Editorials and Opinions

Georgetowner • May 9, 2014

In a recent Georgetowner article concerning liquor licenses (“Applicants Camp Out for 4 Liquor Licenses in Georgetown,” April 23 – May 6, 2014), facts were cited which, if not explained further, leave a distorted impression of the ABC-license situation in Georgetown. It is true that the Georgetown Moratorium limits the number of restaurant licenses to 68. What is not made clear is that this restriction applies only to the Moratorium Zone, which does not encompass all of Georgetown. The boundaries of the affected area are roughly Q, 27th/28th, and 36th Streets, and the river. Areas outside this designated zone are not governed by the moratorium. Nor are Washington Harbour, Georgetown Park, Georgetown Court and the hotels. These exempted locales account for at least 25 additional restaurant licenses. There are also six tavern licenses throughout Georgetown. Thus, at this time, Georgetown has almost 100 ABC licenses with the potential, and expectation, of more.

Karen Cruse, Citizens Association of Georgetown,

co-chair, ABC Committee

Georgetowner • April 23, 2014

I wrote in my last column about the mayor’s budget proposal and several of my ongoing priorities, such as public safety, affordable housing, tax policy and funding for the arts. I am also very interested in supporting our transition to a new chief financial officer this year.

Before the budget proposal was released, we undertook the performance oversight process. In an effort to inform the initial budget proposal, I sent a number of questions to the agencies under my purview to determine what is working and what is not. With the proposal in hand, I recently sent another round of questions to all the agencies. These were specific questions arising from the proposal itself.

The largest agency falling within the oversight framework of my committee is the Office of the Chief Financial Officer. This agency includes a number of component offices: Tax and Revenue, Finance and Treasury and Revenue Analysis, to name a few. Some of the questions I will ask of this agency are higher profile, such as how the Office of Tax and Revenue will administer a real property tax lien sale this year, given that the initial budget proposal would not fund my reform legislation until the fall.

Since the tax sale is typically held in July, I will be working closely with the CFO and my colleagues to implement as much reform as possible prior to any sale held this year. I will also closely oversee the sale itself to make sure that our residents in need are not treated unfairly.

Some of the questions are more technical in nature, such as whether the budget is in fact structurally balanced. As you may know, the District is required to prepare a four-year balanced budget annually. For those of you who review our budget online, you can see on pages 2-8 and 2-9 of the introduction that $100 million of the 2014 surplus is being shifted to 2015 to make that year’s budget balance. Further, fiscal year 2016 is balanced on the assumption that certain efficiency savings will be realized.

I am all for efficiency, but after witnessing our government pass the largest budget in the city’s history each successive year – despite the financial downturn – it is hard for me to believe that these savings will come to pass. Thanks for your engagement in this process, and please don’t forget to reach out to me and my colleagues with any feedback you have on the budget.

Georgetowner •

People in Washington – but probably in every city in the world – are always talking about change.

Hop into a cab and you get into a lively conversation with a cab driver from Ethiopia about change: the city landscape, the lack of parking, the difficulty of getting around, too much traffic, bicycles and bicycle riders, how expensive it is.

All of us do it, not just cab drivers. And besides, when you hop into a cab now, you get talk-show snippets and credit payments and the cabs are uniformly identified on top. Not so, even a few years back.

But it’s true, the city’s changing. In the last political campaign nobody talked much about that. We heard about affordable housing, but real estate has shot ahead so fast – the bursts of gentrification, the rise of so-called pop-ups and the tornado of condo building – that whatever might have been affordable is no longer affordable by the people who were meant to afford it.

Whole neighborhoods have changed. Look at the area around the ballpark in southwest, a fairly recent change, and what’s about to
happen along the harbor.

Most of us would agree that a lot of this change isn’t catastrophic or bad. (Remember the 14th Street Corridor from P Street to U Street and the entire downtown area?) Ailing neighborhoods have gotten better, but in the process the city has lost longtime residents.

But people weren’t prepared for this much change, seemingly overnight. So when you go downtown or closer by and find long-standing fixtures – a restaurant, a gas station, a car wash, a deli or a mom and pop restaurant – simply gone, it’s unsettling.
It’s not that we don’t have city planners, or life planners or day planners. Change is now fast, and some people get furious. The landscape is changing, the weather is changing, the politics are changing.

Still, it’s the same blue sky, the same face of your neighbors, the same good mornings and howyoudoins. Washington will always be the city of trees, the city of statues and – who knows? – maybe even the city of free museums and zoos.
It’s still our town and our neighborhoods and our neighbors. After all, we live here together in our neighborhoods, even as they are changing daily.

Jack Evans •

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.

