Yesterday, I joked that Councilmember Tommy Wells appeared to celebrate the death of an elementary school. It was a reference to an item posted on the Ward 6 councilmember’s website.

The Wells’ item detailed the closing of Anthony Bowen Elementary School and the efforts of the school and the community in easing their transition to Amidon Elementary School and Jefferson Junior High. In other words, one school is now being closed and its students are being forced to split into two different schools.

Last Friday, Bowen students and tons of other interested parties marched from their old school to Amidon. The Wells’ item describes the scene this way:

“A crowd of nearly 400 people marched from Bowen to Amidon, with children and adults wearing matching blue and white tee shirts identifying the occasion and major sponsors. Most waved small American flags. Leading the parade, wearing their traditional red and white uniforms and plummed white headdresses was the 12 member 3rd U.S. Army Infantry Regiment (The Old Guard) ‘Fife and Drum Corps.’ based at nearby Fort McNair military base. Officers from the First District MPD escorted the group and provided a safe walking route with traffic controls. While drivers waiting to cross could have been annoyed by the long wait, many drivers were seen smiling at the sight.”

Wells’ office was not happy with my jab and called me to let me know. They saw this scene as an impressive show by a community trying to make the best of a tough deal. The change in schools is going to be difficult but at least everyone seems to be engaged in easing the transition.

But. No parade and free T-shirt is going to answer many of the questions parents may have about their kids’ new school.

Read the rest of this entry »

Ward 6 Councilmember Tommy Wells has introduced a bill to ban the sales of single beers in his bailiwick, hot on the heels of bans passed for Wards 7 and 8 and the renewal of a ban for Ward 4.

Part of Ward 6, along the 700 to 1400 blocks of H Street NE, already has a single-sales ban (a “moratorium,” actually) set to expire after three years. Wells’ bill would extend a permanent ban to the entire ward.

“As [the other wards'] bills moved forward, I heard increasingly from neighborhood leaders and our elected Advisory Neighborhood Commissioners that they wanted Ward 6 added to the list of wards prohibiting the sale of singles,” said Wells in a press release.

Another interesting aspect of the legislation: Liquor stores and groceries would be able to get an exception from the ban by entering into a “voluntary agreement” with the local ANC. Heretofore, “voluntary agreements” were almost always restrictive rather than permissive, consisting of additional regulations forced by the community.

The bill’s headed to Ward 1 Councilmember Jim Graham’s public works and environment committee.

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 »

Minutes ago, Council Chairman Vincent C. Gray introduced a bill containing several changes to charter school oversight, the School Reform Amendment Act of 2008—as LL reported in his column last week.

The legislation, as described in comments by Gray and co-sponsors Tommy Wells of Ward 6 and Harry Thomas Jr. of Ward 5, contains several components. The first is to change the process by which members of the Public Charter School Board are nominated; currently the mayor selects nominees from a list provided by the federal education department. The bill proposes making the members direct mayoral appointees with a District residency requirement, a move likely to attract congressional scrutiny.

Other parts:

• A requirement to match quarterly payments to charters to enrollment figures, making sure money better follows the movement of students between schools
• A required 15-month planning period for new charter schools. Virtually every charter school has followed this to date; the grand exception, of course, is the pending Center City application, which would convert seven Catholic schools to charters in only three months.
• A requirement to open only a single campus upon a school’s initial chartering (also a poke at the parochial schools), and, as a corollary to that, a requirement that a charter school meet certain academic benchmarks before expanding.

In his remarks, Wells made the point that charters schools were intended to be places of “innovation and best practices” in educational methods. “Failure to make adequate yearly process in five years is not a best practice,” he said.

Members Marion Barry of Ward 8, Mary Cheh of Ward 3, Ward 7’s Yvette Alexander, plus at-large members Kwame R. Brown and David A. Catania, signed on as co-sponsors, giving the bill immediate majority support.

Megaphone maniacs beware: Ward 6 Councilmember Tommy Wells is again pushing a bill that would limit the amount of noise that people can make around town.

