fees.

In his questioning, Mendelson is suggesting that Rubin’s department attempted to circumvent a law that recently came into effect requiring the D.C. Council to pass judgment on such fee hikes by enacting an emergency rulemaking with an abbreviated comment period. At one point, Mendelson seemed to imply that the law had in fact been broken.

Earlier, Mendelson was similarly critical of representatives of the Chief Financial Officer Natwar M. Gandhi over revenue projections for the fee hikes. At one point, Mendelson said to Gandhi deputy Angelique Hayes, “I know you’re trying to be diplomatic about it, but the analysis that was used to create the budget has been rejected.”

Responded Hayes, “I wouldn’t say it’s been rejected; it’s been refined.”

CFO reps admitted in their testimony they had a less-than-complete idea of to what extent Medicaid, Medicare, and private insurers would pay the hiked fees.

It’s the culmination of yet another testy week between Mendo and the executive branch. Last week, Mendelson was pissed after the mayor’s office failed to send an representatives from the emergency medical services department on a hearing on a bill on EMS issues. He chose to recess the hearing rather than close it, meaning the legislation is effectively held up. Then earlier this week, Mendelson’s office put out a press release decrying a lack of transparency in the Fenty budget.

Here’s what At-Large Councilmember Phil Mendelson, chair of the committee on public safety and the judiciary, has to say about the hike in ambulance fees:

“The proposed fees sound steep to me….That could lead to a backlash. After all, we are talking an emergency need,” he says.

He’s somewhat skeptical of the argument that this is no big deal because insurers will pay in the vast majority of cases: “Does that mean we can charge $5,000 and CIGNA will pay?”

And ambulance fees, Mendelson says, shouldn’t be looked at as a way to boost the bottom line. “I don’t think it would go over well: We need $7 million, so we need to tax the victim in the ambulance.”

He’s most critical, though, of the short notice on the public hearing, which was held this morning: “You’re not talking about a lot of time,” he says. “I don’t think this is a hearing where questions will be raised.”

With so many millions of dollars walking out the door in Jimmy Choos, etc., courtesy of the tax scandal, you’d figure D.C. Gov would be totally into recovering millions of other dollars it’s rightfully owed by the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA).

You’d figure that. But you’d be wrong. In a classic case of buck-passing between the Office of Property Management (OPM) and the Department of Corrections (DOC), the utility bill for steam used to heat the Correctional Treatment Facility—located right next to the D.C. Jail and privately operated by the Nashville-based CCA—has gone unpaid for years. What’s owed is up for negotiation. Last March, former OPM director Lars Etzkorn (who has since lost his job over that unfortunate police department relocation fiasco) testified before the Council that OPM was “collecting monies owed.” To wit: “For example, last month OPM presented to the Department of Corrections the analysis for it to recover $5.7 million from the Corrections Corporation of America…”

OPM didn’t take over collecting the money, mind you, it presented an analysis of how to collect the money. And this was after At-Large Councilmember Phil Mendelson figured out in the 2006 budget process that DOC was actually being billed for the steam rather than being paid for it. A year after OPM was informed of that, a year after Etzkorn’s testimony throwing around “$5.7 million,” none of the money has been collected. And $5.7 million could be way underselling it.

To be fair to the CCA, the folks in Nashville didn’t know how much steam they were using in D.C. until OPM installed a meter last March; a bill didn’t even go out until a few months later, in June. According to the bill, the meter shows that in six months—from June to December of 2007—the Correctional Treatment Facility used more than $450,000 in steam. When you do the math, and take into account that the CCA, according to its lease, has been responsible for paying utilities on the facility since 1997…. well that’s somewhere around $10 million to $11 million in danger of—poof!—evaporating.

The DOC, by nature of its relationship with the the jail, the next-door Correctional Treatment Facility, and the CCA, has been the agency ostensibly in charge of the lease with the CCA. But—and you’ll have to try and follow this alphabet soup—the DOC thinks it’s the OPM’s job to get the CCA on board. Beverly Young, spokesperson for DOC, e-mailed that succinct response to me this week: “The Department of Corrections is not responsible for the collections. The matter is ultimately an issue between OPM and CCA.”

Mendelson agrees. The DOC, he says, never should have been in charge of the lease in the first place. “The only agency that should administer a lease is OPM,” he says, and further: “They (OPM) screwed around last year with invoicing and not getting payment….They’re very slow to act and wer’e talking about millions of public dollars.”

