Every May 15, legions of city employees scramble to finish their financial disclosure statements---public documents collected by the Office of Campaign Finance laying out whether government managers and certain other workers have any real or potential conflicts of interest.

This year, for instance, LL walked into Phil Mendelson's office on May 15 to see the at-large councilmember hunched over a typewriter shortly before the deadline. Mendelson, as it happens, is one of the few folks in town who reports anything of substance on his forms.

Most declare nothing, and some haven't filed at all. Last week, OCF published a lengthy list of nearly 1,000 nonfilers. Many of those are low-level functionaries, many of them no longer work for the District, but a handful were top-level officials.

Read More "Top D.C. Officials Haven’t Filed Financial Disclosures" »

Thanks to the Washington Post's preview yesterday of the city's latest HIV/AIDS numbers, we know know that, with 3 percent of the population diagnosed, D.C.'s rates are "higher than West Africa" and "on par with Uganda and some parts of Kenya."

Those comparisons came from Dr. Shannon Hader, head of the city's HIV/AIDS Administration and a former public health officer who did extensive work in Africa. But LL and LL's boss had the thought: Is this just another example of the District suffering in an apples-to-oranges comparison---you know, where the District is compared to a state or country encompassing both urban, rural, and suburban areas rather than to its peer cities?

So after today's press conference on the numbers, LL asked Hader to put the numbers in context of American cities: "Our rates are twice as high as New York City and five times as high as Detroit," she said, adding she wasn't aware of a city with a higher infection rate.

Read More "How Does D.C.’s HIV Rate Compare to Other Cities?" »

A man died Monday morning while receiving treatment for a drug addiction at a District facility.

Sandy Ethridge, 59, was pronounced dead at Prince George's Hospital Center on the morning of Dec. 15. He had been admitted on Dec. 11 to the Addiction Prevention and Recovery Administration's detox facility on the D.C. General campus, according to sister Annie Holder.

Ethridge, a resident of Potomac Gardens in Capitol Hill, had been sent to detox under a court order, Holder says; he had been admitted to the facility several times before for treatment of drug and alcohol addictions. On Monday morning, according to an account related to Holder by a detective investigating the death, Ethridge was seen by a fellow patient using a needle and syringe to inject drugs in a facility bathroom. When patients were awakened for breakfast a few hours later, according to the account, he was discovered to be unconscious and unresponsive and was taken to the Maryland hospital.

"I said, 'Well, where did he get [the drugs] from?" Holder says.

An investigation into the cause of death is pending, according to the Maryland medical examiner's office. A call to the investigating detective today was not immediately returned.

If Ethridge was indeed determined to have died from a drug overdose, it raises serious questions about security at the APRA facility, which is charged with providing indigent District residents with inpatient addiction treatment. Facility policies require strictly controlled access to the facility and thorough searches of patients upon admittance.

Dr. Pierre Vigilance, head of the District's health department, declined to comment on the specifics of Ethridge's death. "The passing of any client is unfortunate. We take this situation very seriously, and we are in the process of carefully reviewing this matter. Out of respect for our client's privacy we are unable to provide details of his demise at this time."