We’re headed into the final weekend. So who will have the biggest war chest to blow in the next five days?

According to reports filed earlier this week, Ward 2 incumbent Jack Evans has better than $184,000 in the bank; challenger Cary Silverman has but $3,440. Unopposed at-larger Kwame Brown has $144,000 in the bank. Republican at-large foes Carol Schwartz and Patrick Mara continue to duel; Mara’s spent more thus far, but Schwartz has more in the bank going forward.

But the fattest kitty belongs to Ward 4’s Muriel Bowser, who has been downright thrifty in her expenditures thus far. She has $224,000 banked.

WARD 2

Jack Evans
In: $20,596 ($605,324 total); Out: $48,672 ($420,718 total); Debts/Loans: $0; Cash on Hand: $184,606

The Skinny: Evans breaks the $600,000 mark on a ward council race. He did it with help from law firms Arnold & Porter and Arent Fox (and the latter’s client, D.C. United), developers Forest City Enterprises, and Shaw race-baiter Leroy Thorpe ($200), among many others. In most parts of the country, the state party apparatus raises money to give to its candidates, but not here: Evans gave a hefty $10,000 donation to the D.C. Democratic State Committee. Much of the rest went to canvassers, consultants, and newspaper ads. (That controversial Current spot apparently cost $1,827.)

Cary Silverman
In: $12,591 ($48,360 total); Out: $13,553 ($44,995 total); Debts/Loans: $10,000; Cash on Hand: $3,440

The Skinny: Silverman’s put together a nice little haul, garnering 83 mostly low-dollar-amount donors since Aug. 10. Silverman has also loaned $5,000 to pump up the campaign’s bottom line. Most of the cash has gone to printing and to direct-mail firm Paul & Partners of Dulles, Va.

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DENVER—The D.C. delegation to the Democratic National Convention came out in force this afternoon to support Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton. Among the elected VIPs on the scene were council Chairman Vincent C. Gray, Ward 4’s Muriel Bowser, Ward 5’s Harry Thomas Jr., and Ward 7’s Yvette Alexander (Mayor Adrian M. Fenty has yet to arrive). Together, they chanted, “We demand the vote.”

The impact of those demands was, well, debatable.

Norton was placed at the very head of the daily lineup, just after an overlong invocation, the colors presentation, the Pledge of Allegiance, and a local children’s choir singing the national anthem. Perhaps a few hundred press, delegates, and staff were milling about the floor during the speech, very few paying particularly close attention.

Norton had but three minutes, but she did a fine job presenting some of the greatest hits of D.C. voting rights rhetoric (a feat helped, no doubt, by the fact she had only three minutes). The founders, she said, “did not create a new nation to get the vote, only to turn around and deny the vote to the citizens of their own capital.” She also hit on the voting-rights’ crowd’s new favorite feint: focusing on D.C.’s veterans, for instance namechecking Spec. Darryl T. Dent, who in 2003 became the first D.C. resident to die in Iraq.

As Norton spoke, one delegate unfurled a No Taxation Without Representation flag, mildly flouting rules about signs on the convention floor. Earlier today, D.C. Vote outreach director Eugene Dewitt Kinlow had talked about smuggling in some of his organization’s advocacy signs, but few of those appeared.

Before taking a strangely Burkean turn—”Change is best achieved when wrapped in unchanging principles”—Norton called on Democrats to “finish [Martin Luther] King’s unfinished business” and extend full civil-rights to the District.

Of course, that doesn’t include statehood. Not surprisingly, Norton’s advocacy extended only to passing the D.C. Voting Rights Act, the bill that passed the House last year but failed to gain sufficient Senate support. “Tonight, we challenge the Senate, especially the Republicans, to match the House”—never mind that if all Senate Dems had voted for the bill it would have passed—and she said to “have no doubt [that] if George Bush wouldn’t sign the D.C. Voting Rights Act, its most prominent co-sponsor, our next president Barack Obama, will.”

What was the impact of Norton and D.C.’s few minutes in the spotlight? Back at the D.C. bureau, LL’s boss reports that none of the 24-hour news networks emerged from their reverie of wonkitude to cover Norton’s remarks. Inside the hall, a few joined in the Washingtonians’ chant of “we demand the vote.” Rather than drown out decrepit former Kennedy aide Ted Sorenson, speaking after Norton, the chant faded fast.

After Sorenson came DNC vice chair Rep. Mike Honda, David Gupp of North Dakota, who spoke on Native American issues, and Rep. Linda Sanchez of California. Make no mistake: D.C.’s franchise, like Native American affairs or Latino affairs, is just another issue or VIP to be given a token speaking slot. But no big surprise there—better to have three token minutes than no minutes at all.

