The time has almost come for Mayor Adrian M. Fenty's annual birthday spectacle.

Two years ago, Fenty threw a grand, open-door party at the Washington Convention Center. A year ago, Fenty kicked off his re-election campaign with a massive fete at the Forest Hills home of local developer Chris Donatelli. This year, for Hizzoner's 39th, the birthday bash/campaign fundraiser will also take place at a tony, oversized residence. This one, however, isn't occupied by any developer.

In fact, it's vacant. The Dec. 5 event will be held at 1821 Hoban Road NW, a 7,000-square-foot, six-bedroom model home built as part of the Residences at 1801 Foxhall, a development of 27 single-family homes in the upscale Ward 3 neighborhood.

According to an e-mail sent out to Fenty supporters, guests will "mingle in a signature Fenty outdoor tent" and can "do a dine-around on quick healthy bites of tacos, turkey chili or mac and cheese catered by On The Fly"---the ex-business of Fenty transportation director Gabe Klein. Oh yes: "There will also be a large cache of Wine, Beer & Soft Drinks."

There is a slight bit of irony to the location: The 1801 Foxhall residences are being built on the site once proposed for a grand mayoral manse.

Potomac, Md., philanthropist Betty Brown Casey (widow of developer Eugene Casey and the name behind Casey Trees) had proposed donating the former Marjorie Merriweather Post estate to the city and building a grand residence thereupon, to be named Casey Mansion. She even bought some $2 million worth of furniture for the dwelling. Alas, after years of feuding with neighbors, activists, federal and local officials, Casey dropped the plan in 2003.

St. Patrick's Episcopal Day School bought the property and in turn sold a portion to McLean-based Elm Street Development to finance a new campus for the school.

If you attend the fundraiser and like the house, it can be yours for $3,849,000.

The soon-to-be-ex-director of the city parks and recreation department might have been rejected by the D.C. Council, but Mayor Adrian M. Fenty has made no bones about declaring Hartsock to be a model municipal administrator deserving of continued government employment.

And yet, the confirmation battle has soured relations between Hartsock and several councilmembers, making any appointment to a council-confirmed post a futile exercise. But a solution may exist.

The rumblings are this: Hartsock's next stop in municipal government is likely to be as chief executive of the Children and Youth Investment Trust Corp. That is a quasi-governmental nonprofit that partners public and private entities to fund and oversee various youth programs. Crucially, the president/CEO post is appointed solely by the nonprofit's board.

Fenty last year asserted control over the body by ousting several high-powered board members and replacing them with close allies. After the power move, the board selected Millicent Williams, who had been Fenty's volunteerism head, as chief executive.

Williams departed late last month to take over the Homeland Security and Emergency Management Agency; she's been replaced on an interim basis by longtime CYITC exec Ellen London.

The move would play to Hartsock's strengths---CYITC's focus is more purely on out-of-school youth programs (which was Hartsock's job as a top official for the D.C. Public Schools) than DPR's---while avoiding her political Achilles' heel.

Then again, perhaps not. Ward 5 Councilmember Harry Thomas Jr. tells LL that a Hartsock appointment "would lead to a tough funding situation" for businesses that partner with the CYTIC. "Funders would look at the controversy around her, and they would perceive her as not having the most positive relationship with the council," he says. (The agency's budget is overseen by Ward 6 Councilmember Tommy Wells, who voted for Hartsock's confirmation.)

Thomas, for the record, put in a good word for London: "Why doesn't this administration, instead of shuffling people around, look at people who have experience, who have worked at these agencies, and who have done good work?"

Hartsock's spokesperson had no comment on the matter. London tells LL she's heard nothing from board members except that a search would be undertaken. One board member tells LL that the Hartsock move is rumored but that the mayor has yet to pass any names to the board.

Like locusts swarming from above, a new (pink) cupcake truck and New York-based Crumbs Bake Shop are showering the District with more overpriced, nauseatingly cute cupcakes. Does this mean we have to suffer through another dreadful Washington Post war? Matt, commenting on Prince of Petworth, says: “I see sub-prime cupcake crisis coming! Cupcake bailout?”

Undoubtedly the result of the massive cupcake crisis, WTOP reports that federal and retail positions are being inundated with an unprecedented number of job applications—some federal positions that previously attracted 25 applicants are now getting up to 400. Accompanying the article is a photo of a handsome, sneering man who is clearly thinking: “You won't even get a job at a cupcake place! Have fun decorating your cardboard box, intern.”