According to Charles Allen, the councilmember’s chief of staff, the council’s committee of the whole has approved the legislation, which will be up for a plenary council vote on May 6.–Rend Smith

You know the fifty-color fliers and postcards good neighbors leave on your windshield? The ones inviting you to those exclusive afterhours parties and special events? The ones that would make Luther Campbell nod in approval?

While I’m not sure who actually responds to this spam and goes to these things, I do know that they constitute an annoyance. How many of these cards have I tossed into the backseat of my car? Too many!

It’s not a shock that people have complained. Southwest residents have been up in arms over them for a while. They’ve started calling them “Booty Cards.” Kinda perfect.

And they got Councilmember Tommy Wells‘ attention. After months of effort, Wells—along with the D.C. attorney general’s office—has been able to at least banish one company from distributing them. Wells, in a press release, calls this a “partial victory” for Southwest residents—and D.C. citizens in general.

Although he considered them pornographic, Wells knew he couldn’t fight them on indecency issues. Instead, his office went after the company over the trash they produce. A smart move!

-”This is just one battle in a much larger effort,” explains Wells’ Chief of Staff Charles Allen.

Read the rest of this entry »

Back in December, Ward 8 Councilmember Marion Barry introduced a bill to extend Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue SE across the Anacostia River into Wards 2 and 6. Since then, the measure’s gone nowhere fast, but Barry’s looking to speed up the timetable a bit.

This week, Barry circulated a memo informing his colleagues that he would move his bill as emergency legislation at next Tuesday’s legislative meeting. The memo said the emergency action, which requires no public hearing, was necessary in order to honor the good Dr. King in time for the 40th anniversary of his April 4, 1968, assassination.

The bill would extend the traditional MLK Avenue, renamed from Nichols Avenue SE in 1971, from its current northern terminus at Good Hope Road SE across the 11th Street Bridge, along the Southwest/Southeast Freeway and along Maine Avenue SW to its new terminus at Raoul Wallenberg Place SW (itself a renamed portion of 15th Street SW). The new portion would be called Martin Luther King Jr. Drive.

An inspection of the route revels very few, if any, addresses will be affected, but it’s problematic to say the least that folks won’t get a chance to express an opinion one way or another about the change before action is taken.

Nine councilmembers co-sponsored the original bill, indicating a reasonably good chance of legislative success. Noticeably absent from the co-sponsor list: Ward 6 Councilmember Tommy Wells, through whose ward most of the affected thoroughfares run. Wells is out of town and unavailable for comment, but his chief of staff, Charles Allen, says that Wells declined to cosponsor because “he wasn’t approached or consulted about the possible renaming of streets in Ward 6.”

Anyone doubting the strength of organized labor in this town, think again: A bill that would allow the District to enforce limits on daytime noise was tabled without debate this morning at a meeting of the D.C. Council’s committee of the whole, thanks in no small part to union protesters.

The Noise Control Protection Amendment Act, sponsored by Ward 3 Councilmember Mary Cheh and Ward 6 Councilmember Tommy Wells, was prompted, among other things, by the amplified demonstrations of the Black Hebrew Israelites on or near H Street NE. Under the bill, noise greater than 70 decibels, or 10 decibels above ambient noise levels, would be subject to sanction.

Cheh introduced the bill, citing the need for some checks on daytime noise that’s currently unregulated “no matter how long, no matter how unrelenting, no matter how amplified.” She mentioned that she had met with members of the labor community, who were concerned that the bill might interfere in union protests, but noted that the bill had gained the support of the Service Employees International Union. Cheh, a constitutional law professor at George Washington University, also said she “completely confident in the ultimate constitutionality” of the bill.

Immediately afterward, Ward 2 Councilmember Jack Evans moved to table it, a manuever that under council rules requires no debate. The motion passed 7-5, with Evans, Jim Graham (Ward 1), Muriel Bowser (Ward 4), Yvette Alexander (Ward 7), Kwame Brown (At-Large), Phil Mendelson (At-Large), and Chair Vincent C. Gray in favor; Cheh, Wells, Marion Barry (Ward 8), David A. Catania (At-Large), and Carol Schwartz (At-Large) opposed the tabling. Ward 5 Councilmember Harry Thomas Jr. was absent.

