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.’”

Washington Post this morning reports that the Fenty administration has been a bit selective in dishing out coveted tickets to the Washington Nationals. Some D.C. councilmembers get ‘em, but Fenty leaves others off the list.

Those left on deck include At-Largers Phil Mendelson ,Carol Schwartz, and Kwame Brown. Not hard to figure out why those people would get stiffed, considering that they have shown little hesitancy to put a little water in the tank of the Fenty machine.

Another shunned councilmember: Ward 7 rep Yvette Alexander. What’s the deal here? Alexander hasn’t done much antagonizing of any sort since replacing Vincent Gray, who jumped from the Ward 7 seat to the council chairmanship in 2006.

So the verdict is this: Ticketgate is part petty pique and part disarray/incompetence. Right in line with a grand District tradition, in other words.

In a town where Barack Obama got better than 75 percent of the vote, this wasn’t supposed to happen. But it did anyway: Hillary Clinton picked up an extra District delegate to the Democratic National Convention last night. For that, Obama supporters have only their own to blame.

The D.C. Democratic State Committee met in the John A. Wilson Building for almost three hours to select a pair of unpledged add-on “superdelegates.” More than 20 signed up to run for the two slots, voted on by the 80-odd members of the committee. “Unpledged” in this case is a bit misleading; most delegate candidates’ presidential preferences were already widely known to voters.

The days and weeks before the vote saw furious lobbying of the 80-some committee members—especially on the Obama side—to sway votes to their presidential candidate. Obama organizers hoped to prevent a split vote by steering support to two delegate candidates: Ward 7 Councilmember Yvette Alexander, a longtime state committee member and favorite of the old guard, and lawyer Miriam Sapiro, a relative unknown favored by the grassroots types.

Though a number of the 25 candidates on the ballot withdrew before the vote, seven Obama supporters ended up running, while only two Clinton supporters only three Clinton supporters only two Clinton supporters stood: Ward 5 Councilmember Harry Thomas Jr., Ward 3 resident Mary Ann Miller, and lawyer and ex-council staffer Aimee Occhetti.

Clinton’s name never came up in Thomas’ brief remarks before the vote; he instead chose to talk up his own qualifications and big-picture issues. “The issue is what are we going to do when we get to Denver that best represents the District of Columbia,” he said. (Rumors had swirled that Thomas planned to switch to Obama, but Thomas knocked those down after the vote: “I haven’t changed,” he says. “I’m consistent.”)

The actual candidates’ names rarely came up, in fact. The division within the Obama camp was briefly aired when candidate Linda Nguyen rose to say, “I only have 2 minutes to convince you to vote for me…not someone you promised the mayor you’d vote for.” That earned her hearty boos from the crowd. (Line of the night, though, came from Occhetti: “If you call me at 3 a.m., I will definitely try to answer the phone.”)

In the end, Alexander cruised to victory, but Sapiro came up two votes short; she got 22 to Thomas’ 24. Check after the jump for a full tally of the results (i.e., which Obama folks didn’t get with the program).

Delegate Potpourri

• Unsurprisingly, Council Chairman Vincent C. Gray and At-Large Councilmember Kwame R. Brown took the two spots reserved for PLEOs—party leaders and elected officials. Shadow Rep. Mike Panetta appeared on the original ballot but withdrew before the vote. In remarks after the vote, Gray said, “My life’s aspiration has been to be a PLEO. I’ve finally arrived!” Panetta says he plans to run for an alternate pledged at-large spot set to be selected on May 3. Barring that, committee chair Anita Bonds announced to the crowd that Panetta would be serving as the delegation’s Official Blogger in Denver. Says Panetta: “One way or another, I’ll be there.”
• Ward 2 Councilmember Jack Evans showed early in the meeting to greet the crowd but quickly left. Since the decision came down that both PLEOs were to be Obama-pledged, Evans did not appear on the ballot. Gray announced after voting that Evans would be running at the May 3 meeting for a pledged at-large slot for Clinton; Gray lobbied the crowd on Evans’ behalf.

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A few months ago, LL gave a little ink (second item) to the Statehood Delegation Fund Commission, a body tasked with appropriating the money collected though a check-off box on District income tax forms to the District’s three shadow members of Congress. (Yes, LL’s ink likely would be the only ink it has ever gotten.)

The fund currently holds a little over $30,000. The only member of the board is Barney Circle activist John Capozzi. With no quorum, the money has not been spent.

Last week, Council Chairman Vincent C. Gray circulated a memo informing his colleagues that he’d be introducing emergency legislation today that would take the statehood delegation fund out of the statehood delegation fund commission’s hands, essentially disbanding the body. The memo states the statehood delegation would be free to spend the money directly.

Capozzi spoke last night on Gray’s proposal, on behalf of his august institution: “We had a meeting, we discussed it, and it passed with no opposition.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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From the wilds of Southwest, Loose Lips columnist Mike DeBonis phones in this scoop:

D.C. Council Chairman Vincent C. Gray is an Obama guy. Throughout this crazy campaign season, Gray has done as good a job as anyone of keeping his prezzy preferences a secret. But fence-sitting time is over: The rules of the District of Columbia Democratic Party require that Gray now take a side if he’s going to represent D.C. in this summer’s convention.

Gray’s loyalties were confirmed by his chief of staff, Dawn Slonneger.

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

• The biggest deal tomorrow is going to be what happens with the final reading on the Accrued Sick and Safe Leave Act, which has attracted the intense scrutiny of the business community. After LL queried Gray on possible amendments, At-Large Councilmember and bill sponsor Carol Schwartz stepped to the mike to announce that she would be submitting a substitute bill, which she had drafted with her staff over the weekend. (LL’s voice mail vouches for that: He arrived this morning to find a message from Schwartz left on Sunday returning a Friday call. “Hope you’re having a good weekend,” she said. “Better than mine!”) Schwartz declined to make the new text available this morning, but she did allude at the press conference that it was intended to allay the concerns of the business community. LL is presently trying to get his hands on a copy of the bill to see if Barbara Lang’s “Big Five” made it in.

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As I indicated yesterday, support is shaky at best for At-Large Councilmember Carol Schwartz’s Accrued Sick and Safe Leave Act, though it will come to a vote today.

Ward 2 Councilmember Jack Evans moved to table the bill after Council Chair Vincent C. Gray spoke in favor of taking time to take a closer look at the bill. Evans and At-Large Councilmember David A. Catania both cited the declining economy for the need for further study. The motion to table failed 7-6, which seems to bode well for for the bill passing today.

On the other hand, this is a first-reading vote, so if it passes, there’s still another whole month where further amendments will likely be developed.

UPDATE, 2:05 P.M.: Bill passes. See you in a month.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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