Posts
Good morning, Getting this to you on the early side today.
Best, Karyn-Siobhan Robinson a/k/a DC Government Clips
D.C. Government/D.C. Council media clips: Tuesday, November 16, 2010.
Missed yesterday? http://bit.ly/bxDRvo
Twitter: DCGovClips
Bill would place 5-year limit on welfare in D.C. - Washington Post
Reuben Charles unlikely to be Gray's chief of staff - D.C. Wire (Washington Post blog)
D.C.'s taxi drivers supported Vince Gray -- and now they want payback - Wonkbook (Washington Post blog)
Can the D.C. special election be done on the cheap? - DeBonis (Washington Post blog)
Together We Stand With Vincent Orange, Divided, We Fall - Loose Lips (Washington City Paper)
Flood plan proposed to protect Washington Mall - Washington Post
Levee to be built in D.C. - Washington Business Journal
Pepco's proposed surcharge rejected - Washington Business Journal
Corruption charges in P.G. shine a light on D.C. - Examiner
Missed: DC Dems should appoint a caretaker to Kwame Brown's seat - Greater Greater Washington
* * *
Bill would place 5-year limit on welfare in D.C.
By Tim Craig
Washington Post Staff Writer
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/15/AR2010111507284.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/15/AR2010111507284.html
Monday, November 15, 2010; 10:36 PM
Two D.C. Council members from impoverished areas of the city are proposing to end cash payments to long-term welfare recipients to save tax dollars and encourage more of their constituents to find work.
The proposed five-year benefit limit, sponsored by council members Marion Barry (D-Ward 8) and Yvette M. Alexander (D-Ward 7), would bring the District in line with most other states, but the proposal is drawing warnings from advocates that it would lead to more homeless families, hungry children and crime.
"For far too long, we have cradled a large part of the population, and our cradling has actually handicapped people," Alexander said. "Many of our residents view government assistance as a way of life, and in my opinion we are actually hurting our residents instead of helping them."
As part of the welfare reform act signed into law by former president Bill Clinton in 1996, the federal government placed a five-year lifetime limit on participation in the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program. But states are allowed to keep recipients on the rolls longer than five years if they use local funds.
The District, long known for its generosity in providing and protecting social services for the poor, has embraced a limitless policy, costing D.C. taxpayers about $35 million a year.
But Barry and Alexander, both of whom represent neighborhoods east of the Anacostia River, say too many District residents now rely on their monthly check from the government. About 40 percent of the city's 17,000 families on TANF have been getting benefits for more than five years. They receive an average of $370 a month.
"We have to break the cycle," Barry said. "Part of the purpose of the bill is to start a dialogue about how ineffective our current system is."
The two council members' push to limit benefits caught many of their colleagues by surprise, even though the council is searching for ways to close a $175 million budget shortfall.
At a hearing on the bill Monday, council members Michael A. Brown (I-At Large) and Tommy Wells (D-Ward 6) both said they opposed it. About 8,000 families would immediately lose their benefits and other government help, such as child-care subsidies, if the bill was approved, they said.
"I don't plan to move the bill forward," said Wells, chairman of the Human Services Committee. "But I do think it was driven by a frustration that we have generational poverty, and people seem to subsist on these services and we are not able to get them off."
Although the legislation will probably not be voted on, it's renewing a debate about whether the District's Department of Human Services is doing enough to offer job training and job placement services to TANF recipients.
As part of federal welfare reform, states are expected to develop programs to help able-bodied recipients work at least 20 hours a week. But Clarence H. Carter, director of the Department of Human Services, said several thousand recipients cannot meet those requirements.
He said there is a one- to two-year waiting period for job-training services. Carter also said, "The challenge in the District is that many of the customers we support are not functionally literate enough to get jobs."
But Barry pinned the blamed on Carter, saying it's "inexcusable" that more recipients have not moved into the workforce.
"The TANF program cannot achieve without the full, active participation of every agency in District government," said Barry, who wants Mayor-elect Vincent C. Gray (D) to replace Carter.
At the hearing, the District's TANF program was contrasted with Maryland's. Although the state has a population of more than 6 million, only about 25,000 Maryland families receive benefits, all but 10 percent of whom are removed from the rolls in five years or less.
