As LL first broke yesterday, the D.C. Council is embroiled in a dispute with Mayor Adrian M. Fenty over control of Channel 13—the District’s public access channel devoted to airing council proceedings.

The dispute is rooted in last Thursday’s ‘open deposition’ of Peaceoholics co-founder Ronald Moten—an unorthodox proceeding, to be sure. As a deposition, Councilmembers Mary Cheh and Phil Mendelson requested that the television recording not be aired on Channel 13.

Long story short, the proceeding has been aired repeatedly since. That led the D.C. Council today to take up emergency legislation saying that it has exclusive control over the content of Channel 13.

In brief comments prior to the vote, both Cheh and Mendelson said that the executive branch had exerted influence on the Office of Cable Television, and its director, Eric Richardson. Mendelson, in fact, said that Richardson “was specifically directed by the highest member of the executive branch to run this tape and run it again.”

Read More “D.C. Council Asserts Control Over Channel 13″ »

Two weeks ago, the D.C. Council engaged in a knock-down fight over anti-crime legislation—in particular, over so-called ‘civil gang injunctions.’ They were at it again today, rehashing the debate regarding the permanent version of the bill. But the outcome was much the same.

A compromise of sorts was in the works today: Councilmembers Jim Graham, Jack Evans, and Muriel Bowser, all supporters of the gang injunctions, proposed allowing the measures for six months in their own wards—1, 2, and 4, respectively.

That proposal didn’t get very far with their colleagues.

Read More “Civil Gang Injunctions Again Foiled by D.C. Council” »

The D.C. Council saw one of the livelier proceedings in recent memory this morning, when Peaceoholics co-founder Ronald Moten appeared before councilmembers Mary Cheh and Phil Mendelson in connection with their investigation into the donation of used city emergency equipment to the Dominican Republic.

The proceeding wasn’t hearing, exactly, but an open deposition. Moten had originally been scheduled to give his deposition behind closed doors on Friday, but he declined to testify, citing the council’s political motivations. Council staff agreed to let him say his piece in public today, in what Mendelson called a “very unusual” proceeding.

Moten set the tone early, with a combative opening statement decrying a “political smear campaign” targeting his organization. He accused councilmembers and media of “attacking the mayor at my organization’s expense” and engaging in a “political charade” that has affected his business and his family. “We hold the council directly responsible for creating an atmosphere where such stories could flourish,” he said of media accounts questioning his organization’s role in the shadowy transfer. The questions will remain, he says, until the “thirst for political blood is quenched.”

Read More “Mayoral Official, Friend Implicated at Council Fire Truck Proceeding” »

In what’s become a quarterly tradition around these parts, Chief Financial Officer Natwar M. Gandhi announced this afternoon that projected city revenues over the next few years are again being revised downward.

The bottom line: The mayor and council have to find at least $190 million to balance this year’s budget, which runs until Sept. 30. (That number may rise; the CFO has identified $87 million in overspending, too, but that can be offset by underspending and other cuts yet to be identified.) Finding the money, actually, isn’t hard: The city’s budget reserve can cover it, but at least half would have to be paid back in the next year’s budget.

And for that budget, passed by the council last month, they’ll have to find another $150 million in cuts even without having to refill the reserve. Add that in, and it’s at least $245 million.

Read More “District Revenues Keep Falling, Gandhi Says” »

The big news in Washington this morning was already shared with City Desk readers early yesterday evening: Senator John Ensign (R-Nev.) admitted to having an affair with a campaign staffer.  There’s no word on whether Ensign plans on resigning but he wishes he could take it all back.  Obviously.  He was a member of the Promise Keepers, for Pete’s sake.  There’s a lot to be said about Ensign’s contradictory behavior but at least he came public without the help of the fine journalists at the National Enquirer.

