Jack Evans • January 29, 2015

I wrote last month about the community side of a council member’s role. Attending community meetings, working with civic associations and handling constituent services are all critical parts of the job I’m thankful you have elected me to do. The other side is legislative. This part includes both writing and reviewing potential and existing laws and providing oversight of government agencies – to make sure they are efficiently and effectively utilizing your tax dollars.

That oversight happens throughout the year, but during February and March the D.C. Council undertakes a robust performance oversight process of all agencies. Over the next few weeks, I will send questions to the agencies under my purview to collect data on agency structure and recent spending. On Feb. 25 and March 11, the Finance and Revenue Committee, which I chair, will hold hearings with members of the public and representatives from the agencies that the committee oversees to make recommendations on adjustments to next year’s agency budgets.

A schedule of all of the Performance Oversight Hearings can be found on the D.C. Council’s website: dccouncil.us.
After the conclusion of the oversight process, the mayor will release a draft budget proposal for the 2016 fiscal year. At that time we will have another round of hearings with the agencies that fall under the committee’s oversight responsibility. After we make changes to the budget that we consider appropriate, a final version will be passed in June.

The Performance Oversight Hearings are an excellent opportunity to share your experiences – both positive and negative – with D.C. government agencies over the past year. This is the right time to recognize good work and to bring accountability to areas that need improvement.

I also want to announce that I am co-chairing a joint public oversight roundtable on the Jan. 12 incident at the L’Enfant Plaza Metro station and the response by the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) and D.C. agencies. The hearing will take place on Feb. 5 at 2 p.m. in Room 412 of the John A. Wilson Building.

As some of you may know, I joined the WMATA Board of Directors four days before this incident occurred. WMATA’s acting general manager announced 10 safety enhancements last week to improve the safety of the system. Additionally, the National Transportation Safety Board will likely make safety recommendations as part of their final report to WMATA. I am fully committed to working to implement these safety improvements and to continue to make Metro safer, more reliable and better able to respond to the transit needs of our city and region.

Jack Evans is the Ward 2 Councilmember, representing Georgetown since 1991.

Jack Evans • December 5, 2014

The District of Columbia lost one of its founding fathers last week when Marion Barry, Civil Rights leader, mayor, council member, passed away at the age of 78.

During my time in D.C. and in local government, we have experienced an incredible amount of change as a city, but there has always been one constant: Marion Barry. From my earliest days in the District, I’ve always known a city with Marion Barry. I moved to Washington in September 1978 and started working as an attorney at the Securities and Exchange Commission on a Monday. The next day, Marion won the Democratic primary for the Mayor of Washington, D.C. He truly was my “Mayor for Life.”

For the last 10 years, I’ve had the office right next door to Marion. Serving on the Council together was like having an historical figure right within your reach. I had the opportunity to travel with him around the country and the world, and no matter where we were everyone always came up to him and wanted to take their picture with him. From Las Vegas to South Africa, people loved Marion Barry.

In the 35 years I knew him, he never backed down from his belief that Washington, D.C. should do more, should be more, for every person who lives here. Marion looked out for people who were down and out and he should always be remembered for that.
Most people know that Marion Barry served as Mayor of Washington, D.C. longer than anyone else in history, and everyone knows of his infamous struggles, but many people are unaware of how integral a role Marion played in the Civil Rights movement.

Marion participated in the Nashville sit-ins in 1960 as a student at Fisk University. Later that same year, he was elected the first chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, one of the most important groups of the Civil Rights movement. It was through SNCC that he first came to Washington, D.C.

During those early years in Washington, he helped to organize boycotts and peaceful demonstrations. He fought for District home rule. He went to the federal government and won funding to establish Pride, Inc., a jobs training program for unemployed black men.

Helping people find jobs became a passion for Marion, and he made it his life’s work. As mayor, he created the Mayor’s Summer Youth Employment Program, which has provided summer jobs to nearly every young Washingtonian over the last 25 years, including my triplets, and through his final days on the Council, he kept fighting for “the last, the lost, the least,” as he would say.
While Marion is gone, his belief in a better District for all residents lives on. It’s now for the rest of us to continue to make it so.
My thoughts and prayers continue to be with his wife, Cora, his son, Christopher, and the hundreds of thousands of Washingtonians who loved Marion Barry.

Jack Evans is the Ward 2 Councilmember, representing Georgetown since 1991.