Stacy L. Rodgers, a deputy secretary for the Maryland Department of Human Resources, said the state immediately assesses a recipient and matches the person up with federally funded job training and potential employers. If a recipient refuses to abide by a government-imposed plan "to achieve self-sufficiency," Rodgers said, Maryland terminates his or her benefits.
"We'll work with you as long as you work with us," Rodgers said.
Wells said the District will be looking to Maryland for advice as it seeks to reform its system. But most advocates lined up against a five-year limit on benefits, even though about 5,000 D.C. families have been receiving the assistance for eight or more years.
Nina Smith, a single mother affiliated with the Southeast Ministry, a nonprofit job-training and study program, told the council that she had to reenter the TANF program last year after she was forced to quit a job because of a lack of child care.
"I'm back on, not because I want to be but to support my household," she said. "I am asking you not to pass this because if you do, a lot of us will be cold, homeless and hungry and our kids will suffer because we won't have the money to support them."
Reuben Charles unlikely to be Gray's chief of staff
By Tim Craig
D.C. Wire (Washington Post blog)
November 15, 2010; 10:17 AM ET
Reuben O. Charles II, who is heading up Mayor-Elect Vincent C. Gray's transition, is unlikely to become the new mayor's chief of staff, but could land another role in the administration, several sources close to Gray said.
Charles, a businessman who moved to the District three years from St. Louis, has quickly risen through the ranks of Gray's organization, heightening expectations that he would play a major role in the administration.
After organizing bundlers to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars for Gray, Charles took over the campaign a few weeks before the Sept. 14 Democratic primary. He then headed Gray's general election campaign, which featured a series of town-hall meetings.
Charles currently leads day-to-day operations for Gray's transition team, and jobseekers have been clamoring for his attention. He was featured recently in Washingtonian magazine as someone prominent residents should get to know.
Despite his close-working relationship with Gray, Charles has been battered by a series of media reports about a series of liens and judgments that have been filed against him in other states. Many appear related to his business career.
Although he's being more thoroughly vetted by Gray, the chairman has been telling friends that Charles is not a leading candidate to become his chief-of-staff. It's unclear whom Gray could tap for that position, but sources say Gray most likely won't be making major personnel decisions until after Thanksgiving.
D.C.'s taxi drivers supported Vince Gray -- and now they want payback
By Ezra Klein
Wonkbook (Washington Post blog)
November 15, 2010; 9:00 AM ET
The worries that some of us had about D.C. mayor-elect Vince Gray were never really about Vince Gray. They were about the constellation of interests that had converged behind his candidacy -- many of which were angry about common-sense reforms made under Adrian Fenty.
One of those groups were the city's taxi drivers, who'd been forced out of D.C.'s inane zone system -- where your fare was based on how many arbitrary boundaries your cab driver managed to touch in the course of a single ride -- and into meters, like the ones that exist in every other city. They're not happy about that, but they realize no one will let them restore the zone system. So they're going for the next best thing: Taxi medallions, which force down the number of cab drivers so it's harder to get a cab but more lucrative to run one. Donald Marron explains:
I love taxi medallions.
As an example for my microeconomics students, not as policy.
Just last week, I used New York City’s medallion system to show how an entry barrier — the requirement that each yellow taxi have one of a limited number of medallions — could create profits in an otherwise viciously competitive industry.
How much profit? Well, according to the most recent data from the city’s Taxi and Limousine Commission medallions for independent cab drivers traded at between $610,000 and $620,000 in October. If you figure 8% as a reasonable rate of return of this asset, that translates into almost $50,000 in pure profit each year from driving a cab, thanks to the entry barrier.
That's bad policy, but sometimes bad policy is good politics. City Paperquotes Derje Mamo, a taxi driver who was active on transportation for the mayor-elect’s campaign, who says, "He’s got one year, that’s it." And no one knows better than Gray what happens when the city's established interests turn against you.
Can the D.C. special election be done on the cheap?
By Mike DeBonis
DeBonis (Washington Post blog)
November 15, 2010; 1:44 PM ET
Sometime in the first half of next year, the city will be electing a new at-large D.C. Council member to replace Kwame Brown, who will become council chairman Jan. 2.
Running a citywide election at full scale -- meaning two weeks of early voting plus running 143 precincts on election day -- will cost upwards of $500,000, according to an estimate from the D.C. Board of Elections and Ethics. That happens to be $500,000 that the BOEE, and the city generally, has not budgeted for. In a fiscal year in which the city is already projected to come in $175 million short on the bottom line, that's a problem.