At a hearing last Friday, OPM’s interim director Robin-Eve Jasper (after being jousted by Vincent Gray) faced Mendelson on this front:

Mendo: “We should get answers without having to think of every angle to ask the question. So I get the bills, but it turns out we’re not getting the pyament…”

Jasper: “I’m going to have to get back to you. We are billing currently, but the first bill didn’t go out that long ago…and I don’t believe it was as high as $11 million….I will get back to you with a detailed response.”

Mendo: “What I was last told at our last hearing on this was that the Office of Property Management was talking to the Department of Corrections. I’m not sure why that makes sense. Why doesn’t the OPM talk to CCA or to the CFO’s office?”

Jasper: “I can’t answer that question…I can’t answer why we were in discussion with the DOC rather than sending out a demand note and just proceeding on that basis.”

Mendo: “When you get back to me, can you also go into what was going on prior to June 2007?”

Jasper: “Yes, I believe we’re trying to establish a baseline of a full year at this point and…establish prior payments.”

Mendo: “I’ve yet to receive any evidence that anyone has talked to CCA, so this would all be a surprise to them when we send them a bill. That would kind of help, I think, to talk to them.”

Hey, it’s a start.

OPM’s spokesman, Bill Rice, did not return three phone calls. Stay tuned!

From time to time, the mayor sends legislation down to the D.C. Council, which, under the legislative body’s rules, the council chairman introduces on his behalf. And, from time to time, the mayor decides for whatever reason that the legislation that’s been sent down needs to be withdrawn.

So no big deal when Mayor Adrian M. Fenty sent a letter to Council Chairman Vincent C. Gray last month asking for a bill, the Corrections Officers Easy-Out Retirement Act of 2007, to be withdrawn. In its place, Fenty transmitted substitute legislation.

The bills aim to improve the retirement benefits for District corrections officers, trying to help with the well-recognized need for younger folks to be doing the dangerous, demanding work inside the D.C. Jail. Fenty’s substitute bill fills out certain technicalities and broadens the bill’s scope to other District agencies.

The problem: The original bill wasn’t sent down by the mayor. It had actually been introduced by At-Large Councilmember Phil Mendelson.

Mendelson wrote a memo back to the council secretary—cc’d to Fenty’s legislative director, JoAnne Ginsberg—explaining the situation. “Please note that Bill 17-59 was introduced by me. It is not the Mayor’s to withdraw,” he wrote.

The Fenty response? “Dear Councilmember Mendelson, Thank you for bringing this matter to my attention; it has been rectified,” reads a letter signed by Fenty on Jan. 3.

Says Mendo of Hizzoner’s interest in his bill: “It was kinda cute, wasn’t it?”

Here’s a statement issued by At-Large Councilmember Phil Mendelson. He heads the council judiciary committee, which has oversight over the Office of the Attorney General:

Linda Singer’s resignation comes as a complete surprise and does not bode well for the office. The Office of the Attorney General is critical to the District government’s success. As the city’s law firm, this office defends the city, prosecutes on behalf of the city, and provides critical legal support to every city agency. The abrupt resignation creates renewed instability and concerns me greatly.

That Peter Nickles will be interim Attorney General is a mistake. There is a principal deputy AG who served quite well as acting Attorney General previously, and there are other deputies who are well qualified and who can step up temporarily. To appoint one of them would not only promote competence but provide stability to this important office in this moment of instability. On the other hand, Mr. Nickles has been a source of friction. Moreover, he is not a District resident. So if nothing else, we know there will be more turnover.

As you know, council colleagues have been increasingly outspoken about the need for greater cooperation and consultation between the branches of government. In this instance I learned of Ms. Singer’s resignation from the Washington Post. I hope the Mayor will be consultative with the Council and its Judiciary Committee as he moves forward to restore leadership to the Attorney General’s office.

Finally, Linda Singer was a public servant who wanted to improve the work of the city government’s law firm. She clearly cared about the little guy – from activism in the area of consumer protection, to filing lawsuits against slum landlords, to using the law to keep guns off our streets. It is unfortunate that she came to the government with such high hopes, and now leaves after less than one year.

