In the past few weeks, the Office of the Attorney General has waged a curious battle against plaintiffs in the Pershing Park case.

Attorney General Peter Nickles & Co. fought over whether plaintiffs could depose a government witness. They lost that battle and the deposition provided devastating evidence of more discovery abuses.

The losing fight over the depo has yet to put a dent in Nickles’ M.O. The AG has not backed down from further stonewalling in the cases. In a curious move, the OAG argued in federal court filings that plaintiffs should return 211 pages of documents claiming that they were “mistakenly produced.” The OAG contended that these documents were attorney-client work product.

Last night, Legal Times reported that U.S. District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan ruled against Nickles on the matter.

So what are these mystery docs?

Read More “Pershing Park Case: Read The Document Nickles Didn’t Want You To See” »

Faster, better, cheaper.

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:

Read More “Why Adrian Fenty’s Parks Contracting Scheme Is an Outrage” »

From Kojo:

Ugh.

“The mayor had nothing to do with the contract.”—Peter Nickles on Kojo concerning questions related to the parks contracts to Fenty’s frat brothers. Then why is there a hearing going on? Maybe Nickles needs to read LL’s latest column.

And this from Nickles: “I think Mary Cheh is great….Mary Cheh is a great councilmember.”

The D.C. Council has just gaveled to order a hearing on parks contracts transferred by Mayor Adrian M. Fenty in such a way as to evade council oversight.

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!

Late Friday, Attorney General Peter Nickles released an opinion stating that the D.C. Housing Authority is required to vet its contracts worth $1 million per year or more through the D.C. Council.

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.

Read More “Nickles: Parks Contracts Are OK After All” »

Attorney General Peter Nickles has determined that the D.C. Housing Authority must send its million-dollar-plus contracts to the D.C. Council for approval.

Such a determination comes less than 24 hours after news broke that the Mayor Adrian M. Fenty has sent a dozen parks-and-rec construction projects worth $81.6 million to DCHA in a manner that eluded council oversight. The contracts subsequently awarded by DCHA have gone to firms with close ties to Fenty—raising a whole lot of question about the process.

The opinion released this evening came in response to a question posed today by DCHA. In it, Nickles relies on a 1996 corporation counsel opinion that addressed an almost identical question.

So what does this mean?

Read More “Nickles: DCHA Contracts Must Go to D.C. Council” »

Today, DHS Director Clarence Carter sent out a statement to various homeless advocates and shelter providers. Earlier this week, Carter and Councilmember Tommy Wells sparred on just how much the homeless services budget would get cut. Many shelters are facing 30 percent cuts or worse—closing down.

I’m not sure Carter does himself any favors with this statement. Readers: Tell me what he’s trying to say! Are there still going to be cuts? I think so. Carter does stress one priority: making sure the homeless have shelter during the hypothermia season. But he is fuzzy on what the looming cuts are going to do for family shelters or transitional housing facilities.

Read statement after the jump.

Read More “Clarence Carter Issues Statement On Homeless Services Cuts” »

The Issue: Southeastern University, a private school founded 130 years ago by the YMCA near the Southwest Waterfront, has gone the way of the Titanic—and taxpayer’s money is going down with the ship. According to the Washington Examiner, three months before the Middle States Commission on Higher Education yanked the school’s accreditation, the floundering university received a $1.5 million earmark requested by Mayor Adrian M. Fenty. The university, which catered to low-income DC residents, reportedly “spent every dime”—to no avail. Now that the school’s fall semester has been canceled, and the students transferred to other universities, what should be done with the block?

Bring On the Buckets: Some argue the city should work to save the school as a place for higher learning: Charles Allen, chief of staff to Ward 6 Councilmember Tommy Wells, told City Desk: “The university is right in the heart of Southwest. Not having classes there is a major loss to the neighborhood in terms of educational resources…and just losing activity on the sidewalk.” There has been talk of merging the school with another institution.

Abandon Ship: Others complain that taxpayers have already given the school a fighting chance, both through Mayor Fenty’s earmark, and an additional $400,000 in public funds. Dee, commenting on US News and World Report, says: “The faculty was a joke…my marketing instructor recruited people to sell Amway products. If you didn’t show up to his house for his “sales pitch,” you didn’t receive extra credit.”

Next Step: Wells is working with the school to find a merger and possibly carry on the school’s medical associate degree program—but Allen says, “so far, none of the options have panned out.” As far as the money goes, a Mayor Fenty spokesperson told the Examiner, “We’ve asked them not to spend any additional money.”