Georgetowner •

Spring is the season of the charlatans, it’s the season of the seducer and sales pitch, the prediction and prophecy.

It’s the season of the street corner: who’s gonna win the Series, who’s going to win the election, repent, the apocalypse is here, go to the end of the world to seek your fortune.

Spring is the season of the sure thing, though not the one in November or at the Derby, or at the end of The Hit List, but the one right on the ground: it’s the season of the robin and spatzie building nests, singing songs. It’s the season of the baby carriage, the puppies, the blue skies at last. It’s the season dancing the something or other, just dancing, or the season of celebrating beauty.

Spring is the eternal do-over, the start-over. It’s the season of fresh things growing straight up out of the ground, the blessing without disguise.

It’s (finally) spring, and we think it may be here to stay, hopefully without rushing shortly after Wednesday into endless summer. Summer and winter: the bearers of severe and extreme temperatures and climate, storms and sturm and drang.

Spring is making things: houses, gardens, nests high in the tree, love and babies. Look how it is: a toddler in a carriage who’s never seen you before smiles at you nonetheless, knowing none of your secrets or habits.

In the spring in Washington, it’s the world of bicycles that have multiplied faster than rabbits can even dream of multiplying, but must be trying anyway.

Spring when it works properly is always nothing but blue skies from now on until. . . . It’s about being born again in that season, every year through time. For sure the baby thinks so, and the new-job-I-just-got guy thinks so, and everyone in love thinks so and some of us older who should know better think so.

Spring and its blossom end suddenly, unforgettably, but the music and its memory don’t end at all. It inspires because as E. E. Cummings noted:

in Just-

spring when the world is mud-

luscious the little

lame balloonman

whistles far and wee

and eddieandbill come

running from marbles and

piracies and it’s

spring

when the world is puddle-wonderful. . .

Mark Plotkin •

One perceptive observer of the D.C. political scene commented on the winner of the Democratic primary for mayor: “Muriel Bowser – most of the voters in Ward 2 and Ward 3 couldn’t pick her out of a police line-up.” This is not mean or vindictive. It’s the truth.

Bowser won because she became the “anti-Gray” candidate. She evolved into the clear alternative to the incumbent. Yes, she was known in her home ward, Ward 4. But in the wards with overwhelmingly white populations – Wards 1, 2 and 3 – she was no more than a name. A name that was not Vince Gray. That was good enough.

She piled up huge margins in those wards. In Ward 3, she received 7,836 votes, an astounding 64 percent of the vote. In Ward 2, she got 50 percent of the vote (3,396 votes). Next in line was Ward 2 councilmember Jack Evans, who has served for 23 years and got only 17 percent of the vote (1,190 votes). In Ward 1, Bowser got 45 percent of the vote (4,654 votes). Vince Gray did better there, but still got only 24 percent of the vote (2,396 votes).

Four years ago, Vince Gray won Ward 4. This time, he lost it by 14 percentage points. Gray did win Wards 5, 7 and 8. But the story there is reduction: in voter turnout and in his totals.
Four years ago, Democratic turnout in Ward 5 was 39 percent; this time it was 22 percent. Four years ago, Ward 7 turnout was 36 percent; this time, it was 16 percent. Four years ago, Ward 8 turnout was 31 percent; this time, 11 percent. Even more important – the key factor – was the total vote Gray got in the wards he won.

In Ward 5 four years ago, Gray got 14,160 votes or 74 percent. This time, he got 5,221 votes or 47 percent. In Ward 7, the same story. Four years ago, he got 17,889 votes or 82 percent; this time, only 4,831 votes or 60 percent. Finally, in Ward 8: 12,993 votes or 82 percent four years ago; a mere 3,058 votes or 58 percent this time. (These figures do not include absentee or provisional ballots.)

Two major events propelled the vote to Bowser. The first was the March 10 indictment of “shadow campaign” fixer and financier Jeff Thompson. Gray was not indicted, but he was perceived to have been. Second, two polls and the early Washington Post endorsement of Bowser made it a two-person race.

Jack Evans, in my opinion, was by far the most experienced and qualified candidate. He never caught on. Tommy Wells hoped to parlay the clean ethical mantle. That did not work either. When Bowser, Evans and Wells were bunched in the early polls, Gray looked like the winner. Once Bowser broke out and started climbing in the polls, the momentum and the election went to her.

There is plenty of time before November to talk about Bowser versus Catania. I have plenty to say about each. I promise you it will be blunt, and I will predict the next chapter.

Mark Plotkin is a political analyst and contributor to the BBC on American politics.

