Why is Leo Alexander running for mayor?

LL stopped by his kickoff event at the Channel Inn on Monday evening to ask the 45-year-old Brightwood resident and newcomer to electoral politics the first question any decent reporter is obligated to ask a candidate—especially one convinced (deluded?) that he can knock off well-financed incumbent Adrian M. Fenty.

His response: “I’m running because of the suffering that’s going on in our community,” the former TV reporter and government spokesperson says. “No one has a plan to attack generational poverty in our community.”

Read More “Leo Alexander Explains His D.C. Mayor Run” »

Another candidate is announcing a challenge to Mayor Adrian M. Fenty and his $2.5 million war chest: Leo Alexander, a former WRC-TV newscaster, is announcing a mayoral run tonight.

Alexander will join Sulaimon Brown, a former Fenty 2006 volunteer, as Fenty’s only declared competition for the 2010 race.

Alexander was a Channel 4 reporter in the mid-1990s before moving on to communications jobs for the D.C. General Hospital and the D.C. Housing Authority. A Brightwood resident since 1999, Alexander now works in insurance sales and has been active in the Brightwood Civic Association and the D.C. Federation of Civic Associations.

Read More “Leo Alexander Joins 2010 Mayoral Fray” »

The Metropolitan Police Department’s “All Hands on Deck” initiative violates the terms of officers’ labor contract and must be ended, an arbitrator has ruled.

“AHODs,” three-day periods during which all sworn police officers are required to work eight-hour patrol shifts, have been a favorite tool of Mayor Adrian M. Fenty and Chief Cathy L. Lanier since 2007. They’ve credited the initiative with being at least partly responsible for record low levels of violent crime. But police union officials have long decried the AHODs as essentially a publicity stunt that generate goodwill for politicians at the expense of rank-and-file officers. The Fraternal Order of Police filed a grievance challenging the practice earlier this year.

In an opinion released today [PDF], arbitrator John C. Truesdale largely agreed with the union’s arguments, ruling that the AHODs violated several terms of the police contract. He declined to take into account the policing value of the AHODs, calling them “apparently well received in the District of Columbia.” But due to the contract violations, he ordered the department to rescind the 2009 AHOD order and pay time-and-a-half overtime to officers who participated in the six AHODs that have taken place this year.

Read More “No More ‘All Hands on Deck’ for D.C. Cops, Ruling Says” »

Some folks might be satisfied with the “innocent explanation” presented in this morning’s Washington Post editorial on the enrollment of Mayor Adrian Fenty’s twin sons at Lafayette Elementary:

Mr. Fenty’s neighborhood school, West Elementary, has only one fourth-grade class. Most studies show that twins, particularly if they are of the same gender, should be in separate classes for both learning and social development. That’s apparently why Ms. Rhee — using a process employed for other families in similar circumstances — assigned the boys to Lafayette, where the existence of four fourth-grade classes made it easy to accommodate them. The school is also in Ward 4, where the Fentys live.

Some folks, on the other hand, might not be satisfied.

Read More “Why the WaPo’s Fenty Schooling ‘Explanation’ Is Not Convincing” »

There’s been much hand-wringing of late over @MayorFenty, assumed to be Hizzoner’s official Twitter feed.

But something wasn’t quite right about it. The first tweet, on July 27, informed the world that this was a summer-jobs project. There’s the poor design and copyediting, not up to the EOM’s usual standards. Then there was the repeated admonitions to “stay in school!” And today comes a strangely relevant tweet.

Yesterday, LL was intrigued as to why Hizzoner’s profile contained the line, “For more information about this profile contact McKennaLong & Aldridge c/o Jessica Abrahams,or Badele McQueen Esqs.”

McQueen, reached yesterday at the law firm, had no idea what was up with that.

So LL asked mayoral communications director Mafara Hobson, who says her office has nothing to do with the @MayorFenty Twitter page. Someone’s freelancing! “It’s not ours,” she e-mails. “Can you get the word out?”

A Twitter feed might be helpful for that!

Mayor Adrian M. Fenty – or, rather, his Twitter stand-in, if anyone wants to own up to serving in that role – asked in a tweet early this morning: “Do DC residents want District government officials twitter use to be for entertainment, news or answering questions from voters?”

One word, @MayorFenty: entertainment!

This morning, Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee went on WTOP radio and said more than Mayor Adrian M. Fenty has about the process by which Hizzoner’s twin sons ended up enrolled at out-of-boundary Lafayette Elementary.

“I can assure you that no rules were broken,” Rhee said. “We have a number of provisions that allow kids to go to out-of-boundary schools and all of those things were followed.”

It’s not a complete explanation by any means, but it’s something. Rhee seems to grasp in some way what Fenty has not: That questions about his kids’ schooling concerns the integrity of a process relied upon by many parents in this town, and that they are questions that have implications for his grand project of school reform.

Since Fenty has made it quite clear that he will answer no questions about this issue, LL will not be asking him any further questions about the matter for the time being, barring further developments and the results of several records requests. But here’s a rhetorical question for Hizzoner: Why do this?

Read More “The Last Word on Lafayette Elementary. For Now.” »

Early last Sunday—like 6 a.m. early—D.C. Council Chairman Vincent C. Gray briefly discussed a potential mayoral run in response to a question on WRC-TV’s Viewpoint program. Long story short, he’s not ruling it out:

Read More “Vince Gray Talks Mayoral Prospects” »

Courtesy of WRC-TV, here is video of LL, WTOP’s Mark Segraves, and WRC’s Tom Sherwood vainly trying to extract some answers from Mayor Adrian M. Fenty on his adherence to the DCPS enrollment process:

This morning, local reporters gathered at a press event at the John A. Wilson Building honoring the World Team Tennis champion Washington Kastles. We, of course, were interested in something besides the fabulous tennis team. That, of course, was to give Mayor Adrian M. Fenty one more opportunity to explain how his twin sons ended up in out-of-boundary Lafayette Elementary School.