Drug recalls, crime bills, and a double dose of foreign policy after the jump. Read More “Our Morning Roundup: Truth Telling Edition” »

First off, here’s what’s already happened today in the D.C. Council chamber: The bag tax has been approved and is ready for mayoral signature, the Public Employee Relations Board now has a quorum, and councilmembers hiked the limit on their constituent services funds from $40,000 to $60,000. Not bad for a day’s work.

But not quite enough: Debate is about to begin in the D.C. Council on a competing pair of anti-crime bills. One, introduced by Councilmember Jack Evans and supported by Mayor Adrian M. Fenty, takes a hard-line approach, notably toward “civil gang injunctions,” which makes it easier for police to keep alleged gang members out of specific neighborhoods. LL calls this the “jackboot reactionary” version. The other, introduced by Phil Mendelson, addresses most of the same issues, but amended to address civil rights concerns raised by the ACLU, NAACP, and other organizations—such as, How do you determine someone’s a gang member? and What defines a neighborhood? LL calls this the “liberal weenie” version.

Both need nine votes to pass. Neither Evans nor Mendelson claimed earlier today to have the requisite number of votes in pocket.

Live from the John A. Wilson Building: Let the grandstanding commence!

12:47 P.M.: Evans, no surprise, says he’s voting against the Mendo bill (the emergency declaration, to be precise). “I thought we spent a lot of time negotiating and were prepared to go forward,” he says, then says that Mendo pulled key portions of compromise legislation. But he does strike a conciliar note, nothing the “hard work” put in by all parties.

12:50 P.M.: Marion Barry: “For the last 25, 30 years, we’ve had a public safety problem. During my administration, we have a crack cocaine epidemic…I was very naive about how to handle it.” Calls the Fenty/Evans bill a “Band-Aid approach, a shotgun approach.” Says he’s supporting the Mendo version. “I don’t condone criminal activity,” he notes. You can’t make this stuff up.

Read More “D.C. Crime Bill(s) Liveblog: Grandstand City!” »

Here’s an interesting but not really shocking D.C. crime fact: The District is home to about 130 criminal street gangs and smaller crews, whose members are involved in a disproportionate number of the city’s homicides, according to the report “Responding to Gang, Crew and Youth Violence in the District of Columbia.â€�

Gang members make up more than 60 percent of the city’s homicide suspects and four in every 10 of the victims, according to the report, commissioned by the D.C. Council and published by the Healthy Families/Thriving Communities Collaborative Council. It goes on to issue recommendation on how city officials, police and the community could do a better job of defusing youth violence and preventing teenagers from joining gangs.  You can find the full text here.

The D.C. Council failed to endorse a proposal to limit this year’s summer jobs program to six weeks.

The 7-6 vote came on an emergency measure introduced by Ward 8 Councilmember Marion Barry that would cut this year’s Summer Youth Employment Program from the nine weeks planned by Mayor Adrian M. Fenty. (Emergency legislation requires nine votes to pass.)

In remarks introducing the measure, Barry called last year’s disaster an “embarrassment for the nation”—this, of course, from a man who knows from national embarrassment.

D.C. Council Chairman Vincent C. Gray also spoke in favor of the bill, and spoke highly of Barry’s efforts to create and nurture the program, which, he pointed out repeatedly, has “historically” been six weeks. “I think we have an obligation to the young people in this city to show that we can make this program work,” he said.

Ward 7’s Yvette Alexander had more prosaic concerns—why take up kids’ entire summers with work? “Let a child be a child,” Alexander said. “Let our children enjoy their summer!”

At-Large Councilmember Kwame R. Brown expressed skepticism at the Fenty administration’s claims that they had already identified jobs for all 22,000 registered participants in the program. “This is a joke,” he said. “I was born at night, but it wasn’t last night….Can we be real here?” He went on to take the Fenty administration to task for planning for a $40 million-plus program, when the current budget supports only half that.

Also voting in favor were Mary Cheh, Phil Mendelson, and Michael A. Brown. Barry still didn’t have enough votes.