The city is distributing more than 122,000 plastic reusable bags to low-income residents to prepare them for the 5-cent bag fee that goes into effect Jan. 1. Mayor Adrian M. Fenty says it’s for the “Skip the Bag, Save the River” campaign, but really it’s due to the massive cupcake shortage! Start stockpiling those crumbs!

Americans are rediscovering frugality and spending money only on life’s staples: specifically, canned beans and Sarah Palin's memoir, which was officially released yesterday. Clearly, the cupcake-crazed are already going rogue.

And finally, the New York Daily News offers evidence that Clint Eastwood is not very impressed by the rogue cupcake crisis: He lamented to GQ that “it seems like our country is in kind of a morbid mood because of the recession or whatever…we have a bunch of teenage twits.”

Photo by Bev, Creative Commons Attribution License

In his column this week, LL asks the question: Is Mayor Adrian M. Fenty exercising too much? Is he pushing himself so far in his triathlon training that it has begun to affect his judgment and temperament?

In his analysis, LL relied heavily on Dr. Alayne Yates and her 1991 book, Compulsive Exercise and the Eating Disorders: Toward an Integrated Theory of Activity. Yates suggests a pathological basis to overexercises that manifests itself in other aspects of life.

Given, LL is wary of engaging in any armchair diagnoses here, and Fenty is free to take any fitness-related advice doled out by the 225-pound LL with a grain of salt (or sodium-free substitute, as it were). But ask yourself whether you don't think any of these passages from Yates' book hit home:

• "Persons who make an unusually intense commitment to diet or exercise are...generally intelligent, high-achieving individuals from well-to-do families" and are "hard-working, task-oriented, and persistent." Their "achievement orientation, independence, self-control, perfectionism, persistence, and well-developed cognitive strategies can foster significant academic and vocational accomplishments." They are, in fact, "too well geared for success."
• Overexercisers "commit themselves to diet or running in the same manner that they commit themselves to vocational...activities," and truly “disordered” overexercisers become "seclusive, depressed, distrustful, hostile, and egocentric" and "assume a position of embattled autonomy and extreme overactivity."
• They prefer to go it alone professionally. "If they work independently, they will be neither distracted nor corrupted. They seem to be saying, 'If you want something done right, do it yourself.' They strive for perfection and they become irritated at persons who are less committed, less perfectionistic, or more fallible than they are."
• The "obligatory" runner "avoids parties or relationships because they might interfere with his running. Needless to say, life revolves around the run." And their "emotional investment in the activity becomes more intense and significant than the investment in family or work."
• They "plan vacations around running and when they are not running, they ruminate endlessly about time, distance, food, and the proper shoes." They feel "proud of the body and in command of the future." They "seem rather disinterested in maintaining close relationships."
• Compulsive exercise "fosters a state of apparent narcissism," complete with a "lack of empathy, a sense of self-importance, indifference about the feelings of others, and preoccupation with a successful performance." Overexercisers become "more and more egotistical as they become enveloped in a cloud of intermingled plans, lists, and actions."
• The exercise can become a "joyless, rigid pattern of activity which leads to physical, personal, or social damage and which interferes with other more constructive activities" and it "can lead to conflicts with the spouse, constriction of interests, dissatisfaction on the job, and pervasive fatigue."

Bad as all that sounds, when compulsive exercisers are forced to cut back on their exercise schedule, they can "experience severe anxiety, depression, anger, confusion, psychic fragmentation, and a feeling of bloatedness." Best to seek professional help!

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

WTOP's Mark Segraves noted the huge time suck for officers on the Fenty bike detail:

"Documents obtained by the police union through a Freedom of Information Act request show officers from the Special Events Branch are routinely detailed for the "mayor's bike ride," racking up hundreds of man hours - many of which officers spend waiting for the mayor.

On multiple occasions, WTOP witnessed uniformed officers waiting for one to two hours for the mayor's cycling team to arrive for their training rides.

Thanks to Fenty, Lanier is now forced to offer some kind of lame quote. This past summer, Lanier had to defend her officers' zany response to that Fenty traffic accident. Now comes her weak defense of her department's escort service for Fenty's bike team.

Lanier told WTOP:

"For the mayor to have a security team when he's out riding his bike is not unusual. It's not uncommon. I don't look at their daily agenda of where they go or what they do. I don't know about running stop signs and stop lights and things of that nature."