But is it possible to run a different type of election? One with a shorter early-voting period, maybe, or with some of those 143 polling places consolidated into "voting centers." Or, perhaps, even an election done solely by mail ballot, like in Oregon and much of Washington.
History indicates that turnout for this election will be meager. During the city's last special elections -- in 2007, for a pair of ward council seats -- turnout was about 23 percent in Ward 4 and about 15 percent in Ward 7. The last special election for an at-large seat, held in 1997, saw only 7.5 percent turnout -- a total of 25,701 votes -- allowing then-Republican David Catania to outpoll Democrat Arrington Dixon.
Does it make sense to pay several hundred poll workers to work an election that's likely to see many polling places serve only a handful of voters? Especially when the city is in tough fiscal straits?
The board is "preparing to provide some options to the council, possibilities that we might be able to do to save the taxpayers some money," said BOEE spokeswoman Alysoun McLaughlin -- including the options mentioned above. But any changes, she said, will probably require the council to pass emergency legislation in the coming months.
D.C. Council member Mary Cheh (D-Ward 3), who oversees matters electoral, said she's "hopeful" that money for a full-bore election will be found without much fuss. She raised the possibility last week of using federal grant funds; that's unlikely, however, since federal election grants are supposed to be used for improving elections, not for actually holding elections.
Don't look to Cheh to propose any money-saving shortcuts, calling that "the absolute last, last thing I would do."
"Philosophically, I don't think we can give this short shrift," Cheh said. "People need a full opportunity to vote."
Together We Stand With Vincent Orange, Divided, We Fall
Loose Lips (Washington City Paper)
Former Ward 5 Councilmember Vincent Orange is displeased with recent editorials in the Washington Post and Greater Greater Washington decrying the fact that the 81-member D.C. Democratic State Committee (It's actually an 82-member group, but one seat is currently vacant) has the power to appoint a councilmember to replace Almost Chairman Kwame Brown.
Orange, who just ran against Brown and lost, is thought to be a frontrunner for the committee's pick. In an email to committee members, VO references the editorials and this blog post by Mike DeBonis, which wonders whether there's a cheaper way to hold a special election in which turnout is expected to be ridiculously low.
Read VO's email after the jump:
There is a movement to manipulate the DCDSC out of its power granted to us by the Home Rule Act. There is a desire to weaken the DCDSC by placing an Independent or Republican on the DC Council through the Special Election process. We must stay focus on the mission granted to us by the Home Rule Act. If this was a Republican At Large vacancy or Independent At-Large vacancy, there would not be an editorial entitled "Getting a leg up on D.C. Council". We cannot let the Washington Post or Greater Greater Washington divide the DCDSC or manipulate the intent of the Home Rule Act.
See below the latest twist on the election process. Remember, no one contacted the DCDSC for comment on trying to amend the Home Rule Act.
Together we stand with the Home Rule Act, divided, we fall.
Vincent Orange
DC Democratic National Committeeman
DC Democratic National Committeeman
Flood plan proposed to protect Washington Mall
By Michael E. Ruane
Washinigton Post Staff Writer
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/15/AR2010111506916.html
Washinigton Post Staff Writer
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/15/AR2010111506916.html
Monday, November 15, 2010; 8:50 PM
Eighty thousand cubic yards of dirt. Thirty steel girders. An eight-foot-high concrete wall.
All to hold back floodwaters that may, or may not, surge across the Mall in the next century or so.
But in the apocalyptic, post-Hurricane Katrina world, no chances can be taken.
So government officials announced Monday morning that work is about to start on a $9 million flood control project that will alter the landscape of the Mall west of the Washington Monument to protect it, and part of Washington, from potential catastrophe.
The project will create a levee that would be erected across 17th Street below Constitution Avenue in the event of a huge flood.
It calls for the construction of large earthen berms, using tons of dirt, and the eight-foot walls on both sides of 17th Street.
It also will require engineers to sink a series of caissons 30 feet deep into the surface of 17th Street, where girders could be placed to support temporary panels to block floodwater.
Work is to begin next month and conclude next summer.
The project aims to protect large sections of downtown Washington from extensive river flooding, and to keep those sections from being declared a flood zone, which could require property owners to buy flood insurance. Such insurance runs about $1,500-a-year, officials said.