Jack Evans • April 11, 2014

It is now time to consider the fiscal year 2015 budget, which will be the District’s 18th consecutive balanced budget. As I write this, I am still reviewing the mayor’s proposal, but I will discuss a few key items I have already seen.

First, the mayor’s budget proposal includes much that I agree is important. For example, the mayor is committed to fully funding 4,000 sworn police officers, a critical item on which I introduced legislation several years ago. I also support many of the mayor’s transportation initiatives and full funding of the Housing Production Trust Fund at $100 million. Overshadowing many of these good ideas, however, is the list of things that are not in the budget. In each year of the economic recovery, the mayor and the Council have created a contingency list – known as the “wish list” – of items we want to fund but have not been able to put in the budget. Then, as revised revenue projections show more income, we have moved some of them from the list to the budget.

Relating to tax policy, our Tax Revision Commission identified several areas of potential reform that are on the wish list rather than in the budget. My top priority is to recouple the District’s estate-tax level to the federal level, which adjusts with inflation every year. This change is particularly important for our seniors, many of whom cross the District’s threshold simply by owning a home here. Several other items of particular importance to me are additions to the Earned Income Tax Credit, which helps working families, and business tax relief, which helps encourage businesses to locate in our city, expanding our tax base. I also hoped the mayor would fund expansions to the personal exemption and standard deduction.

On the positive side, the mayor has funded a new tax bracket of 7.5 percent for individual income between $40,000 and $60,000. Though the change targets middle-income earners, it actually will reduce taxes for anyone making over $40,000 (because of the incremental way that state income taxes are calculated). The budget also includes a proposal to lower the business franchise tax rate from 9.975 percent to 9.4 percent.

Finally, the budget includes allocations for projects of importance to Ward 2, such as $38 million for Garrison Elementary School.

Also in need of our attention is enhanced funding for the arts. Last year, I established a dedicated funding mechanism for the arts, tied to the sales tax. Due to our balanced budget requirements, it will not become fully effective until fiscal year 2018. This year, the mayor has proposed an operating budget of $16 million for the arts, along with $10 million on the wish list. I support this funding level, but believe the extra $10 million should be included in the fully funded budget to ensure that our arts community continues to benefit the District both educationally and economically.

This is a crucial time in the financial life of our city, particularly in light of the recent transition to a new chief financial officer. I will continue to review the budget proposal in the coming weeks. Please share your views with me and with my colleagues.

Jack Evans • January 16, 2014

Happy New Year, everyone! This week I want to discuss a few of my New Year’s resolutions. The year 2014 is now well underway, and we will soon be swept up in our oversight and budget season. Before that happens, I want to lay out some of my top priorities for the year. In addition to keeping our finances in good order, as chair of the committee on finance and revenue my other top areas of focus include the following:

Our public education system continues to be one of my top areas of focus. I was pleased to work with the community in helping to advocate that the chancellor keep Garrison and Francis-Stevens open. Fortunately, the chancellor took note of what we already know well in Ward 2: demographic trends in our neighborhoods require our city to provide residents with the educational and other resources our new children will need. I hope families will continue to decide to stay in the District, unlike in past years, when so many young families would move to the suburbs once they started having children.

Next, public safety is a continuing priority of mine. As the District’s population – not to mention the daytime commuter population – continues to grow, we need an expanded police force to continue to keep us safe. While I applaud the chief for her great work in making the city safer, we have to give her the resources she needs to continue this trend. When I first moved to D.C., we had 5,200 officers on the police force. When I joined the Council, we had 4,800. Would you believe that just last year we had only 3,890 sworn officers? I introduced a bill last year that would mandate that the mayor fund 4,000 officers as a minimum staffing level. That is not a magic number, but in my judgment, after 20 years of service, it is a first step in the right direction. We also need to fund overdue pay raises to the officers currently on the force, and I introduced a bill recently to force that issue. When you don’t give pay raises for several years, retention starts to become a problem.

Third, I want to continue to focus on providing access to quality health care for all our residents.  Hopefully, it is well known by now that we have the second-highest state insurance coverage rate in the country, with only Massachusetts consistently outscoring us. Isn’t it nice to finally be at the top of one of those state ranking lists? I am excited about the implementation of the District’s new health care exchange, one of the few in the nation that seems to be working, which should be making it easier for individuals to avail themselves of private health insurance options. I want to make sure, though, that this is not done in a way that increases insurance costs for our small businesses.