Read More “Council Proposal to Limit Summer Jobs Program Fails” »

Since he moved last month to hold $27 million from the D.C. Public Schools budget over an enrollment dispute, Council Chairman Vincent C. Gray has been pleading for an answer to a simple question: Where are the schoolchildren that DCPS is projecting will enroll this fall—more than 3,000 more than if longstanding trends hold—going to come from?

Now Gray’s crowing, because he says DCPS Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee has admitted he has a point in a letter sent to him yesterday.

In the letter, Rhee cites the work of independent researchers in coming up with the projections, but writes, “I understand your hesitance to accept the projected increase in enrollment….Based upon the assumptions we outlined…we believe we have sound evidence and data to suggest that DCPS’s enrollment of October 2009 will increase slightly….However, as I shared with you Friday, I cannot guarantee that this will occur.”

Gray sees vindication therein: “Basically, what I think it says is [that] I think we’ll be proven right on the number,” Gray said this morning at the council breakfast meeting. “It says in a lot of words that they don’t know where 3,073 people are coming from.”

As for a modus vivendi, a compromise has been fashioned: The council will vote today to restore DCPS funding on the October 2008 enrollment figure—meaning DCPS is free to spend about $24 million of the $27 million that council had threatened to place in escrow. The remaining $3 million will be set aside pending an audit of the fall enrollment.

For next year, however, Rhee and Gray have agreed to work together to “develop a uniform method by which enrollment projections will be completed by both DCPS and the charter schools.” That would aim to end the inequity in the mechanics of charter funding versus DCPS funding: Charters have to refund money accepted due to overprojections, but DCPS doesn’t.

Yesterday, after the D.C. Council voted to hold back on some $27 million in D.C. Public Schools funding, Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee wasted no time writing a nastygram [PDF] to Vincent C. Gray and his colleagues.

The letter laid out all the money that would have to be pulled from schools—itemized and broken down by ward. (Smart move: Hey, Harry Thomas, want to explain to your constituents why you voted to cut $3.9 million from Ward 5 schools?)

This wasn’t the first letter Rhee had sent Gray and the council.

Last week, she had sent another missive [PDF], asking the council to reconsider its moves to cut the budget of the Deputy Mayor of Education’s office and to remove the State Board of Education from the Office of the State Superintendent of Education. Rhee says the council moves, which were ratified yesterday, “begin to erode the structure established by and the progress which has ensued under” school reform legislation passed in 2007.

Much of the letter concerns the decision to take the Interagency Collaboration and Service Integration Commission (aka ICSIC—”ick-sick”) out of DME Victor Reinoso’s shop and put it in the DCPS Office of Youth Engagement. That office, Rhee writes, “is building twilight programs, student attendance and truancy initiatives, and the Youth Engagement Academy,” and as such “cannot take on the additional responsibilities of ICSIC without diverting its focus from these other important initiatives.” Better, she says, to leave it with Reinoso, where it “has the force of the Mayor’s office to coordinate across agencies and the dedicated focus and resources which would otherwise be lost in the day-to-day functions of another agency.”

Rhee also takes issue with the council’s move to pump up the SBOE’s independence, saying it is “likely to lessen the policy focus of the Board and create the temptation to micromanage” and claiming that moving the school ombudsman’s office under their aegis “is likely to politicize” that operation.

In closing, she writes, “we need to continue our progress within the structure and the time line promulgated by the Act. It is too early to turn back.”

Full letter after the jump.

Read More “Michelle Rhee Annoyed By Council’s School Governance Moves” »

Immediately after the D.C. Council’s 12-1 vote to recognize same-sex marriage in other states, a small group of ministers and church congregants raised a ruckus in the hallway outside the fifth-floor council chamber at the John A. Wilson Building.