Things got pretty darn testy. Listen here:

WTOP’s Mark Segraves kicked things off by asking Fenty if every student who wanted to get into Lafayette Elemetary got in.

“I’m not answering any more questions about Lafayette or my kids,” he replied.

Read More “Fenty Vexed by School Questions” »

This morning, the Washington Post reported that at least one of Mayor Adrian Fenty’s twin sons attended class at Lafayette Elementary School this morning—thus, it seems, making good on a vintage campaign promise from Fenty to have his kids attend D.C. Public Schools.

Yet Fenty, strangely, did not go out of his way to advertise that fact at a press conference early this morning. In fact, Hizzoner was quite terse in addressing questions about his kids, saying he would not discuss the matter out of respect for their “private life.” This evening, mayoral spokesperson Mafara Hobson doubled down on her boss’ silence, releasing this statement: “This morning Mayor Fenty and his wife, Michelle, officially enrolled their boys in DC Public Schools. Out of respect for the boys’ privacy, he has declined to comment further.”

But the fact is that his desire for privacy is caught up in a sticky political situation: Lafayette isn’t the Fenty family’s neighborhood school—that would be the somewhat lower performing West Elementary, at 14th and Farragut Streets NW. And the question is, how did the Fenty kids come to be enrolled at high-achieving Lafayette, across Rock Creek Park?

Read More “Fenty Mum on Kids’ DCPS Schooling” »

This week’s Loose Lips column delves into the background behind Mayor Adrian M. Fenty’s move to evict Cora Masters Barry and her Recreation Wish List Committee from the Southeast Tennis and Learning Center—a beautiful eight-year old facility in Congress Heights.

Some questions remain unanswered: For one, why did this happen in the first place? When the story initially broke, Attorney General Peter Nickles explained that the city discovered that RWLC’s corporate registration had lapsed through “random checks of nonprofit organizations that do business with the city.”

LL finally connected yesterday with Nickles to ask him about the origin of the probe. He says the random check was part of a Fenty administration effort to review city arrangements with nonprofit organizations in the wake of misconduct allegations against Ward 8 Councilmember Marion Barry.

So, it seems that Cora Barry’s current problems were collateral damage from her estranged husband’s nonprofit woes.

Read More “Did Marion Barry Get His Wife Evicted From Her Tennis Center?” »

Yesterday, Mayor Adrian M. Fenty’s office issued the following press release: ‘Fenty Administration Shuts Down 14th Vacant Problem Property in Ward Six for the Year.’

The release goes on to explain how the Ward 6 Core Team Drug Haven/Vacant Problem Property Initiative ’shut down’ an H Street NE structure as part of its program to shutter ‘vacant commercial and residential properties that are home to drug and prostitution activities in Ward 6.’ It goes on to detail the program, compete with content-free boilerplate quotes from top agency honchos.

Aside from the question of how you ’shut down’ an already vacant property, why, pray tell, is this news?

Is it because…

Read More “Fenty Issues Press Release; Why Care?” »

WaPo has a nice little incremental story on the controversy surrounding the Recreation Wish List Committee’s looming eviction from the Southeast Tennis and Learning Center. Fenty and Co. appear confused about how to handle the Committee’s Honcho Cora Masters Barry. D.C. Wire writes:

“‘If Cora Barry gets her corporate papers together, then we will determine if she can play a role in the future plans of the city’ said Fenty spokeswoman Erica Stanley early Wednesday.

However, Mafara Hobson, Fenty’s director of communications, called a short time later to say that Stanley’s comments did not accurately describe the administration’s position.

‘While we can’t comment on leasing or contracting issues, the administration appreciated the contribution and partnership of Cora Masters Barry over the years,’ Hobson said. ‘We will work hard to find ways to continue working with her going forward.’

Whatever the Barry-Fenty partnership may be, this reads like the administration is prepared to evict Barry from 701 Mississippi Avenue SE. What could the future work be?

The District’s move to evict Cora Masters Barry’s Recreation Wish List Committee from the Southeast Tennis and Learning Center has certainly caused a late-summer dust-up among politicos. District officials have given Masters Barry 30 days to vacate the facility, citing that the committee’s corporate charter had lapsed.

In Sunday’s WaPo story, AG Peter Nickles stood firm on the decision to send Masters-Barry an eviction notice, saying: “Legally, you can’t give them a break. This is not the fault of the city. They should have known better. They were trying to do business with the city when they knew their status as a registered D.C. corporation had been revoked by the government.”

But Committee Board Chair Chance Patterson tells City Desk, the District erred when it originally notified the nonprofit that its corporate status had been revoked. Patterson claims the organization never received any warning or notice. In fact, Patterson says, the city mailed the notification to the wrong address.

“It was an early address,” Patterson says. “I don’t know if someone moved. It never got re-routed. It was sent to an address that no one was aware of. We’ve been very diligent about our paperwork in general in all the other areas.”

In a letter sent to the city today, the non-profit’s lawyer, A. Scott Bolden made similar arguments.

Read More “Claim: Cora Masters Barry And Co. Weren’t Properly Notified Prior To Eviction Notice” »