Fourth, I want to continue to fund affordable housing. I was one of the original creators of the Housing Production Trust Fund, and I still support it because it is one of the relatively few government programs that consistently exceed our performance expectations. I also believe it is critical to subsidize private developments so that they include affordable housing components.

All of these priorities lead to my fifth goal: more jobs for District residents. When you provide a world-class education system, a safe environment and affordable housing, as well as health care, to all our residents, jobs will follow. While many parts of our city are doing well, other parts of our city still have very high levels of unemployment. They deserve our best efforts in facilitating job creation in the District. Helping to incentive the creation of construction jobs through city projects prepares our residents for long-term career paths via apprenticeship programs. Once the developments are completed and businesses occupy the new spaces, permanent hospitality jobs result. We receive many dollars in expanded tax revenue for each dollar we initially invest in subsidies.

Thank you for all your support and good ideas. Please keep them coming and don’t hesitate to reach out to my office if we can provide assistance. I hope you had a wonderful holiday season and are making progress on your own New Year’s resolutions. The holidays always seem to go by a little too quickly, but I am very excited about the year ahead.

Jack Evans • December 6, 2013

I always enjoy the holiday season. Last week, I attended a number of Thanksgiving gatherings both in the Wilson Building and around the city. I think this is a good time to focus on gratitude for what we have and to engage in service to those in need.
For example, one event I really enjoy is the Feast of Sharing at the Convention Center. This event is a great way to help someone in need during the holidays. I joined fellow community members and the Salvation Army in preparing and serving a festive Thanksgiving meal to over 4,000 D.C. residents. There are typically two separate prep shifts that volunteers can sign up for, morning and afternoon, so you may want to consider adding this event to your calendar in future years. Volunteers help our local chefs prepare the meal and assist in setting up the event venue.

My office participated in the Council’s nonperishable food drive and we were excited to collect the most canned goods of any office in the building. (Well, technically speaking, Phil Mendelson’s office is claiming victory. But since his staff includes the Committee of the Whole and has about 30 people versus my eight, I think we can claim our share.) On a more serious note, it is always a satisfying feeling to give to families in need. This is another thing I always look forward to doing every year.
Let me end on this note: While Thanksgiving is but one day of the year, I have to say I am truly thankful every day. Thankful for my family and friends. Thankful for my colleagues and staff. Thankful to have the opportunity to make a difference every day in what I do.

So, don’t let the holiday season go by without a little reflection—and hopefully a nice meal with family and friends, too!

Jack Evans • July 31, 2013

Is it summer yet? I think that with the arrival of July 4th and high temperatures reaching 100 degrees we have removed all doubt. Take a moment to check in with your elderly or ill neighbors who might need a little assistance. Weather like this can effect even the healthiest of us.

This 4th of July, I began my celebration as I always do at the annual Palisades 4th of July Parade. This was the parade’s 46th year. For those of you unfamiliar with the parade, this is a throwback to another time – a real small town parade. It usually begins at 11 a.m. at the corner of Whitehaven Parkway and MacArthur Boulevard, NW. It continues along MacArthur Boulevard for about a mile before turning left to end at the Palisades Park. As an elected official, I always enjoy the opportunity to participate in local parades with family and friends. While I walked, others rode in the car or joined me walking and threw candy to all those watching and cheering along the parade route.

This year, what with all the elections going on, there seemed to be even more politicians than usual. But what would the 4th of July be without politicians? After the parade, we joined hundreds of others at the Palisades Park for hot dogs, drinks and ice cream – kudos to the organizers for a great event.

After we cooled off and caught our breath, we headed to another park, this time a ballpark. Yes, the Nationals were in town, so off to Nationals Park we went. It was a gorgeous day for a baseball game, though a bit hot. In light of the 11:05 am start time, I missed about half of the game. There was still plenty of action from the Nationals’ hitters in the later innings, though, with the Nationals beating San Francisco 9 to 4. The Nationals always seem to shine on the 4th of July – I read that Ryan Zimmerman is now 10 for 20 with four homers and 13 RBIs in six Independence Day games.

The next step in this great day was a trip home for a break and then off to watch the fireworks. What a terrific 20-minute fireworks display!

Neighborhood parades, Major League Baseball, world class fireworks – where else can you stay home and get all that? ?

