On Monday, the same day that news broke that a bunch of city employees were allegedly taking home both a pay check and unemployment benefits, Mayor Vince Gray told all District government workers that they have to sign an ethics pledge. And yes, since you're wondering, a spokesman for the mayor says signing the pledge is mandatory.

Here it is:

D.C. GOVERNMENT EMPLOYEE ETHICS PLEDGE

As an employee of the Government of the District of Columbia, I understand that I am a public servant and, thereby, am entrusted with working for the common good of our city and its residents.

As a public servant, I have been given access to governmental power and resources for one purpose: To serve the government of the District of Columbia and the people whom that government represents.

Therefore, I solemnly pledge to honor the public trust and responsibility with which I have been entrusted by: Read more Vince Gray’s Ten Commandements For City Workers

LL's column this week, which you've naturally already read, details how Tower 3—the District fire truck specifically designated to rescue the president and the first family from a White House blaze—is currently in very poor shape.

But Fire Chief Kenneth Ellerbe said on the The Kojo Nnamdi Show today that he'd reached out to the U.S. Secret Service and assured them that his department is still capable of rescuing the prez in spite of equipment problems. As LL noted in his column, when Tower 3 (the only truck in the fleet that has a bucket at the end of its ladder) is out of service, a regular ladder truck takes it's place.

"We assured them that if the need arises, we're going to make sure we take care of our responsibility," Ellerbe told LL after the show.

Do note that Ellerbe contacted the Secret Service after he'd received emailed questions from LL regarding Tower 3, questions that LL never got a response to.

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

Yibarek Syume, the mastermind behind the widespread D.C. taxi corruption case that brought down Ted Loza, the former chief of staff to Ward 1 Councilmember Jim Graham, was sentenced to 41 months in prison today.

Two co-conspirators, Berhane Leghesse and Amanuel Ghirmazion, were sentenced to 12 months and eight months, respectively. Earlier this week, Abdul Kamus, another co-conspirator, was sentenced to 12 months.

Loza, who's pictured above, was sentenced to eight months in prison last summer after pleading guilty to taking $1,500 in gratuities. Loza is currently an innate at Moshannon Valley Correctional Institute in Philisburg, Pa.

All things considered, it sure looks like Loza got a pretty sweet deal compared to everyone else.

Read more Main Wheel in Taxi Corruption Case Sentenced to 41 Months

A deliberative roundup of one city's local politics. Send your tips, releases, stories, events, etc. to lips@washingtoncitypaper.com. And get LL Daily sent straight to your inbox every morning!

Good morning sweet readers! Catch LL on The Kojo Nnamdi Show at noon today. LL will be asking Councilmember David Catania about his recent Mr. Congeniality award, and Fire Chief Kenneth Ellerbe about the fires burning in his own department. News time:

Like a Freak Accident: The Post's Mike DeBonis publishes more of his interview with Ward 7 Council candidate Kevin Chavous, who recently copped a deal with prosecutors after he was arrested on a charge of trying to buy a $20 blow job from an undercover police officer. Says Chavous: "I did nothing wrong or illegal, that it was a misunderstanding that took place. ... If it happened to me, it can happen to you. A lot of people have had misunderstandings with law enforcement, but you move on and move forward. ... If this were enough to break me, then I wouldn’t be ready for office." Also, Chavous shared his thoughts on Ward 7 Councilmember Yvette Alexander's recent push for permanent "prostitution-free zones": "I just think it’s very interesting that the councilmember who hasn’t sponsored one major bill now wants to take up this issue when this is not an issue on the radar of people in Ward 7."

AFTER THE JUMP: Street Legal; Parking News; Mayor's Tweets Back... Read more Loose Lips Daily: Freak Accident Edition

A deliberative roundup of one city's local politics. Send your tips, releases, stories, events, etc. to lips@washingtoncitypaper.com. And get LL Daily sent straight to your inbox every morning!