There are few officials who are more prepared, more media savvy than Lanier. She rarely offers up an "I don't know" response when getting grilled before the D.C. Council. She almost always has an answer and the stats to back her up. This is a chief that lives the job. For her to not know where the mayor is or what her officers are doing is laughable. Can we blame the mayor for Lanier's sudden drop in I.Q. points?

Have you thanked a veteran today? What are you waiting for? Technology is only getting faster! That’s right, soon you will be able to thank a veteran by using a technology chip in your mind! (No, there’s no actual link to that…it's just a theory.)

Can’t remember if the Georgetown Circulator exists? Download the new iPhone app! And while you’re at it, you may soon be able to pay for parking at meters with your cell phone! Isn’t technology great? Oh wait, WUSA has just reported that there is a new virus that downloads child porn onto your computer. Does it call Chris Hansen too?

Do you Twitter? Do you use LinkedIn? This was actually a secret intern test to remember not to trust you (because you are obviously over 30, we don't touch that stuff). Anyway, the two companies announced a new partnership yesterday.

Stop the presses (are there any left to stop?)—commenters on Prince of Petworth universally agree that the new mural on Sherman Avenue and Barry Place NW is awesome.

The Advoc8te bemoans the lack of local news coverage in Ward 8, and argues that bloggers have been picking up most of the slack. Looks like print journalism’s fat lady is singing before I even graduate. At least when I’m unemployed, I’ll still be able to get a haircut.

Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service has reportedly placed an online ad for a new dean. A commenter says, “Let’s also put it on Craigslist. Then people searching for DVD players can also apply.”

And two things technology has yet to solve: death and politics. John Allen Muhammad, the D.C. sniper, was pronounced dead by lethal injection last night at 9:11 p.m. EST.

WTOP also reported on Monday that it caught Mayor Adrian M. Fenty biking in Bethesda in (gasp!) a no-biking zone. Oh right, he also used police officers and their handy sirens to clear traffic—apparently a violation of federal law. Evidence of corruption, or political mud-throwing? You decide. But this has to be evidence that we need more bike lanes. Fix that, iPhone.

Photo by Christopher Chan, Creative Commons Attribution License

WTOP's Mark Segraves has the hot scoop: He is reporting that Mayor Adrian M. Fenty regularly uses motorcycle-mounted police to escort his cycling team as they train throughout the District and Maryland. This happens during weekday business hours, leading to traffic backups.

Moreover, Segraves says, Fenty and his team, D.C. Velo, use the cops to run red lights and stop signs (mere misdemeanors in LL's book) as well as traverse thoroughfares verboten to cyclists, e.g. the Clara Barton Parkway along the Potomac.

WTOP's video is above. Fenty, in comments to Segraves, declined to address the story, except to say if he did anything illegal, he won't any longer.

More from Segraves' piece:

According to sources familiar with the mayor's security detail, Fenty became furious after he spotted WTOP videotaping a recent bike outing. L

Last month, Fenty spotted WTOP with a video camera as he rode along Rock Creek Parkway. Minutes late, as Fenty and his teammates rode along the parkway, the mayor darted across the road and onto the bike path, where he dismissed the police escort and took off through the woods.

A few days later, when WTOP caught up with the mayor and his bike team again, they had moved their training ride to Bethesda, where more than 20 cyclists - along with a D.C. Police escort - tied up traffic along Goldsboro Road, MacArthur Boulevard and other major roadways.

UPDATE, 4:55 P.M.: Not to detract from Segraves' report, and his extensive videodocumentary evidence, but Examiner's Bill Myers aired a similar report almost a year ago.

This news comes from a memorandum [PDF] issued by City Administrator Neil O. Albert last month, which cites flat revenue growth, the cessation of stimulus funding, and need to replenish reserve funds spent to cover a gap in fiscal 2009. The bottom line is that every agency is "required to present expense reductions and revenue generating proposals that could sustain up to a 10% local funds budget reduction target."

Writes Albert: "It is critical that each agency evaluate all spending, and dig deeply into the assumptions that underlie its allocation of resources." Agencies have until Dec. 2 to come up with ideas.

Lazere notes that the "revenue generating proposals" stand to be interesting, given that Fenty made a campaign pledge not to raise taxes, "which severely limits how the city can create new sources of revenue in these cash-strapped times."