Jack Evans • July 4, 2013

I voted in support of the 2014 budget this week, because it was a big step in the right direction for our city. From education and the arts to affordable housing and public safety to tax relief for seniors and all of our residents, all stakeholders in our city should feel like they did well this budget cycle. It doesn’t hurt, of course, when the chief financial officer announces a couple of days before the final vote that there will be millions of “new” dollars available to spend due to our economic recovery.
One big focus of mine is our education system. During the past couple of years, I have worked on a number of issues relating to education, such as introducing a bill to mandate that each public school have at least one full time librarian, art teacher, music teacher, and PE teacher. Despite having the highest per-pupil funding formula in the country, our schools seem to be lacking some basic resources.

Another of these basic resources is school libraries. I have heard reports of multi-million dollar school modernization projects being completed, including great new library facilities, but the libraries have no books! All school modernization projects have a built in budgetary cushion in case of cost overruns, so at the budget vote, I moved an amendment to require that excess school modernization funds at the end of a project first be used to purchase an initial circulation of library materials before being diverted to other government projects.

I also worked hard to ensure that Garrison and Francis-Stevens remained open after they were initially put on the school closure list. More recently, I fought to restore full funding for the Fillmore Arts Center, which provides arts education to many elementary students in the District. I heard from many distraught parents throughout the city when the original decision to cut funding for Fillmore was announced. Fillmore provides education in drama, music and fine art, and is a gem in the DCPS system.

Fillmore is such an asset to participating schools because it provides a breadth and depth of arts and music offerings beyond what each school could do on its own. This is also a big part of why I support government funding for the arts, in general.
Partnerships with entities like the Smithsonian and other local arts organizations fill a critical gap in the arts education available at so many of our public schools. The programs at Fillmore offer the ability for students to participate in dance and drama activities as well as art projects and music instruction, which always seem to be the first things cut in the school system. I want to thank the Chancellor for restoring this important funding.

The budget also included a number of other important education-related items, such as: $11 million to increase early-childhood program infant and toddler slots by 200 and an increase in the quality of existing infant and toddler slots by increasing the child care subsidy rate by 10%; nearly $2 million to expand the school-based mental health program; nearly $800,000 to expand the Metrobus and Metrorail subsidy to include students up to 21 years old if they are still attending high school; $4 million for a new School Technology Fund; $2.8 million to upgrade the DCStars system in the public schools; and $4 million to expand adult literacy and career and technology education programs. We still have quite a way to go to turn around a system that isn’t producing the results that we all expect, but I am encouraged by steps we are taking and the government’s continued commitment to education in this year’s budget.

Finally, I want to at least briefly mention one other budget action. At my initiative, the Council voted to reduce our sales tax from 6% to 5.75%. The sales tax is a regressive tax that the government unwisely chose to increase a couple of years ago, so I am glad to finally return it to its original rate.

Jack Evans • June 6, 2013

I usually write about our baseball team around opening day every year, but I think the timing of opening day caused the budget to take precedence for me this year. April 1 was opening day for the Washington Nationals, and it was a great day to head outside and watch the Nationals win their opener over the Marlins.

Since the Nats started playing baseball at RFK stadium in April 2005, I have attended every opening game. Although I had never attended an opening game for any team before and had been to very few baseball games, I have come to look forward to baseball season. This year, there were obviously high expectations after our exciting playoff appearance last year, but it’s tough for any team to be successful with so many injuries. Still, I’ll take second in the division versus last place, for now, and I will hope we put some more wins together as the season progresses.

Little is heard these days about the decision to bring a baseball team to Washington and to build a new stadium. The stadium has worked out better than anticipated. The District borrowed $584 million to build the stadium and identified other sources of revenue to pay off the loan: 1) a 1-percent increase in the commercial utility tax; 2) a tax on businesses with gross receipts of more than $5 million; and 3) revenue generated from the stadium itself, including rent and sales tax on concessions, tickets and apparel.
Together, these taxes have raised millions of dollars more than necessary to pay the annual debt service obligations. All contingency funds have been fully funded, and I support using the excess revenue to pay off the bonds early. Our stadium financing method is used as a model by other jurisdictions.

Development around the stadium has occurred but has been slowed by the recession. Recently, with the credit markets becoming available, development is proceeding. I stated at the time that it would take ten years to build out the area. Keep in mind that it took that long to develop the area around the Verizon Center, a part of town which was much further along than the baseball stadium area.

So, as we settle into another baseball season, if you are a baseball fan, make sure to run over to a game after work or on a sunny weekend. Play ball! ?