More City Desk blanket Linda Singer resignation coverage:
• Singer Resigns, Reports Frustrations With Nickles
• Cheh: Singer Resignation “Extremely Disappointing”
• Mayor Will Not Name Nickles to Permanent Post

In June 2006, two inmates escaped from the D.C. Jail by shimmying down a canopy. In the aftermath of the escape, officials pledged that the canopy, which protects waiting visitors from the elements, would be removed. But when At-Large Councilmember and Judiciary Committee Chairman Phil Mendelson toured the facility on Tuesday, he noted the canopy was still there. “I thought they removed it,” he says. “I was surprised. I was told a year ago that it jeopardized security.”

Corrections spokesperson Beverly Young blames former Mayor Anthony Williams. “Director Brown sought approval from the previous administration to have the canopy removed but did not receive response to his formal request,” Young writes in an e-mail. “Of concern was that the visitors would not have any shelter during inclement weather.” She adds that there are construction plans in the works that will address the visiting area.

Finally—proof that payoffs for political favors can be beneficial for city residents.

Last Saturday, during an auction to benefit Eaton Elementary School, a basketball in a display case signed by Washington Wizards all-star Gilbert Arenas brought in $300 for the school. The ball, which is now in the hands of an unnamed Eaton parent, was donated by At-Large Councilmember Phil Mendelson.

He and eight other councilmembers received the encased balls as a gift from Wizards owner Abe Pollin. The sports mogul delivered the token of appreciation after the council voted in favor of a bill to raise taxes on a tickets sold for Verizon Center events. The revenue from the new tax will be used to fund a planned $75 million upgrade his downtown arena.

The Eaton auctioneer deserves a pat on the back for this one: The estimated market value of the ball, autograph, and display case is about $200.

Last week, I had the privilege of writing another story on the ongoing saga of overdetentions at the D.C. Jail. It was my third piece that touched on the issue in the last few years. And while it’s nice to be able to go back to the well so many times, my editors’ eyes tend to glaze over at the mention of the words “overdetention” and “D.C. Jail.”

But maybe there’s a solution to my editors’ fatigue, perhaps reader fatigue(!), and more importantly inmate fatigue. There seems to be growing agreement that maybe, just maybe, inmates should not be sent back to the D.C. Jail to be released; maybe inmates should be let free directly from the courthouse. At-Large Councilmember Phil Mendelson, who chairs the judiciary committee that oversees the jail, thinks this is decent solution.

“It’s easier on everybody,” he says. “It’s easier on the inmate, the marshals don’t have to re-transport. There’s less likelihood of a late release like at 10 o’clock at night.”

Apparently, Department of Corrections and Superior Court bigwigs are meeting on the issue.

At-Large Councilmember Phil Mendelson rages on Al Gore-style. Last week, he sent a letter to Mayor Adrian Fenty arguing that he take more definitive steps to curb global warming, specifically in joining a multi-state initiative to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. Maryland joined the initiative last year. So far, the District has not opted in.

Mendo writes: “While setting a target is a wonderful first step, a plan must be put in place to realize this goal.” The councilmember was able to snag the entire council dais into signing the letter.

Potential D.C. Jail inmates may want to consider some scheduling pointers: First and foremost, don’t get cuffed on a weekend if you want to see your family before Monday at noon.

Saturday visiting hours have been canceled since August, and Department of Corrections Director Devon Brown confirmed to the D.C. Council last week that the policy is permanent. There’ve long been no Sunday visits—leaving friends and family to follow the alphabet rule: Inmates with last names starting with A through H on Tuesday and Thursday, J through P on Wednesday and Friday, Q through Z on Monday.

Plenty of folks are still complaining, though. Inmate advocate Pauline Sullivan, of Citizens United for the Rehabilitation of Errants, brought her concerns about visitation rules to the oversight hearing for the Department of Corrections last Thursday. “I was very disappointed,” she told public-safety committee chair Phil Mendelson. “I really do not know the reason why it’s been discontinued.”

The cutback, Brown said, was necessary to maintain “safety, security, and order,” and he added that the jail was harder to staff on weekends.

Mendelson was not pleased. “Long-term, it does not sound agreeable,” he said.

Brown replied, “It’s gonna get worse.” An upcoming construction project at the jail, he said, will further curtail visitation rights.

More trouble with ACS: This time, the company’s rival—American Traffic Solutions, which is taking over traffic camera duties from ACS—spotted major troubles with ACS’ speed cameras.