LL learns that Hizzoner is in San Francisco today---first off, to attend the Urban Land Institute's fall meeting in order to drum up interest in next year's shindig, to be held here in D.C.

But while there, he will be attending a fundraiser to benefit his re-election campaign, thrown by San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, fresh off his decision not to pursue a gubernatorial bid. LL is guessing that of all the Frisco big shots invited, developer and ex-D.C. United owner Victor MacFarlane will not be among them.

Can you feel Mark Segraves' blood boiling yet?

The Giro d'Italia---one of the three grand European cycling tours---is considering starting its run in Washington, D.C. "in the coming years," before jetting all the competitors across the Atlantic to continue the race.

This momentous news comes courtesy of Cycling News, which in turn got the tidbit from a dispatch in Italian sports rag La Gazzetta dello Sport. LL was unable to find the original reportage on that publication's Web site.

Race director Angelo Zomegnan is quoted saying, "There exists a concrete interest from the city of Washington." Adds Cycling News, "Mayor Adrian Fenty will help the bid. He is a fan of cycling and competes in triathlons to stay in shape."

UPDATE, 11/5, 2:45 P.M.: Fenty spokesperson Jack Pfeiffer says there indeed have been discussions about hosting the start of the race, "but nothing is final."

"The city welcomes discussions with race officials and share their enthusiasm for the District to serve as a host city," he said in a statement.

File photo by Mike DeBonis

Interim parks director Ximena Hartsock and her capital projects director had been asked to come to today's hearing on the matter, but they did not show.

That prompted Ward 5 Councilmember Harry Thomas Jr., chairing the inquiry, to announce at the hearing that he will be issuing subpoenas for the witnesses and related documents.

LL and other local observers have gotten plenty of mileage out of comparing Mayor Adrian M. Fenty's executive-power-aggregating habits to those of President George W. Bush.

Let the comparisons continue!

Early in October, the D.C. Council passed the fiscal 2010 city budget, after months of wrangling over how best to deal with a late-breaking drop in city revenue. The process had not exactly been a model of interbranch cooperation, with the council jawing about Fenty's methods of closing the $660 million budget gap and Hizzoner threatening a veto over school-governance matters.

But even with the final vote, the bickering hasn't ceased. On Oct. 15, Attorney General Peter J. Nickles dispatched a 13-page memo [PDF] to Fenty, who in turn sent it to Gray. The document lays out no fewer than 16 provisions included in the budget legislation that Nickles and his lawyers found to be objectionable---including six measures, he announced, that the executive branch should ignore completely due to "problems, including separation-of-powers and other Home Rule Act violations, that prevent lawful implementation."

The practice mirrors Bush's embrace of "signing statements"---messages sent to lawmakers accompanying the presidential signature. The practice, certainly, did not begin with Bush---presidents as far back as James Monroe have made them, but the practice saw a halcyon era under Bush 43. According to one professor's analysis, Bush by the end of his term ended up challenging some 1,100 provisions in federal law---more than doubling all those issued before him.

Where Bush's memos addressed matters such as affirmative action programs and the treatment of military detainees, Fenty's memo deals with matters like taxi rates (the council has no power to set them), budget directives for the deputy mayor's office (an "unlawful management of Executive Branch affairs"), and grant reporting requirements for the Children and Youth Investment Trust Corp. (the home rule charter says the council only gets to review contracts, not grants).

But just as Bush's use of the maneuver sent Congress over the edge, Nickles' memos are driving council types crazy.

Ward 3 Councilmember Mary Cheh says Nickles "is channeling Alberto Gonzales on an unsupported theory of executive power" and says he "doesn't really understand" the doctrines he cites. At-Large Councilmember Phil Mendelson says "much of the logic is tortured" and that it's "part of this continuing pattern of picking and choosing which laws to follow." Even At-Large Councilmember David A. Catania of all people, increasingly peeved by Fenty overreaching, calls them "an exercise in creative writing without the force of law."

As on the federal level, mayors have issued legislative memos before, but usually to accompany vetoed legislation, says Brian Flowers, the council's chief lawyer. And since Fenty has taken office, he says, the memos have been flying faster than ever before, with increasingly broad legal claims.

As for the claims in Nickles' budget memos, "Some of them are quite laughable," Flowers says. He is drafting a response.

Nickles has a fine retort to the Bush comparisons: "Why don't they criticize President Obama, who's engaged in the same practice?"