Perhaps the most livid was a well-dressed gentleman who identified himself as Paul Trantham, a member of Allen Chapel AME Church in Ward 8. “You are destroying our youth!” he cried to dozen gathered outside. “An abomination to God!”

Rev. Charlie Smith of the Missionary Baptist Conference urged electoral retribution: “Catania first!” he shouted.

Same goes for the Rev. Anthony Evans of Mount Zion Baptist Church in Ward 5. “They just kissed themselves goodbye,” he said of councilmembers. “Harry Thomas is gone.”

Same-sex supporters were outside as well; they were, needless to say, in a better mood. Says activist Peter Rosenstein, “I think it was an amazing day for the D.C. Council.” In response to the ministerial demonstrations, he said, “I think people need to recognize there’s a separation of church and state.”

Also in attendance was former Department of Parks and Recreation Director Clark Ray, who said, “I just think it’s a great day for the residents of the District of Columbia.”

Completely without ceremony or debate, the D.C. Council has just made its final vote to recognize same-sex marriages performed in other states. Actually, the council did not vote specifically on the legislation, but rather voted it through as part of the “consent agenda”—a package of typically uncontroversial bills passed together without objection.

Any member can take a bill of the consent agenda, but Ward 8 Councilmember Marion Barry, who told a crowd last week he’d oppose the bill, declined to do so.

This may not be over—Barry may not have realized what he was voting on, and could move a reconsideration.

UPDATE, 11:15 A.M.: OK, Barry just realized his mistake. He has moved reconsideration. Roll call vote passes 10-3, with Catania, Graham, and Evans opposing.

UPDATE, 11:22 A.M.: Debate has begun. Barry has begun speaking on the gay marriage measure, “It’s been a very agonizing and difficult kind of decision. In America, we have a democracy…it is one of the better democracies in the world, which allows people to disagree on the issues….I represent the 70,000 residents of Ward 8. I represent a lot of other people citywide because of my long service as mayor….I initially said i would be supportive [of gay marriage]…and my phone lit up, people talked to me in the street about. And I prayed.” Barry went on to speak about his long civil rights record, including opposing the firing of a gay teacher. “The ministers and preachers of this town …have a responsibility to stand on the moral compass of God whereever they go, and they do….I feel comfortable with this position because I know where my heart is….I’m representing my constituencies.” He explained that his signature appeared on the original amendment due to a staff error when he was in the hospital: “It’ll never happen again, or they’ll be at 64 P Street, which is the unemployment office….I don’t want this to be a litmus test. Look at the whole picture. Look at my whole history. In a democracy, you ought to be able to disagree without being put to a test….Look where i was on gay pride day. I started that!…I said I’m a moral person, but I’m not a pastor or a preacher.” He closed by pointing out that he was a member of the Temple of Praise church in Ward 8. He pointed out that his own preacher, Bishop Glen Staples, opposes the bill.

UPDATE, 11:40 A.M.: Phil Mendelson, sponsor of the amendment, and now David Catania have spoken in support. “It is somewhat personal,” Catania says. “I think it immoral for you to be my friend on one hand and on the other say you are not entitled to the same rights and obligations that I am.” “The District has been a place where we’ve long tried to live under our motto, ‘Justice for All’…I will not stop until I have that for every single resident of this city.” Retorted Barry, “I resent that implication, that because you’re not over here on this particular issue, that you’re not being treated equally. That’s not fair at all.” That earned him applause from a portion of the council chamber. Catania comes back: “I want to be clear…Your position is bigoted, I don’t think that you are.”

UPDATE, 11:45 P.M.: Tommy Wells speaks up for Barry’s civil rights record and the record of churches in delivering needed services, but he says he’s foursquare behind the marriage measure: “This is not a political issue for me. This is a moral issue.” And here comes Jim Graham, against starting out with kind words for Barry’s history before noting, “We part ways today on this issue.”