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT:

• Protective Services Police Department Chief Fired
• Unfriendly Fire
• Gray Spox: $5,000 Speech is a "Friggin' Bargain."
• OCF Swats Down GOP Complaints
  

Good morning sweet readers! It's Thursday, and you all know what that means: another dead tree edition of Washington City Paper is out and the paper's staffers will be performing the musical Hair in the middle of Champlain Street at 4 p.m. This week's cover is the Spring Arts guide. Alex Baca finds out why Counter Culture coffee is ubiquitous in the District. LDP exposes the seedy underbelly of the District's construction recycling industry, which comes with this great quote: "This may come as a surprise to you, but there are people in the waste industry who will lie.” LL takes a look at the growing tensions between Fire Chief Ken Ellerbe and the fire union. LL's lede: "The D.C. fire truck specifically designated to save the president and the first family from a White House blaze has been out of service for 500 out of the last 1,000 days, according to some of its operators, and is, in the words of one firefighter assigned to drive the truck, a 'piece of crap.'" In related news, Lon Walls, the spokesman for the department, was suspended for calling a recent protest by union members "racist," the Washington Times reports. More news time:

Deadbeat Dirty Harry: File this under news that is not in the least bit surprising. Disgraced former Ward 5 Councilmember Harry Thomas Jr. isn't living up to the repayment terms he agreed to last summer in order to settle a civil suit with the District. Thomas was supposed to pay the city back $50,000 every six months, but Thomas has already skipped out on the second payment, which was due in December. WTOP's Mark Segraves has the scoop: "D.C. Attorney General Irv Nathan tells WTOP his office is aggressively working to recover the money Thomas owes. 'He's definitely in default,' Nathan said. 'We're in discussions with his attorneys and we definitely want to get satisfaction for the full amount.'" The Post notes that even if Thomas were to declare bankruptcy, he'd still couldn't escape his debt to the city. But in practical terms, it's hard to see the District ever getting this money back. Thomas already has other debt problems, he's almost certainly going to be spending time in prison, and his earning potential after he gets out looks extremely limited. He's been he's been dependent on the District government, either directly or indirectly, for a paycheck for almost all of professional life and that gravy train, LL's pretty sure, has left the station.

AFTER THE JUMP: Muriel for Mayor?; New Hampshire Doesn't Like D.C.; Ward 7 Candidates Looking For Attention... Read more Loose Lips Daily: Deadbeat Dirty Harry Edition

Lou Cannon, the head of the D.C. Protective Services Police Department, was fired today, a city spokesman confirms to LL.

Cannon oversaw the small police agency tasked with protecting city-owned buildings. Kenny Diggs, a spokesman for the Department of General Services, said Cannon was let go today but could not specify why citing privacy rules governing personnel decisions. A spokesman for Mayor Vince Gray also declined to explain Cannon's firing (get it?!). A call to Cannon's home line was not immediately returned.

Cannon was one of several retired Metropolitan Police Department officers who returned to District employment and was receiving both a full salary and a full pension, a double dipping deal the Gray administration said was illegal. Earlier this year, Cannon and a handful of his deputies sued the District after they stopped receiving both their full salaries and their full pensions.

About a year ago, Cannon, who was appointed by President Barack Obama to the Federal Salary Commission in 2009, was temporarily placed on leave.

LL is still trying to track down why exactly Cannon was canned, and will update as necessary.

UPDATE: Pedro Ribeiro, the mayor's spokesman, says another Protective Services employee was also let go today. But Diggs says only Cannon was fired today.

UPDATE No. 2: Cannon's lawyer, Matt LeFande, was able to shed a little bit of light on the situation. LeFande says Cannon was given a letter today telling him he was fired. LeFande has not seen the letter, but says it's his understanding that the letter said Cannon's firing was related to an incident in October involving Occupy D.C. protestors taking down the District of Columbia flag from the Wilson Building. LeFande says the letter says there was something wrong with how Cannon's agency handled and reported the incident.

Read more D.C. Protective Services Police Department Chief Fired

The D.C. fire truck specifically designated to save the president and the first family from a White House blaze has been out of service for 500 out of the last 1,000 days, according to some of its operators, and is, in the words of one firefighter assigned to drive the truck, a “piece of crap.”

Tower 3, the District fire department’s one and only tower truck (a tower truck has a bucket at the end of its ladder), is stationed at the fire house downtown on 13th and L streets NW. One of its main responsibilities, according to several fire officials, is to make a quick dash to the White House in the event of a blaze.

“That’s why D.C. has a tower [truck],” says one longtime firefighter assigned to Tower 3, who asked not to be named because he feared getting in trouble with his superiors. If the president and his family are trapped above the first floor, Tower 3’s bucket, which can support the weight of several people, is supposed to be available for a mass rescue.