The project is the result of the Federal Emergency Management Agency's nationwide review of flood zone maps after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans and parts of the Gulf Coast in 2005.
When FEMA reviewed the District's flood zones, it concluded that existing plans to use sandbags and jersey barriers to block floodwaters flowing north on 17th Street from the Potomac River and the Tidal Basin were inadequate.
FEMA foresaw a scenario in which a flood could inundate a huge crescent of downtown Washington from 17th Street and Constitution Avenue east to the Capitol and south toward Fort McNair.
And it proposed placing the area - including Federal Triangle, the east end of the Mall, and several Smithsonian museums - in the 100-year flood zone unless a better flood-prevention system was devised.
"It became necessary for us to finally protect this Mall with [something] other than sandbags," D.C. Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton said at Monday's announcement.
Working together, the District, the Army Corps of Engineers, the National Park Service and other agencies came up with the idea for a robust flood barrier at a "choke point" on 17th Street.
It is called a "post and panel" system, officials said. In the even of a flood, girders would be erected temporarily and eight-foot-tall aluminum panels assembled between the girders to block the surging water.
The system will first require the sinking of about 30 caissons into the ground across 17th Street and its shoulders, where the girders will be set up. "You've got 10 on the roadway and about an equal number on each side," said Steve Garbarino, the Corps of Engineers' project manager for flood protection in the Washington area.
The posts and panels will be stored on a special tractor-trailer at a National Park Service facility in the District until needed. The caissons will be covered when not in use, officials said.
"This city does not flood that fast," said Steve Lorenzetti, the National Park Service's deputy superintendent of the National Mall and Memorial Parks. "We'll have 24 to 48 hours of notice."
The post and panel system - about 140 feet long - will be augmented by a permanent eight-foot-high concrete, stone-covered wall on either side of 17th Street, and by the earthen berms on either side to link the walls to high ground.
"They've got to bring a lot of dirt in here," Garbarino said, as he stood after a news briefing on the Washington Monument grounds, just east of 17th Street. "This whole area has got to be built up."
Although the project is deemed necessary, Norton expressed some dismay.
"I regret that, however minor, any structure is on this land," she said. "The notion of breaking this landscape is really heartbreaking to me and should be to all who value what the Mall stands for. But . . . there was nothing else to do."
Levee to be built in D.C.
Washington Business Journal - by Tierney Plumb
Date: Monday, November 15, 2010, 10:49am EST
A levee will be built on 17th Street NW to protect downtown, the National Mall, and parts of Southwest D.C. from river flooding.
Construction of the levee, announced at a press conference on Monday, will occur on the east side of 17th Street about 100 feet south of Constitution Avenue on the grounds of the Washington Monument.
The stimulus-funded levee will meet new government standards that were imposed after Hurricane Katrina. It will replace a 1930s-era levee that relies on temporary Jersey barriers, sand bags, and a soil berm to curb flooding.
Invited guests at the press conference included Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton and representatives of the collaborating agencies including the National Park Service, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the National Capital Planning Commission, the District Department of Transportation, District Department of the Environment, D.C. Office of Planning, and other federal and local agencies.
Pepco's proposed surcharge rejected
Washington Business Journal - by Michael Neibauer
Date: Monday, November 15, 2010, 12:08pm EST
The D.C. Public Service Commission has rejected Pepco's proposal to add a 15th surcharge to its customers' monthly bills, one that would have paid for a series of energy efficiency programs that the District recently de-funded.
The utility in August sought a "demand-side management" surcharge to raise the $6 million it needed to continue five energy efficiency and conservation programs — one that benefited residential customers and four that aided commercial clients.
Those programs until recently were funded by the Sustainable Energy Trust Fund surcharge that all utility customers pay. But the District, in a summer budget cutting maneuver, shifted the $6 million to the general fund. The programs ceased to exist on Oct. 1, the first day of fiscal 2011.
"There's nothing running now," said Bob Hainey, a spokesman for Pepco, a subsidiary of Pepco Holdings Inc. (NYSE: POM).
The Sustainable Energy Trust Fund generates about $20 million a year. The $14 million that the District left alone will fund the Sustainable Energy Utility, a private contractor that will bring D.C.'s energy efficiency programs under a single umbrella. The contractor is expected to be named soon.