What gives, you may ask? Our man on the scene, Arthur Delaney, reports that more than 100 members of the Metropolitan Washington Council AFL-CIO and its affiliated organizations showed up for the council meeting wearing red T-shirts. After the vote the group set off around the Wilson Building thanking members and their staffers for putting the kibosh on the bill.

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.

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…

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.

Today is Car-Free Day in the District of Columbia, which provided city politicos a chance to prove their ecocredentials during this morning’s commute.

Ward 6 Councilmember Tommy Wells, who masterminded the holiday, rode his bike to work, as did City Administrator Dan Tangherlini. Council Chairman Vincent Gray and Ward 2 Councilmember Jack Evans took Metro. But several other councilmembers chose less purist modes of transport.

At-Large Councilmember Carol Schwartz, for instance, says she was picked up and driven by a staffer to a morning appointment. She cited a rather bulky briefcase for the chauffeur treatment. She did, after the appointment, walk the remainder of the trip to the John A. Wilson Building. Her trademark Jaguar remained parked at home, she says.

The biggest splash came from At-Large Councilmember Kwame Brown, who arrived with Wells atop a police-issue Segway he rode all the way from his Hillcrest home. LL suggested to Wells that the Segway was cheating, seeing as it has a motor that has to be charged off the electric grid. Gotta watch that carbon footprint, Kwame!

Wells defended Brown’s choice of wheels, calling them “in the spirit of the day.” Brown said his conveyance was inspired by a sense of empathy: “I wanted to see what it was like for the disabled.”

Ward 7 Councilmember Yvette Alexander chose not to eschew internal combustion for her commute: She showed up on a sharp purple Vespa Granturismo scooter. In her defense, she did manage to scooterpool: Friend and Hillcrest resident Darryl D. Rose piloted the petite vessel to the Wilson Building while Alexander held on behind.

“I drive a Land Rover,” she says. “I had to wean myself off.”

And it seems that Car-Free Day might turn out to be Car-Free Morning for the D.C. Council. At the Council’s pre-session breakfast meeting, discussions turned to transportation down to the Capitol for today’s Senate vote on District congressional representation. Gray offered use of his official car and a van to ferry councilmembers the 13-and-a-half blocks down Pennsylvania Avenue NW for the vote.

It’s a Friday afternoon in D.C. in the middle of August. The D.C. Council is in recess—has been, actually, for over a month. In other words, there is absolutely no reason for anyone to be working today. Even workoholic Mayor Adrian Fenty left for vacay today. And yet! Some of your public servants are still showing up to work. For Loose Lips Video No. 2, we took inventory of who still has their noses to the grindstone. Turns out it’s the council’s rugrats—rookies like Yvette Alexander, Muriel Bowser, and Tommy Wells—who are still marking time at city hall. Interesting tibit gleaned from our interviews: Wards 4, 6, and 7 all “never sleep”!

Thanks as always to intrepid cameraman Arthur Delaney.

P.S.: Those of you wondering when Loose Lips the column will be returning, look for it in the Sept. 7 issue.

The Committee on Public Works and the Environment yesterday voted to approve a moratorium on single sales of alcohol for a section of H Street NE. The proposal must now come before the full council for consideration.

According to a communiqué from the office of Ward 6 Councilmember Tommy Wells, the measure, which would prohibit the sale of single containers of beer and half-pints of liquor, would span the 700 to the 1400 block of H Street NE. He said the proposal “will go a long way to address some of the chaos and crime afflicting H Street, NE.”

A similar moratorium is already in effect for a slice of Mount Pleasant, and supporters cite a reduction in calls for service to MPD as a result. But local H Street business owners have fought the ban, with Paul Pascal, an attorney for some of the businesses, saying it’s a “draconian” response that amounts to an effort by neighbors to micromanage local commerce.

But Wells says he supports the ban. “For too long, we’ve had individuals using our curbsides and sidewalks as open-air bars,” he said in the release. “I’m proud to support the ANC and residents to put the moratorium in effect…”