Georgetowner • April 1, 2014

The Democratic Primary race for Mayor of Washington, D.C., has been an unprecedented contest, characterized by turmoil, a large field and a mayor running for re-election under the worst kind of legal fire and the prospect of facing an indictment. In addition, the primary is being held in April, months before the November general election. At-large council member David Catania, an Independent, awaits the Democratic victor.

Voters are facing a difficult and unheard-of set of choices. Incumbent Mayor Vincent Gray is running for re-election despite the shock waves from the guilty plea of D.C. businessman Jeffrey Thompson only weeks before the election. Thompson has alleged that Gray knew about the off-the-books shadow campaign on his behalf in 2010.

There has been talk – by the mayor’s lawyer no less – that Gray could be indicted at some point. But Gray has vowed not to resign, even if indicted. This situation has become a surreal strain on the campaign itself.

Various polls—even the latest –indicate that Gray could still win this race. Ward 4 council member Muriel Bowser has tied with Gray in the polls. A March 25 Washington Post poll gave her a 30-percent lead.

All of the leading contenders have been a part of the D.C. political scene for a number of years, with Evans the senior member of the council and Gray having served as Ward 7 councilman, chairman of the city council and mayor. Bowser has been on the council for seven years, winning a special election and being re-elected twice. Wells succeeded Sharon Ambrose in the Ward 6 spot. Orange at various times has served as Ward 5 councilman and at-large councilman, in addition to running unsuccessful campaigns for mayor and council chairman.

VINCENT C. GRAY

In any ordinary time, Vincent C. Gray would be a shoo-in for the mayoral nomination.

He is a Washington native and a graduate of Dunbar High School and George Washington University. He served as director of the D.C. Department of Human Services in Mayor Sharon Pratt Kelly’s administration. In 2004, he defeated incumbent Kevin Chavous for the Ward 7 council seat and served two years before running for the chairman seat vacated by Linda Cropp, who ran unsuccessfully for mayor. He won handily, then upended incumbent Adrian Fenty in the 2010 mayoral primary.

Even with an ongoing federal investigation into that campaign, beginning almost at the start of his tenure and leading to the indictment and guilty pleas of several campaign officials, Gray could still possibly win. But the proverbial other shoe has dropped, and now Gray’s chances have gone in another direction.

Here are the pluses and minuses for Gray: He’s the incumbent. He can claim, at the very least, a chunk of the credit for the city’s ongoing financial stability and prosperity. Even with the Thompson explosion, he can probably look to his home base of Ward 7 and Ward 8, where council member and former mayor Marion Barry has endorsed him, for a solid base of support.

On the other hand, voters in general, if the polls are to be believed, would rather have someone else at the helm. Although that by no means is an indicator of strong or overwhelming support for any of the challengers, it’s fair to say that Bowser seems to be surging.

Barry’s endorsement may be of help, but it could also backfire in other parts of the city.

Voters will have another sticking point. Voting for Gray is a chancy thing, given the possibility of an indictment, which would add to what could be a chaotic political and emotional summer for the city. Not only would he be a mayor under indictment, he would be a mayor under indictment running for re-election.

MURIEL BOWSER

Bowser, also a Washington native, was the first candidate to announce for mayor. Over time, she’s built a solid organization, has been an effective fundraiser and has found her comfort zone on the campaign trail, touting a fresh point of view, her status as a seven-year council member, and her claim that she has more citywide appeal than any other candidate. A recent poll has her pulling ahead of the mayor.

On the campaign trail, she’s been forceful and confident. She points to her leadership on ethics legislation as one of the principal achievements of her tenure on the council.

She has the endorsement of the Washington Post, a not inconsiderable gift. The Post also championed her mentor and sponsor Adrian Fenty and school reform.

Bowser, however, remains a mystery and is criticized by Evans as being light on experience. More than that, in spite of a certain amount of momentum and the Post endorsement, she remains something of an enigma. She’s talked about school reform, affordable housing and “leading a government that’s responsive and honest.” However, she’s been light on policy specifics.

JACK EVANS

Evans is the longest-serving member of the council, winning a special election in 1991 to replace John Wilson, who went on to become council chairman. He has been re-elected every time out, though he lost his bid for mayor in 1998 to the late-blooming candidacy of Anthony Williams.

The biggest plus he brings to the campaign should be – and is – his experience. As chairman of the City’s Committee on Finance and Revenue, he probably knows more about how the city’s finances are run, and have been run, than anybody else in the race. He can say, and certainly believes, that he’s the candidate that’s ready to be mayor.

These days, Evans, who comes from a small town in Pennsylvania, is also offering up a plan for affordable housing so that longtime residents won’t be priced out of their homes. He’s a champion of the school reform begun under Fenty and Rhee.