Among the delegation the reaction was upbeat. D.C. Dems chair Anita Bonds called the remarks “stellar.” Gray said Norton “struck exactly the right themes—that this cannot be consistent with what the founders intended.” He rejected LL’s assertion that the District seemed to be an afterthought to convention organizers—”If it were an afterthought, it wouldn’t be here at all….That alone represents progress.”

But does it? Norton took the podium in 1996, 2000, and 2004 to press voting rights; in 1992, she spoke about the issue along with then-mayor Sharon Pratt and Shadow Sen. Jesse Jackson. Attitudes toward voting-rights have improved during that time, as the District’s political and economic reputation improved, but D.C. still has no vote.

On his way off the floor, LL checked out D.C.’s neighbors. The Maryland section was deserted; the Virginia section held about a dozen folks, few of them actual delegates. In search of some reaction, LL headed over to his home state, Indiana.

There he found delegate Bonnie Reese of Winfield, Ind., which is about 10 miles from LL’s ancestral home in the northwest corner of the state. Reese said she had listened to Norton’s speech and asked LL to tell her more. He explained that D.C. has three electoral votes for president and a delegate to Congress, but no senators, and that Congress regularly tries to exert power over the locally elected leaders of the city.

Said Reese, “Well, that sucks!”

LL asked Reese if she planned to mention it to her colleagues. “I sure will,” she promised.

UPDATE, 7:03 P.M.: Pop Cesspool points out I forgot the video. Here it is:

You may have read about the problems with school construction this summer in the Washington Post yesterday morning, but rest assured that D.C. Council Chairman Vincent C. Gray already knew what was up.

That’s because yesterday Gray sent a letter to Mayor Adrian M. Fenty raising questions about “about the nature of the work, how decisions are made concerning individual scopes of work and changes to those scopes, how funds are allocated among schools, how expenditures are monitored, and the quality of the resulting work.”

In the letter, Gray describes visits to construction sites made by council staff that found “tremendous variability in what work is done at each school.”

At one school the health suite was torn out because a memorandum preventing the demolition never got to the job site. At another school, doors were replaced even though the staff objected because they had been replaced in the last three years and were fine. The contractors apparently had them on their work list, and they insisted on doing what was on the list. At Ballou, the contractor painted the teachers lounge a few months after it had been refurbished, and yet the contractor on August 11 was under direction not to replace ceiling tile, leaving pipes and wiring exposed in a main hallway due to lack of funding. One school is lacking dry erase boards for newly installed classes and labs, while at another school ones which had been installed in the last year were replaced over staff objections.

Gray closes by highlighting the need for a Master Facilities Plan for DCPS: “As you know, the Council, at the request of your administration, has granted several extensions to the deadline for submitting the MFP. The new deadline is September 10th, and to date, we are aware of no effort to provide the promised opportunities for community participation.”

Full letter after the jump.

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For your afternoon viewing enjoyment, LL gives you Ward 8 Councilmember Marion Barry and Ward 3 Councilmember Mary Cheh getting down to “Let’s Get It On.” (Yes, Marion Barry would be the one wearing the Marion Barry T-shirt.)

And here’s Barry dancing with at-large colleague and former mayoral foe Carol Schwartz to “Ain’t Too Proud to Beg.” Behind them, Cheh cuts a rug/lawn with council chair and legendary hand-dancer Vincent C. Gray.

The occasion, you might be wondering, was a picnic—complete with live band!—for councilmembers and their staffs held Saturday at Gray’s Hillcrest home. LL crashed the party; more to come in this week’s column.

D.C. Council Chairman Vincent C. Gray is currently in the midst of slamming, hard, Mayor Adrian M. Fenty and his education deputies—DCPS Chancellor Michelle Rhee, Deputy Mayor Victor Reinoso, and school facilities chief Allan Allen Y. Lew—for bigfooting the legislature.

Gray, in some of his strongest anti-Fenty statements to date, called Fenty et al.’s behavior “unconscionable” from the council dais.

“This started off as a partnership, and an enthusiastic partnership, to reform District of Columbia Public Schools,” he said. “There’s been more than a few days where it’s been a nightmare.”

His remarks follow a sharply worded but largely cordial six-page July 8 letter [PDF] explaining in detail why he and colleagues chose to disapprove recent construction contracts.

“As the Councilmember from Ward 4 for six years, you can clearly appreciate the important role the Council plays in providing oversight to Executive agencies,” Gray wrote, in one of his more condescending lines.

Today, with Lew and Reinoso no-shows and with Rhee choosing to leave early (at 4:25 p.m.) rather than testify, Gray is choosing to recess rather than close the contracts hearing. He deemed the executive branch’s behavior as “either an incredibly disingenuous act or an incredibly misinformed act.”

“We are the Council of the District of Columbia, and we have a right to ask these questions,” he said.