“We actually have a designated window we show up at,” says fire technician Mike Rogers, a 23-year department veteran whose job is to ride up in said bucket. Rogers says he’s been working on the truck ever since the department bought it in 2003.

Since April 2009, the truck has been out of service for a total of 519 days, according to records complied by some of the truck’s operators and provided to LL by the D.C. Firefighters Association, the union that represents the city’s firefighters. Fire crews have to keep records every time their trucks are out of service and the union tracks equipment issues independent of the department. The longest stretch, according to these records, was in the second half of 2010, when Tower 3 was out for 143 straight days.

The problems with the truck that’s supposed to save the president are small pieces of ammo in a growing war between Fire Chief Kenneth Ellerbe and the fire union, along with a vocal group of Ellerbe critics in the department. The battles run from the trivial, like what logo firefighters can wear on their clothing, to the more serious, like what’s the best schedule for working firefighters and who is responsible for equipment problems like those of Tower 3’s. Throw in accusations of racism, a touchy subject for a department with several past discrimination lawsuits, and you’ve got a recipe for a potentially explosive situation. (Yes, LL knows that pun burned.)

Read more Unfriendly Fire

Does Mayor Vince Gray really need to hire outside help to write a speech? The answer, according to the Gray administration, is yes.

Last night's State of the District address was crafted with the help Alan Hermesch, a former spokesman for Howard University. The city's contract with Hermesch is not to exceed $5,000, according to mayoral spokesman Pedro Ribeiro, who added that the final amount will likely come in slightly under that maximum. (Hermesch said he's not tallied up the total hours worked on the speech, but said it was "a lot.")

Ribeiro says the Gray administration has no in-house speech writer and he reached out to Hermesch for help because yesterday's speech was kind of a big deal. When LL noted that last year's State of the District speech was written without outside help (in part by a lower level staffer in the city administrator's office), Ribeiro responded: "But we had different staff last year."

This year's speech was certainly tighter and more concise than last year's drone fest, so maybe the $5,000 was worth it. Ribeiro suggested that if LL shopped around town, he'd be lucky to find a speech writer who could even come close to matching Hermesch's prices.

"Five thousand is a friggin' bargain," says Ribeiro.

Maybe, but LL can't help but think that a better bargain would be finding someone in the mayor's $626,000-a-year*communications shop who can write what amounted to a pretty standard policy speeches.

*Update. Ribeiro calls to tell LL that the mayor's communication's shop is short a person and is currently running well under its $626,000-a-year budget.

The Office of Campaign Finance has ruled that District politicians are free to use their constituent service funds to donate to political organizations as long as the donations aren't for political purposes. The ruling several months after the D.C. GOP charged that almost every councilmember was a rotten rule breaker for having donated constituent service funds to Democratic organizations like the Gertrude Stein Democratic Club and various ward-specific Democratic groups.

OCF says that while it's true that pols donated to groups affiliated with the Democratic Party, those donations were for charitable purposes consistent with the goal of constituent service funds, which is "to support the general welfare of the residents of the District of Columbia."

Naturally, the DC GOP isn't pleased with the ruling. "OCF has a long history defending incumbent elected officials and disregarding the laws they are tasked with enforcing," says a statement from the organization.

A deliberative roundup of one city's local politics. Send your tips, releases, stories, events, etc. to lips@washingtoncitypaper.com. And get LL Daily sent straight to your inbox every morning!

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT:

• READ: Mayor Gray's State of District Speech

• Mendo and VO Go At It Over Gas Bill

Good afternoon sweet readers! If LL's Bean were to write an autobiography, an appropriate title would "Everything is interesting/I'm hungry." News time:

The $4,000 Speech: Mayor Vince Gray told residents crammed into the Sixth & I Historic Synagogue last night that he's put his crummy first year behind him and is now focused on making the District an economic powerhouse that's less reliant on the federal government and more into sexier things like the tech sector. Gray apparently hired a professional speechwriter to craft his message, with the cost pegged by one Examiner reporter at $4,000. An ambulance was reportedly called for Ward 8 Councilmember Marion Barry, but then sent away after the former mayor-for-life started feeling better. And several dozen firefighters showed up wearing DCFD gear in/not in defiance of an order from fire department brass not to.

AFTER THE JUMP: Metro Looks At Graham; iGaming Contract Dies; Kwame Backpedals...

Read more Loose Lips Daily: The $4,000 Speech Edition