Hainey said the proposed surcharge would have provided bridge funding to keep Pepco's programs going until the SEU was up and running. But critics, including the Apartment and Office Building Association of Metropolitan Washington, argued the surcharge would be a double tax on consumers, because the SETF levy remains in place.
The commission agreed. It would not be in the best interest of D.C. ratepayers "to have a surcharge for the same (or equivalent programs)," it states in its Nov. 8 order.
"Thus, while we appreciate Pepco's effort to continue an uninterrupted operation of its energy efficiency programs in FY 2011," commissioners wrote, "we think the better course of action is to allow the SEU process to play itself out as [the D.C. Department of the Environment] has suggested."
Corruption charges in P.G. shine a light on D.C.
By: HARRY JAFFE
Examiner Columnist
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/local/Corruption-charges-in-P_G_-shine-a-light-on-D_C_-1577247-108276559.html#ixzz15R9JbMIN
Examiner Columnist
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/local/Corruption-charges-in-P_G_-shine-a-light-on-D_C_-1577247-108276559.html#ixzz15R9JbMIN
November 15, 2010
What a fabulous feast for those of us who love to feed on tales of urban corruption, alleged though it may be.
Prince George's County Executive Jack Johnson takes $15,000 from a developer in exchange for favors: either a party, as he tells it, or for development deals, as the feds maintain.
Johnson's wife, Leslie, phones to say FBI agents are at their door. He tells her to flush a $100,000 check down the toilet. And while she's at it, hide another $80K. No worries, she says: "I have it in my bra."
You can't make this stuff up. The FBI taped the chat and quoted the cash-in-bra exchange in court documents they used to back up Johnson's arrest Friday. The Johnson's have claimed they are clean, and everyone is innocent until proven guilty in these United States, but how delicious.
The good people of our neighboring county to the east are shocked and chagrined. Their charismatic top politician might have been on the take. This is embarrassing, to say the least. But for us in the nation's capital, it's a spectacle that can put a few things into perspective.
To wit: When it comes to hard-core corruption, we are neophytes.
Everyone likes to tag politicians with "corrupt." So if you ask people outside the District about Marion Barry, they might say: "Yeah, he was corrupt."
Really? During his 16 years as mayor and many more in city council, Marion Barry was never caught taking a dime from anyone. No bags of cash from developers, no fancy shoes from contractors, no jewelry from lobbyists. A bottle of cognac from friends who happen to be doing business with the city? Perhaps. Crack from girlfriends? Absolutely.
Federal prosecutors, beginning with Joe diGenova, despised Barry. They knew he was flawed and vulnerable. They dogged him, bugged him, trailed him. They got zip in basic public corruption.
Ask D.C. residents whether Mayor Adrian Fenty is corrupt, and many will glibly say: of course. They will point to the $80 million in recreation center development contracts that went to his friends, and they will assume he steered them and got something in return.
If that's true, why did a city council investigation come up empty? Why has Robert Trout, the lawyer chosen by the council to dig deeper, not been able to report any incriminating transactions? Why are the feds who nailed Jack Johnson not on Fenty's tail?
Yes, we have our corruption. Barbara Bullock fleeced the teachers' union for $5 million. Harriette Walters stole $50 million from the tax and revenue office. Our political leaders, though flawed, appear to be free of graft.
But we are deep into the game of pay-to-play. Both incoming Mayor Vincent Gray and D.C. Council Chairman Kwame Brown have invited fat cats to pay up to $25,000 each to finance their transition committees.
That's not corrupt until they ask for something in return -- and get it. A slippery slope, indeed.
From Monday:
Mike DeBonis: http://wapo.st/aBFCsj
Loose Lips (daily column): http://bit.ly/au9P48
DMV Daily (P.J. Orvetti): http://bit.ly/bYhZOJ
Missed
DC Dems should appoint a caretaker to Kwame Brown's seat
Greater Greater Washington
November 14, 2010 12:04 pm
In January, DC Council Chairman-elect Kwame Brown will vacate his current at-large seat, and the DC Democratic State Committee will appoint a temporary successor. This is a terrible provision of the law. The DCDSC should select someone who doesn't plan to run permanently, and the Home Rule Act should be amended to remove this appointment power.
The DC Home Rule Act calls for the party committee to fill vacancies in partisan at-large seats, but not in ward seats, until a special election can be held.
