Sometimes, it's all about perspective: Ask Melvin Crenshaw.
A draftsman, he's been dealing with D.C. permitting since 1985. Today, outside the newly refurbished DCRA one-stop permit center, he says, "It's a whole lot better than it used to be." The customer service, in particular.
He would know: He remembers hanging out for hours in the agency's old [...]

If anyone should know how to navigate DCRA's permitting bureaucracy, it's Allen David. He worked for the agency for 31 years as a draftsman engineer, involved in various aspects of the permit review process.
These days, though, David does construction designs and drawings, and he also works as a builder's agent to get the permits in [...]

One woman exiting the DCRA permit center this afternoon wasted no time expressing her displeasure: "This place sucks!" she said. "Fenty sucks!"
She's an architect whose been dealing with DCRA for five years, and she finds herself here as many as five times a week. And, she says, it's rarely a quick or pleasant experience. (She [...]

For decades in this town, no city agency generated as much citizen grief as the Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs. The Brobdingnagian agency, responsible for everything from corporate registrations to business license to housing inspections to surveying to weights and measure to elevator licensing, by the late '90s had been widely recognized as a [...]

On Friday, Mayor Adrian Fenty and other city leaders debuted these new steel barriers at 1515 Rhode Island Ave NE, an old apartment building that has been secured four times in the last four months, due to break-ins from squatters and neighborhood ne're-do-wells, according to Mike Rupert, spokesperson for the Department of Consumer and Regulatory [...]

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Adrian M. Fenty is the closest D.C. has ever come to an imperial mayor. He refuses to answer questions about various business and personal trips. He hogs baseball tickets. He snaps his fingers and people get fired.
On April 23, the mayor appeared to be at it again. On a walk-through of Eckington, Fenty [...]

I noticed this puzzling e-mail on a listserv this morning:
Subject: [MPD-5D] Mayor Fenty's has ordered the razing of the Property at 1811 3rd St NE — Wednesday, May 6th 9:00AM
Good Morning All,
Last Thursday, April 23rd, Mayor Fenty conducted a Walk-Thru in the Eckington community. Comm Wright had great concerns about a once beautiful, but [...]