UPDATE, 11:50 P.M.: Graham, who is gay, drops the little known fact that he was once married. “Legally married, to a woman I love to this day. But, for obvious reasons, that didn’t work out,” he said, to chuckles in the chamber. He closed: “There is not enough love in this world today.”

UPDATE, 11:55 P.M.: Yvette Alexander has strong words for the ecclesiastical community: “They have questioned my Christianity. They have question my morality….Let me just say this is an issue of fairness….I do know one thing, that everyone is equal under God.” Alexander also alluded to some political pressure she’s been feeling: “For those of you threatening to run a ‘Christian candidate’ against me in the next election, you should know: I’m a Christian candidate, too.”

UPDATE 12:00 P.M.: The bill passes, for real this time—12-1, with Barry dissenting.

LL has spent the last week poring over the budget reports submitted by the 12 D.C. Council standing committees. With hundreds of pages of text, there’s bound to be a few slip-ups. Here’s two of LL’s favorites:

Holy Pork: From Muriel Bowser’s public services and consumer affairs committee: “$500,000…is transferred to the Department of Parks and Recreation…for the sole and exclusive use of beatification of passive parks within the boundaries of Ward 4″ [emphasis added]. Now Bowser’s Catholic and all, but does she have enough pull with the pope to sanctify her parklands?

Dept. of Me: From Harry Thomas Jr.’s libraries, parks, and recreation committee: “Redirect $1M from General Improvement (RG001) to Harry Thomas, Jr. Recreation Center Project, created in the 2009 Capital Budget.” The height of narcissistic legislating? Probably not: There is a Harry Thomas Sr. rec center in Eckington, named after the current councilmember’s father and predecessor as Ward 5 councilmember.

This morning, D.C. Council Chairman Vincent C. Gray convened a press conference with 11 of his colleagues to go over their proposed markup changes to the FY2010 District budget. It was a standing-room-only affair, at least in the beginning, but as councilmember after councilmember rose to detail his or her recommendations, it got real tedious real fast. Be glad LL was there so you didn’t have to be. Herewith, the highlights:

—Marion Barry showed up by 9:45 a.m.—by far the earliest LL has ever seen him in the John A. Wilson Building. He explained he had come straight from the airport, after flying in from Oakland, Calif., where he was attending a conference of the National Association of Black Public Administrators. Harry Thomas Jr., the only councilmember not to attend the briefing, remained there. In a strong voice, Barry explained how he “almost jumped out of…my chair” when he saw what the Fenty budget proposal did to charter facilities funding. “I called the chairman, said, ‘Good afternoon; you got your $10 [million].”

—Streetlight Maintenance Fee looks to be gone. Jim Graham, Jack Evans, and Gray all committed to finding the $12 million to make the proposed electric-bill add-on go away.

—As previously mentioned, Emancipation Day will remain a public holiday.

—No Class 3 property-tax relief—for now. The controversial hike on vacant-property tax rates was widely expected to be expunged though the budget process, but Evans says the council will take up the matter after the budget process. Same goes for reform measures at the Board of Real Property Assessment Appeals—everyone agrees it’s necessary, but not necessary to deal with in the budget.

Read More “Streetlight Fee No More, and Other Budget Potpourri” »

A slightly less groggy LL is taking yet another look at the FY2010 budget proposed by the D.C. Council. Another sizable new item he initially missed: Looks like Emancipation Day is back in full.

Originally proposed under Mayor Adrian M. Fenty’s budget plan to move from a full public holiday to an optional “private” holiday, the change was intended to save about $1.2 million on overtime costs for vital employees required to work on the day off. That money has been restored, taken from the operating budgets of nine agencies under the council plan, which will be subject to a full council vote.

In other good news for District employees, the council is proposing restoring $8.3 million to a city fund intended to finance pay raises for union workers. The mayor had proposed zeroing out that fund over the course of the four-year financial plan. Now $8.3 million ain’t a lot, but it’s enough that city employees can at least expect their COLAs.