As Ward 2 chairman, he’s representing a diverse ward. But critics, especially Bower, have accused him of looking out more for the residents of Georgetown, where he lives with his wife Michele and his triplets. As a campaigner, Evans is tireless and earnest.

TOMMY WELLS

A Texas native with a master’s degree in social work, Tommy Wells came to Washington in 1985 as a social worker for the District’s child protective services agency. He headed the D.C. Consortium for Child Welfare and ran for and won the Ward 6 council seat in 2006 to which he was re-elected in 2010. He had previously served on the D.C. Board of Education.

Wells has the ethics issue sewn up. From the beginning, he made a pledge not to accept corporate donations, and he’s kept that pledge. Big on education issues, he speaks eloquently about the need for a new generation of public transit in D.C., including streetcars and an improved bus system to connect city neighborhoods.

The rap on Wells (as was brought up at a recent forum) is that he doesn’t get along with other members of the council, a charge he faced squarely by noting that three previous members of the council who were forced to resign because of ethical and legal problems – Kwame Brown, Michael Brown and Harry Thomas, Jr. – were all well-liked members of the council and their communities.

VINCENT ORANGE

While not a native son, Orange often sounds like one like, belying his upbringing in Oakland, Calif. He’s a Howard University graduate and has a master’s degree in tax law from the Georgetown University Law Center. He has run for mayor before, as well as for council chairman several times, but he proved successful in running for the council seat in Ward 5 in 1995. After running for mayor, he returned to the council as an at-large member and is running again for mayor under the twin banners of “Leaving No One Behind” and “Taking No One For Granted.” While Orange has taken a firm stand on forcing an increase in the minimum wage for D.C. residents, he remains equally pro-business and is a strong advocate

Georgetowner •

March—the month of perpetual snow and cold, the month of the Ukraine and Crimea, and the month of Flight 370 and the testimony of Uncle Earl, and the death of that lawyer on “The Good Wife”—was a cruel month. Let’s hope April doesn’t get to live up to its own reputation as “the cruelest month of the year.”

It could.

April 1 is election day. That’s how cruel things are, and that’s no April Fools’ joke.

There has never been quite such an election campaign as the somewhat abbreviated, and out-of-season District of Columbia Democratic Primary campaign. In terms of the repercussions, it may not be over when it’s over, not even when the fat lady sings.

Consider this:
Almost from the first month of Vincent Gray’s tenure as mayor, after dethroning incumbent Adrian Fenty, his 2010 campaign has been under investigation by the Federal District Attorney’s office. We already know the story. There’s no need to reprise the gory details. But suffice it to say that five Gray associates or friends have pleaded guilty, and people were wondering when the other shoe(s) would drop. With Gray running for re-election, but with very little time left in the campaign, the Jeffrey Thompson or Uncle Earl shoe dropped, in a plea bargain which alleged that the mayor knew about “the shadow campaign.” Now people were talking about the possibility of the mayor being indicted, although he has already said, in a defiant preamble to the State of the District address, that he would not resign even if he were to be indicted.

That’s left opponents scrambling to take advantage. But what can you say? Perhaps: “Please, Mr. Mayor, resign for the good of the city,” as some of his rivals did. That’s not happening, although tomorrow is another day. That leaves us with some people, including columnists on the Washington Post and supporters of the candidacy of Ward 4 Council member Muriel Bowser, suggesting that some of the other candidates—Tommy Wells and Jack Evans, for instance—should consider dropping out.

This suggestion—we’ve heard it a forum, seen it in a Post column—is absurd. It’s done in this ‘Let’s prevent a Gray victory and rally around Bowser” mode. It’s not that we’d like to see a Gray victory. Why should candidates like Evans and Wells, as well as Vincent Orange and Andy Shallal, for that matter, fold up their tents after spending so much energy, passion, and raising funds, and presenting themselves to the public for electoral judgement? Should they suddenly say, “Here, Ms. Bowser, it’s all yours”? There’s nothing very democratic about that. The process calls for concession after the election, not before it.

Speaking of the Washington Post, it endorsed Bowser, relatively early in the game for more impact, and that’s a newspaper’s right and obligation. It can also, as the Current Newspapers did, withdraw an endorsement, which they did to Gray after Thompson’s plea deal. But the Post not only endorsed Bowser but has offered up a steady diet of stories and reportage that seemed often like additional endorsements, seriously unskeptical, like the lengthy piece on the front page of the other day’s Post. The truth of the matter would appear to be that folks haven’t gotten very excited about any of the alternatives to Gray, although one poll indicated they’d sure like to find one.