Yesterday, the Washington Post broke printed* the story that a lot of District drivers have been slowing down for nothing: more than two dozen of speed cameras are busted and inoperable. But the piece failed to go into very much detail. More can be found in a March 12 letter from At-Large Councilmember Phil Mendelson to acting Police Chief Cathy Lanier.

Mendelson writes that, according to the company that services the cameras, “two of the 10 stationary radar units have been out of certification for over eight months…..at least 11 sites have been out of service for at least six months; and one of the cameras (purchased by the District) has an asset tag indicating ‘Property of Fairfax.’”

Mendelson’s wrath stems from a memo he received on March 11 from ATS. That memo goes on to report that 27 out of 50 cameras are inoperable, “cameras reported as operational are simply missing,” and a “number of camera sites have been stripped of equipment and exposed live electrical wires were left at the site.” And the memo snitches on ACS big time:

“Upon move out from the V Street facility, ACS physically severed all of the network cabling within the District’s facility….This resulted in the need for a complete rewiring of the facility and thousands of dollars of additional cost to the District.”

At least they didn’t do this.

ATS eventually had to call the police, the memo states: “ACS made repeated attempts to repossess District owned equipment during hand over to ATS. District police had to threaten to arrest ACS staff on several occasions to stop these attempts.”

Maybe the theft attempt was caught on one of the new crime cameras?

CORRECTION, 3/14: The Post actually didn’t break the story; WTOP’s Mark Segraves tells us he had the scoop the day before. Apologies to Mark. —Ed.

With his Meal Education and Labeling Act of 2007, Phil Mendelson has positioned himself as the District’s culinary Ralph Nader, protecting consumers from greasy, salty, carb-heavy foods that will certainly doom us all in the end.

But as University of Southern* California professor of sociology Barry Glassner writes in his latest book, The Gospel of Food, no one knows for certain what causes us to get fat or whether even our porkiness will shave years off our lives. Food, Glassner notes, is an easy scapegoat, thanks to countless scientific studies that routinely contradict each other from one year to the next.

Glassner reviewed the vast amount of published literature on what causes obesity—and the consequences that obesity can have on health—and walked away with this conclusion:

It’s hard to deny the wisdom of relying upon nutritional scientists for some kinds of dietary guidance. If you don’t want scurvy, you’d better consume some vitamin C. If you’re planning to become pregnant, you need enough folic acid to protect your child against neural tube defects. If you’re suffering from iron-deficiency anemia, you are well advised to eat raisins, beans, liver, eggs, and other foods high in iron.

But deficiency disorders are very different from obesity, heart disease, cancer, and other chronic diseases that Walter Willet [author and professor of epidemiology and nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health] and friends say we can thwart by eating their favored foods. Chronic diseases are caused, as we have seen, not by a missing nutrient, but by a complex interplay of genetics, stress, physical inactivity, and a host of other factors. Undoubtedly, diet plays a role, but science is ill-equipped to tell us how much of a role or which ballyhooed foods are ultimately the most healthful.

Stress over your food choices and food suppliers, in fact, can be one more factor that leads to obesity. Maybe we Americans should just learn to do what the French do: enjoy their food, no matter what’s in it.

About four years back, At-Large Councilmember Phil Mendelson had a bright idea, one that would put D.C. at the vanguard of the healthy-eating movement: Force certain D.C. restaurateurs to provide nutritional information about calories, fat, carbohydrates, and sodium along with their dishes. Well, the Nutritional Information at Restaurants Act of 2003 didn’t go anywhere, but now—with a new cast of characters on the Council dais—Mendelson’s giving it another shot, this time with a catchy acronym.

Like the original bill, the Menu Education and Labeling (MEAL) Act of 2007 restricts its scope to chain eateries with 10 or more locations nationwide. According to a list distributed with Mendelson’s press release, the new requirements would affect 37 of the 78 chains of that size operating within the District (the rest already offer nutrition facts on the Internet) including 7-Eleven, Buca di Beppo, and Legal Sea Foods. One thing’s for sure: Phil’s no longer a pioneer—New York mayor Michael Bloomberg has stolen his thunder in intervening years.

Mendelson’s not alone on this one: Ward 8 Councilmember Marion Barry is cosponsoring—always a guy very keen to know what he’s ingesting.

What say you folks: reasonable requirement or nanny state run amok?