UPDATE, 5:30 P.M.: Mayoral spokesperson Dena Iverson points out that Gray & Co. knew very well that Rhee had to leave when she did; the mayor’s office informed the council days ago that she had a prior commitment out of town. Still waiting for word on Reinoso’s alibi.

A public roundtable on D.C. Public Schools construction contracts is now underway, called by D.C. Council Chairman Vincent C. Gray, who has raised questions about the contracts to prepare facilities to receive students from closed schools next fall.

Is it another opportunity for Mayor Adrian M. Fenty to play politics with the council? Sure looks that way.

While Ward 5 Councilmember Harry Thomas Jr. gave his opening remarks, Gray informed Thomas that the mayor’s office informed him today that school facilities chief Allan Y. Lew would not be present, because he had come down with a case of laryngitis.

Said Thomas, “We have texts and e-mails. Maybe he can text his responses.”

Lew had come in for sharp questioning at a previous hearing late last month on a process some councilmembers saw as rushed and opaque. DCPS Chancellor Michelle Rhee is in attendance today and will be answering questions, though you can count on a lot of “Allan will have to get back to you on that”s, seeing as she has limited knowledge of the nuts and bolts of the contracts.

Turn on Channel 13 for some real entertainment: Council Chairman Vincent C. Gray is now in the midst of sharply questioning Millicent Williams, the executive director-designate of the Children and Youth Investment Trust Corp. who is at the center of a recent power grab by Mayor Adrian M. Fenty.

For more on the background behind the grab, read this and this. The Post followed up this morning as well.

Gray’s questioning is at a hearing called by Ward 6 Councilmember Tommy Wells to discuss recent changes at the CYITC, which was rocked last month by changes initiated when Fenty replaced two high-profile board members, resulting in the appointment of Williams, who had been a Fenty aide.

Board member Winifred Carson-Smith, a council appointee, expressed deep concerns about the process leading to Williams’ selection, saying she voted against Williams’ appointment because “I felt that the process was corrupt.”

“This was foisted upon us,” she said later, “there’s no other way to put it.”

Williams, it came out in the hearing, was not interviewed by the full CYITC board before her appointment. Nor had she even discussed her employment contract with the board, even though she is currently scheduled to start on July 14.

Asked Gray of Williams, “Next Monday, you’re slated to show up and you don’t even know what your salary is?

Williams, to Gray’s questioning, clearly indicated some discomfort with the nature of her appointment. “I don’t know if I’d call it transparency….it probably should have gone through a full review process.”

Williams was left to twist alone under Gray’s questioning, seeing as board chair and mayoral appointee Lisa Simpson failed to show up for the hearing, even though she appeared on a draft witness list today.

UPDATE, 7:45 P.M.: Simpson and her mayorally appointed colleagues didn’t show up due to “conflicts that prevented them from attending the hearing today,” says Fenty spokesperson Dena Iverson.

A brief perusal of Roget’s suggests a galaxy of promising adjectives for describing one’s reaction to a troubling Supreme Court decision.

For one, there is “troubled.” “Shocked,” “outraged,” and “concerned” come to mind. Further options include “chagrined,” “mortified,” “aggrieved,” “offended,” “incensed,” “riled up,” and “scared shitless.”

In their press releases, however, District politicos have been sticking to one word with alarming regularity:

Disappointed.

First, there is Ward 5 Councilmember Harry “Tommy” Thomas, Jr., who “expressed his extreme disappointment with the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to overturn the District gun ban, and indicated that the Council must now establish strict standards to regulate the sale of handguns in the District of Columbia.”

Then we have Fenty, Nickles, and Lanier, who weigh in as follows:

Mayor Adrian M. Fenty, Interim Attorney General Peter Nickles, and Metropolitan Police Chief Cathy Lanier announced their disappointment in today’s ruling of the United States Supreme Court in District of Columbia v. Heller…. “I’m disappointed in the Court’s ruling and believe introducing more handguns into the District will mean more handgun violence,” said Mayor Fenty.*

Council Chairman Vincent C. Gray includes the following in his statement:

Although I am disappointed by the court’s decision, working collectively with the Mayor, the Metropolitan Police, legal authorities, and residents, the Council will do all it can to prevent violence from escalating further as a result of today’s un-welcome weakening of our gun laws.

Ward 4 Councilmember Muriel Bowser:

I am disappointed in today’s Supreme Court action which ruled that the DC law banning private handgun possession at home violates the Second Amendment.

At-Large Councilmember Kwame Brown:

My disappointment in the Supreme Courts ruling cannot be merely expressed by words. Every time I hear of another youth, another mother or child gunned down in our communities is yet another reminder of why we need these protective measures in place.

[Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton issued a statement in which the d-word was conspicuously absent, as did Adam Clampitt, Independent Candidate for DC Council At-Large.]