Photo of school by Alan Cordova, Creative Commons Attribution License

Prince of Petworth posts on the effort/petition to save the Black Rooster. One reader’s response:  “i LOVE the black rooster. if the peace corps really closes it down…i just…i might just not go to happy hour anymore, ever, anywhere. and that would make me terribly sad. save the rooster!”

Penn Quarter Living debuts a new column called High Rise Life. The first one is on elevator etiquette. It’s not so much a column as bad comment bait of which I am sometimes guilty of. Here’s a sampling from PQL’s rookie effort on sharing an elevator: “Fob in and offer to push buttons or don’t offer and make sure others belong in the building? Remind neighbors that bicycles and their owners usually ride the freight elevator or zip it? Heel your dog or let him/her sniff around and be friendly? What is good neighborly elevator etiquette?” Fascinating.

Read More “Our Morning Roundup: A Metrobus Strikes Again” »

Pictures sent in by a helpful reader:

Read More “Jim Graham Gets Pasted @ 18th and Columbia Road NW” »

All this week Councilmember Jim Graham has strayed from his usual m.o.: He’s been press shy. He has stayed relatively quiet, refusing to answer questions about his indicted chief of staff Ted Loza and the various fallout issues that have come up.

Last night, Graham played hard to get with us over this story concerning his intensely personal entanglements with Loza. All of a sudden Graham has become allergic to the cameras. This has got to be a first for the Grahamstander.

Today, Graham made his next move: killing the controversial taxicab legislation that has become part of the Loza bribery scandal, the Washington Post reports. The paper writes:

Reached Wednesday morning, Graham said he planned to withdraw the legislation. “This bill was introduced to provoke a conversation about the ever-increasing number of taxicab operators in D.C.,” he said. In its place, Graham said he planned to hold a public hearing this month to discuss the state of the District taxi industry.

Graham went on to tell the Post that his killing of the bill has nothing to do with the growing bribery investigation.

Does he think D.C. residents are going to believe that?

Read More “A Time When Grahamstanding Fails” »

WaPo’s D.C. Wire posted that the D.C. Council has passed a new ethics code via emergency legislation. Tim Craig writes:

The proposal, for example, states that council members need to uphold “unusually high standards of honesty, integrity, impartiality” and that the “avoidance of misconduct and conflicts of interest on the part of council members is indispensable.” Some of those standards were already scattered through out city code, but Gray concluded the ethical policies dealing with the council were confusing and too dispersed.

In the Post account, Councilmember Marion Barry praises the ethics code as a big step forward and cites Chairman Gray for his “progressive thinking.”

So the code must be full of loopholes?

Read More “Why Did The D.C. Council Have To Pass An Ethics Code Now?” »

It wasn’t much, really, the first candidates’ face-off of the 2010 election cycle. But LL’s still excited to have a campaign to cover.

The two declared Democratic at-large D.C. Council candidates, incumbent Phil Mendelson and challenger Clark Ray, took turns answering questions for a little more than an hour last night in the basement of a Southwest apartment building. They did so in front of about a dozen members of the New Capitol Park Towers Tenant Association.

Given the early date and the small crowd, LL hesitates to read too much into this candidate pairing. But there’s a few points to be made here:

Read More “First Debate of DCision 2010: Ray v. Mendo in Southwest Showdown!” »

Last week, former-Councilmember Kathy Patterson submitted a letter to U.S. District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan. The letter called into question several statements made by AG Peter Nickles in his sworn submission to Sullivan regarding the Pershing Park case. Councilmembers Phil Mendelson and Mary Cheh have their own critiques. But it was Patterson who sent her letter to the federal judge. The judge then issued an August 20 order releasing it to the various lawyers in the case—but not to the public.

Soon, the letter made its way to the press. Nickles does not approve of this leak. He may have a point. But it seems a little petty in light of the AG’s promises of a full investigation into the case’s numerous evidence problems. Also, Patterson corrects several errors that she believes were made in Nickles’ sworn statement. Is this really the moment Nickles should go back to playing the bulldog lawyer?

Nickles suggests he wanted time to oppose the public release of Patterson’s letter. In a filing yesterday, Nickles raises the issue with Sullivan:

“Since Ms. Patterson is not a party to this case, the purpose of the Court’s August, Order was to make Ms.Patterson’s correspondence available to all parties and also to inform the parties of the Court’s inclination to post the correspondence on the public docket and to provide the parties with an opportunity to respond publicly. The Court’s Order, however also provided that any objections to the posting of the Patterson Correspondence on the public docket be filed by no later than August 26 and that the Patterson Correspondence would not be made a matter of public record until the Court so ruled.”

Read More “Pershing Park Case: Nickles Plans To Respond To Patterson’s Letter” »