The early election also reprised an old issue in a changing Washington: the issue of one-party rule, which is often seen as detrimental to the general good when applied in countries and jurisdictions other than ours. The Democratic primary has generally been considered to decide the election since the winner has consistently won the general election. We don’t have a two-party system in D.C., even when there’s a good or viable Republican around, such as the iconoclastic Carol Schwartz or Patrick Mara. In D.C., where there’s a non-Democratic seat guaranteed on the council, you do what Michael Brown did—you become an Independent, even though he trails donkey dust behind him. (That’s not the case for Independent for at-large-council member David Catania, who was a Republican and who will be a formidable foe for whoever survives April 1.)

Now for Mr. Gray and Mr. Barry. It’s sad to see that Gray, who has made it a point to run on a platform of “One City” in several of his campaigns, including the 2010 campaign, chose to embrace the endorsement of Ward 8 council member Marion Barry so enthusiastically. If there is anyone who habitually has the gift for scratching the city’s racial itch and dividing it along racial lines, it’s Barry, who had the misfortune of being convicted on drug charges. This time, in praising Gray as a fighter, he also managed to opine, “I think it’s up to white people to be more open-minded, because blacks are more open-minded than they are. Simple as that.” That isn’t simple. It’s something else. No doubt the endorsement will help Mr. Gray, but it also hurts.

Georgetowner • March 20, 2014

At The Georgetowner, we’ve seen, watched and known Ward 2 Councilman Jack Evans for a long time – about the same length of time he has served the ward, which includes Georgetown, as its representative.

That would be 22 years, ever since he won a hotly contested special election to replace John Wilson, who went on to become chairman of the District Council. We’ve seen him in good times and in bad (he was one of the steadying Council members when it went through the throes of having the city run by a control board) and in good times again.

The most recent good times are evidenced everywhere today in a city that’s growing in population by leaps and bounds, with a budget surplus and a redeveloped and resurgent downtown. We’ve also seen him experience personal joys and triumphs, and a devastating tragedy: the loss of his first wife, Noel, the mother of his three children. And we’ve watched him suffer the disappointment of losing his first mayoral bid.

Now, Evans is running again, in a Democratic primary that has been haunted by a kind of instability and unreality. The investigative cloud over Mayor Vincent Gray’s previous campaign four years ago has injected an atmosphere of unpredictability and nerves into the campaign.

Gray, of course, is running for re-election and remains a low-key leader of the pack in the polls to date, though he’s hovering around 30 percent. Just how much the federal investigation has affected the campaign can be seen in the recent big news that businessman Jeffrey Thompson agreed to a plea bargain with prosecutors, saying that Gray knew of the pre-arranged shadow campaign. This news is still rocking the campaigns looking to win the Democratic primary on April 1. If true, as it unfolds it will have a powerful impact on the Democratic primary and on the general election in November.

However that may shake out, at The Georgetowner our choice is Jack Evans. Here are the reasons. They have nothing to do with the fact that Evans and his family live in Georgetown and that he’s a familiar and important presence in our village.
Without equivocation, we endorse Evans because he’s the one person who is uniquely and – we firmly believe – pragmatically qualified to preside over and run the District of Columbia government. Those 22 years of experience make him the longest-sitting member of the Council. His imprint is on almost all of the major changes that have occurred in the physical and economic rise of our city. He was a leading supporter of the convention center and bringing baseball to Washington and, it’s fair to say, had a hand in most of the development that has occurred in the city.

Evans knows – by dint of working on the Council, on its committees (especially as chair of the finance committee) and with the business community – what this city is all about in all of its aspects. He is not merely and only (as one of his rivals in the campaign has suggested) a councilman from Georgetown. While leading and representing a ward that’s one of the District’s largest and most diverse, he has a record of reaching out to all of the many communities in a city that’s changing rapidly in its racial, ethnic and overall population.

Ward 4 Council member Muriel Bowser has been impressive at times during the campaign. Yet for all her goals and plans, she’s remarkably short on detail and – in her seven years on the Council – light on concrete achievement except for an ethics bill. In many ways, we don’t feel that the city has had a chance to get to know her.
We think the mayor has done serious damage to himself and his reputation. In spite of the fact that he may have maintained the city’s momentum and financial soundness (with the help of councilmen like Evans), it is the kind of damage that is hard to repair in terms of trust, as polls have shown.

We do know Jack Evans, and not just because he has a lengthy track record. We’ve seen him become a mature leader over the years. Evans is the only candidate who has the experience to move forward and address the issues that prosperity can bring, including its impact on long-time residents. There isn’t anybody running who knows the city and how it works better. ?