Indeed, Barack Obama said during the 2008 campaign that he and his lawyers "aren't going to use signing statements as a way to do an end run around Congress." Since taking office, however, Obama has issued dozens of his own, and Nickles says he's read them: "He ensured that Congress knows the president's view…that he's not going to interpret legislation to interfere with the Constitution."

Nickles explains his legislative memos this way: "I think the executive has the duty to stand for the executive's prerogatives. Otherwise, in our tripartite system of government, one part will run over the other part."

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

That was the rationale offered today by the administration of Mayor Adrian M. Fenty for why at least $120 million in city money has been sent to the D.C. Housing Authority and, in turn, handed to politically connected contractors with the faintest whiff of oversight.

The revelations at the D.C. Council hearing today shocked LL's conscience. And LL's conscience, for the record, is not easily shocked. The revelations included:

---That tens of millions of city dollars were moved around the city budget without independent review, in clear violation of the Home Rule charter.

---That the money was handed to a so-called 'quasi-independent' public concern, the D.C. Housing Authority, who in turn engaged in a contracting process that saw little, if any, legal review. For their trouble, that concern was paid $700,000.

---That project management functions were outsourced by DCHA to a private company, Banneker Ventures, that was paid more than $4.2 million to do a job---capital project management---that the Department of Parks and Recreation already employs a staff of 11 to do.

---That Banneker Ventures, in turn, was allowed to run a subcontracting process with only the faintest adherence to accepted procurement practices, with immense power to distribute millions of dollars in public money to the contractors of their choice (including, incidentally, to Sinclair Skinner's Liberty Engineering & Design). And, with the input, LL might add, of the deputy mayor's office.

---That Banneker Ventures' contract described the scope of the work to be done for several projects---in some cases costing taxpayers more than $10 million---in a single paragraph of about 100 words. (An Office of the Inspector General chief noted that the language was "problematic" and "needs to be redone.")

---That this whole scheme was created and calibrated in such a way as to elude oversight by elected officials, and that the D.C. Council took as long as it did to figure out that this was going on under their noses.

The most surprising testimony of the day came from a family-owned local contractor, HRGM Corp., which talked about the subcontracting process that ensued after Banneker Ventures was handed the project management contract. Ramesh and Rachna Butani, father and daughter, both testified, essentially, that the process was a farce---that they were given limited information on what they were supposed to bid on, that the judging process was opaque, and that there was no attempt afterward to explain why they had lost the bid.

Said Rachna Butani, "It has been unclear to me what value Banneker Ventures adds....They're not responsive....They can't answer questions."

She added: "I don't believe they are professional or capable to handle these contracts."

Faster, better, cheaper?

Please.

The issue goes beyond the $82 million in parks spending already identified. According to figures obtained by LL, the Fenty administration has authorized $120.7 million in spending to be sent out to the D.C. Housing Authority. Those funds came from projects budgeted by both the parks department and the deputy mayor for planning and economic development. About $72 million of that has already been sent to DCHA.

The projects built through this method included not only the parks projects already identified, but rebuilds of Walker-Jones Education Center and the Deanwood Recreation Center totaling over $74 million. Both of those projects were managed by a team that included Banneker Ventures, the firm owned by developer Omar Karim, who has close ties to the mayor. And the scope of parks work has expanded to include as many as 26 projects.

LL will be following the hearing from the John A. Wilson Building, and will be Tweeting away!

That was a nice, if unexpected twist to the disclosure that his boss, Mayor Adrian M. Fenty, had sent $82M in parks construction contracts to DCHA in such a way as to elude council oversight. For once, it seemed, Nickles had put the kibosh on a pet Fenty project.

Today, in a one-page memo [PDF], Nickles says that's actually not true.

The contracts-must-go-to-council opinion applies only to future contracts, not ones already awarded.

"Generally," he writes in the memo, "retroactivity is not favored in the law."

Speaking of retroactivity, DCHA spokesperson Dena Michaelson noted to LL over the weekend that her agency had been seeking a ruling from Nickles "since his appointment" as AG as to whether DCHA's independent procurement authority applies to local-funded projects (as opposed to the federally funded projects that comprise most of the agency's work). That didn't come till Friday. "We are pleased that he has responded to our inquiries," Michaelson says, "and that we finally have clarity."

So, asks LL: Is this going to force that lawsuit that the council keeps threatening to file?