Come on, folks! Disappointed is when your team loses in spring training. Disappointed is when your kid doesn’t crack a B in algebra. Disappointed is when your dog relieves himself under the dining room table.

Whatever happened to “I’m mad as hell and I’m not gonna take it anymore!”

*The Post imputes “dismay” to Fenty. Over-editorialize much lately?

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.

OK, like everyone else in town, LL’s been trying to figure out what the hell’s going on with the soccer stadium proposal. Here’s what LL has been able to determine:

• No deal is in place yet. According to Wilson Building sources, the sticking points include, yes, the amount of the District’s commitment—the Fenty administration is holding to a $150 million cap versus the $225 mil that the team is hoping for—and the issue of whether the District will be held responsible for any delays in turning the land over to the team, which, from the District’s point of view is untenable, seeing as the District doesn’t even have possession of the land yet (the feds do) and likely won’t for years, until the National Park Service figures out a way to get its facilities off the property.
• With Councilmember Marion S. Barry Jr. out of town in Tanzania all week, don’t expect a whole lot to get done. He’s the main force driving the stadium deal. Word is, Council Chairman Vincent C. Gray and Ward 2 Councilmember Jack Evans, though supporters of the project, are treading very lightly indeed.
• Last night, Gray told LL there was virtually no chance stadium legislation would be ready for the Tuesday legislative meeting. That means introduction and committal won’t happen until July, meaning first reading wouldn’t be until after the summer recess.

So, folks, hold your horses: Don’t expect any fireworks on this until the fall.

Well, looks like Council Chairman Vincent C. Gray’s plege to rein in pork-barrel spending will wait one more year for implementation: The D.C. Council is about to approve about $48.4 million $72.7 million in earmarks for various city groups in fiscal 2009, including the controversial $10 million for Ford’s Theatre contained in the mayor’s budget proposal.

Mayor Adrian M. Fenty had proposed about $27 million in earmarks, but in draft budget legislation circulated today, various councilmembers had added more than $20 million $45 million to that, just about matching far exceeding the level from last year’s budget battle. LL still needs to go through the list and see what the mayor got to keep and what he didn’t.

But Gray did follow through on promises for greater accountability for earmark beneficiaries. A section of the budget legislation imposes a list of items such groups need to submit by July 15, including articles of incorporation, a recent financial audit, tax forms, and a “detailed Program Statement” explaining what they plan to do with the taxpayer money. Also new: random audits from the D.C. Auditor.

UPDATE, 6:55 P.M.: LL neglected to include the earmarks falling under David A. Catania’s health committee. $20.15 million is allocated to specific groups and businesses; about another $4 million is set aside for grants to groups to be determined.

Full list of earmarks after jump.

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In Saturday’s Post, Council Chairman Vincent C. Gray’s office said that the controversial lottery contract wouldn’t be placed on the agenda for tomorrow’s council meeting, drawing criticism from the representatives of the contractors, Intralot and W2Tech, who said the council was short-circuiting a fair process.

Well, looks like they made their point: The lottery contract, “Contract No. CFOPD-7-C-053, On-line Gaming System and Related Services Approval Resolution of 2008″, PR 17-0429,” is back on the agenda posted this afternoon on the council Web site.

Gray spokesperson Doxie McCoy confirms that her boss made the move, but she makes the point that any councilmember could have moved the contract onto the council agenda.

“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.

On Tuesday, the struggling nonprofit Positive Nature has received some possible help from Council Chairman Vincent C. Gray. He introduced the “Positive Nature Property Tax Exemption Forgiveness Act.”

According to the press release, the bill would:

Provide property tax relief to a unique, high-quality after school program that is threatened with closing due to skyrocketing real estate taxes around its location near the Nationals stadium. The bill was co-introduced by Councilmember Tommy Wells of Ward 6, where Positive Nature is located. Gray said Positive Nature is a non-profit organization that has operated a valuable, therapeutic after school program for D.C. youth with behavioral problems, not just in Ward 6, but from across the city for several years.

We had heard from several sources that the D.C. Council was inclined to not introduce any legislation to assist the nonprofit with its huge property tax bill (caused by Nationals Park). We wrote about Positive Nature here and followed-up with items here and here and here, among other items. The nonprofit held a rally and even resorted to asking for money outside the stadium. It wasn’t pretty.

So it was a huge shock—especially to Positive Nature. The news of the legislation came from this reporter’s blog. But who knows if this legislation will ever come up for a vote.

The Gray press release goes on to state:

“Gray’s tax relief legislation is designed to keep the program from having to shut down while a long-term solution, including relocation to more affordable facilities, is found. Wells and Councilmember David Catania, who chairs the Committee on Health, have been working with the Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development to identify District-owned or other space for relocation. Gray said, ‘The Council must step in to ensure these much-needed services for some of the District’s most vulnerable children remain available until a permanent solution is found.’”