Wilson Building Whirlwind: The summer is usually a little slow for political news. Today wasn't. First, D.C. officials announced that the city was suing Ward 5 Councilmember Harry Thomas Jr. for allegedly using earmarks to buy himself an Audi. Thomas says he's done nothing wrong, but the FBI and the U.S. Attorney's Office were already [...]
The Audacity of Hope: There was good news and bad news out of the Wilson Building today. The good news? The D.C. Council adopted the proposed budget for next year without too much hassle, closing an expected $322 million deficit for the fiscal year. The bad news? Some of the spending in the budget is [...]
On May 19, 1993, the D.C. government lost one of its early Home Rule-era leaders and most accomplished legislators. D.C. Council Chairman John A. Wilson was found dead in the basement laundry room of his Southwest home by his wife, Bonnie, and chauffeur. His death, ruled a suicide by the Metropolitan Police Department, sent shock [...]
On May 16, 2008, D.C. Attorney General Peter Nickles personally delivered controversial baseball tickets to then-D.C. Council Chairman Vincent Gray, ending one of the more mind-boggling standoffs between councilmembers and the administration of then-Mayor Adrian Fenty. At least for that year.
At the center of the dispute were 19 tickets in Suite 61 at the taxpayer-funded [...]
Orange You Glad You Voted For Orange: The election many of you didn't realize was happening is now over, and Vincent Orange is—once again—a member of the D.C. Council. Sure, voter turnout was under 10 percent, and sure, 71 percent of ballots were cast for someone besides Orange. That doesn't matter! What matters is the [...]
The budget deal struck by Congress and the White House last weekend kept D.C. libraries and rec centers open by averting a government shutdown. But it also included policy “riders” that banned the District from spending any of its local budget on abortion and ordered the city to continue a school voucher program. Since federal [...]
Fight the Power: Scholars of social movements have seen it before—first, a moment of triumph, then, the whole thing descends into bickering. And so it is that the day after Mayor Vince Gray and a quorum of the D.C. Council were arrested by Capitol Police in a protest of D.C.'s lack of autonomy and voting [...]
A regular summary of irregular news and notes from neighborhood blogs and email lists around the District.
Hug a Grad Student Today: Of much discussion on the Brookland email list has been what to do with the Colonel Brooks Tavern, a neighborhood institution that some feel should stay, and some feel should go. While the conversation [...]
At Thursday's oversight hearing before Ward One Councilmember Jim Graham's Committee on Human Services, a mother recounted what life has been like for her 13-year-old daughter since she was taken into D.C.'s child-welfare agency's custody. It has been a horror show.
Since coming into the system six months ago, the daughter has been raped twice.
The city [...]
Last week, City Desk reported that At-Large Councilmember David Catania’s birth control bill—which is based on existing processes in Washington state and would allow women who need birth control to get a prescription from a pharmacist rather than a doctor—would increase access, but wasn’t likely to affect the price of contraceptives.
But there’s much more to [...]
Sure, the budget's dangerously unbalanced, House Republicans are starting to poke at us, and there's a recession going on.
Forget all that. The good news is, the D.C. Council takes care of itself.
A recent survey by the Pew Charitable Trusts’ “Philadelphia Research Institute,” while focused (of course) on Philadelphia, ranked the District first for the amount of [...]
Today, we’re kicking off a new semi-regular City Desk feature, Today in D.C. History, where we’ll examine the big events and obscure happenings that have shaped the District of Columbia we know today. While not every day in local D.C. history is notable, we hope to cover a lot of ground. In February, Washington City [...]
All Your Budget Are Belong to Us: All the tax talk up on Capitol Hill must be contagious. The D.C. Council approved a plan to close this year's $188 million budget deficit without raising taxes on anyone, defeating one plan that would have had millionaires paying more, and another that would have raised rates for [...]
That's the question attorney Matthew Fraidin was tasked with finding out. Fraidin, an associate professor at UDC's David A. Clarke School of Law and visiting professor at Georgetown University, had been tapped by Councilmember Tommy Wells to investigate the conditions at D.C. General's emergency family shelter and figure out if the abandoned hospital was a [...]
D.C. police union chief Kristopher Baumann has had a tough time getting through dinner of late. Just last Wednesday, members of a news outlet Baumann declines to name called him six times as he tried to scoop his vittles. If it's not reporters coming at him, it's residents: "I tried to [...]