In this case, that special election will likely happen during the first week of May 2011. Since Kwame Brown was elected as a Democrat, that means the DCDSC will fill the seat. However, the DCDSC is not representative of the will of the voters, and picking any of the contenders for the seat long-term will lack legitimacy and carry the stink of insider dealing.
Oddly, the Home Rule Act does not require vacated ward seats to be filled by appointment (by a political party or otherwise) on a temporary basis, which seems backwards. If there is an urgency to fill vacated legislative seats immediately, that urgency applies most to vacated ward seats. When a ward seat is empty, that ward's residents lose representation. When at-large seats are vacated, everyone in the city loses representation equally. At-large seats, both partisan and independent, should not be treated differently.
An appointment to an elected office immediately endows the appointee with unearned incumbent status, giving that person an unfair advantage in the subsequent election. The appointee will have several months to cast votes on important issues, including the budget, give out favors and accumulate loyalties. A party committee should not have the power to grant the advantage of incumbency. Only the voters should do that.
The party committee is hardly representative of Democrats, let alone all the voters of DC. The DCDSC comprises 82 members. Of those, 48 members are elected in closed Democratic primaries in presidential election years. In 2008, 41,443 Democrats cast votes in the Democratic primary, or 10% of all registered voters in the District. Over 100,000 registered non-Democrats in the District, including Republicans, DC Statehood Greens, and Independents, could not participate in that election by law.
The remaining 34 members of the DCDSC are not elected in a primary, but rather are selected either by the DCDSC members themselves, or by members of specified affiliated organizations. Here is a list of the current members of the DCDSC and the votes they received in the 2008 primary election, where applicable.
Making the most generous assumption possible, if you assume that all 80 members were to vote unanimously for one candidate, DCDSC members elected by somewhere between 20,000 and 41,000 unique Democratic voters, or between 4% and 9% of all registered voters in the District as of August 2010, would be appointing the next at-large legislator.
But one hopeful could reach the 50% plus 1 vote with only the 38 DCDSC members who were not elected in the 2008 primary, plus the 3 lowest vote recipients, who collectively garnered 3338 Democratic votes, or less than 1% of all registered voters as of August 2010, and all of which were cast in Ward 1.
Unfortunately, there's more bad news. The list above does not accurately capture the DCDSC members who will be electing our next at-large councilmember. The DCDSC held an election on November 4 to select 12 new ex-officio members, who will take office on December 2. The results of that election are not posted publicly.
When I called the DCDSC to ask for the results, I was told that there is 1-week certification period, after which time the results would be made available. We do know that the 12 new members will be 6 men and 6 women from this list.
Were this just a private political organization, it would hardly matter. But since its members are now legally authorized to perform a fundamentally public function, we are all stakeholders and we deserve transparency.
Of course, with hundreds of millions of dollars in budget shortfalls to be addressed this fiscal year and next, Council will be conducting urgent business between January and May. But that argues against allowing the DCDSC to fill the vacancy, not for it. If the vacant position must be filled, it should be by someone or some entity with a public mandate from an open and fair election. The DCDSC certainly does not qualify.
Furthermore, leaving Republicans, Independents, and others out of the selection process could be particularly pernicious in the District in the immediate wake of the recent Mayoral primary, after they unsuccessfully fought for enfranchisement in the primary.
There is also a broader point here. District residents and leaders rightly demand equal political representation in and autonomy from Congress. Our local politicians juxtapose our status as the capital of the greatest democracy in the world with the District's historical quasi-colonial status. It helps the District's cause when we demonstrate that we govern our own democracy well.
Many states have similarly poor processes, so one could argue that the District is just acting like most other states by using a fundamentally undemocratic selection method. However, we should lead by example, demonstrating that those in power locally can correct a clear flaw in our system, even when that correction is to their own detriment.
Changing the Home Rule Act requires a public referendum or an act of Congress. Council should pass a resolution requesting that Congress amend the Home Rule Act as soon as possible to treat at-large vacancies like ward vacancies and leave the seats open until a special election is conducted. Since such a change would not take effect in time for this appointment, the DCDSC should follow the "democratic" part of its own party's name and leave the choice to the voters by picking someone with no intention to serve long term.
Editor's note: This post has been in the works for a few days, but the timing turns out to be particularly appropriate given the Post's editorial this morning also questioning the bizarre logic of this appointment process.
No comments:
Post a Comment