News & Politics

Georgetowner •

SweetFrog Yogurt, the pay-by-the-ounce, customized desserts shop at 1737 Wisconsin Ave., NW, at the corner of S Street opened Oct. 20. SweetFrog offers more than 20 froyo flavors and a considerable variety of topping selections.

“SweetFrog is frozen yogurt your way. You determine what goes in your cup, so every creation is perfect,” said James Denison, a company spokesperson. At sweetFrog, customers are invited to be creative, mix and match their favorite flavors and top them with what they want.

The yogurt chain has expanded to more than 300 stores in the U.S., England and the Caribbean since opening in Richmond in 2009.

Storeowners David and Elliot Staley are happy to bring the taste to town and say, “Our goal is for the store to serve as a fun and uplifting environment for the whole family to enjoy.”

Georgetowner •

Armed Robbery on 31st St.; Robbery on Wisconsin Ave. At about 2:30 a.m., Nov. 1, on the 1200 block of 31st Street, a woman sitting outside was approached by a robber with a rifle who took her purse and cell phone and then fled, according to police reports.

Meanwhile, there was a stabbing at 23rd and P Streets, NW, just before 3 a.m.. Nov. 2, according to another report from the Metropolitan Police Department. The suspect is in custody.

Another robbery occurred just after 4 a.m., Nov. 2, on the 1300 block of Wisconsin Avenue. Police described an “Arab male with beard,” wearing a dark blazer and flannel shirt.

Georgetowner •

Charlie Eason, an advisory neighborhood commissioner for 2E, has resigned due to health issues. He and his wife have moved to a home on the Chesapeake Bay, where, Eason said, he will be “sitting on the pier, watching for crabs.” ANC 2E chair Ron Lewis presented Eason with a commendation that hailed Eason’s nearly 10 years of service. “Citizens were well represented in ways not always apparent,” Lewis said of Eason, who worked for clean drinking water and as a community liaison with the Hurt Home and Evermay among other neighborhood efforts behind the scenes. His departure has left ANC 2E with a vacancy in single-member district 7. Anyone wishing to run for this seat must petition the D.C. Board of Elections by Nov. 22.

Georgetowner •

On Oct. 30, I chaired a meeting of the Committee on Finance and Revenue to vote on the nomination of Jeffrey S. DeWitt as the next Chief Financial Officer of the District of Columbia. I have been very impressed with Mr. DeWitt and look forward to working with him on a number of items going forward.

I believe a nominee to this position must possess a deep understanding of municipal finance. Our next CFO must also have good relations with Wall Street. A successful nominee must have or demonstrate the potential to develop a good relationship with leadership on Capitol Hill and the District’s elected leaders.

Once confirmed, a top priority for our next CFO must be to focus serious attention on a commitment to public service and customer service. I asked Mr. DeWitt in written questions to tell me who he views the ultimate “customer” of the office of the CFO to be, and he correctly answered that the ultimate customer should be first and foremost the citizens of the District of Columbia. Whether we are talking about real property tax liens, personal income taxes or various fees the CFO deducts via the cross-tax offset, the common denominator we need is a human touch at the helm of the agency, making sure that our most vulnerable residents are not unduly disadvantaged in the necessary process of raising revenue for our city.

Another critical area of focus for the next CFO is contracting and procurement. Whether we are talking about the lottery contract or technology upgrades, there is a pattern of questions around our CFO’s procurement system that must stop under our new nominee.

Mr. DeWitt has worked for the Phoenix, Ariz. Finance Department since 1994, serving in several positions before becoming the CFO for Phoenix, a position he has held since 2009. Mr. DeWitt was identified by a search committee, which was co-chaired by former Mayor Anthony Williams and former U.S. Office of Management and Budget Director Dr. Alice Rivlin. The search committee recommended several candidates to serve as the next CFO, from which Mayor Gray made his final decision. Mr. DeWitt comes very highly recommended, with letters of support from many stakeholders in the Phoenix area. In addition, in his responses to my written questions and at my oversight hearing, he demonstrated a good understanding of the challenges and responsibilities that are uniquely associated with the District’s CFO position.

Mr. DeWitt would be replacing Dr. Natwar M. Gandhi, who was appointed to a five-year term in 2012. Upon confirmation, Mr. DeWitt will be appointed to complete Dr. Gandhi’s term to end June 30, 2017.

Georgetowner •

About 25 years ago, a popping noise arose outside our office. Then everything went dark.

The door next to ours slammed. Our neighbor, a giant of a man, ran outside screaming, “What the #!@% happened?”
At the time, the region was engaged in a heated debate about turning on a nuclear power plant. Fresh in everyone’s mind was the Chernobyl disaster only a year earlier in the Soviet Union and partial meltdown at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania eight years earlier. The power company argued that nuclear power was safe, cheap, and nothing would ever go wrong. Opponents argued that nuclear disasters happen and take decades to recover from.

Turns out a squirrel got into the underground electric lines, bit a wire, fried itself and our computer, prompting my visit to city council to suggest that things happen with power companies.

Today, my most vivid memory is of my neighbor’s plaintive bellow that echoed for miles around, not of the cost and aggravation of losing our computer. He, too, lost his computer and hours of work. But neither of us closed our businesses over computer miseries.

The Affordable Care Act has serious computer problems, but when fixed, they will be forgotten. Few people recall the computer problems in 2006 with the start of Medicare Part D drug coverage for seniors. Pharmacies offered free guidance and had a steady stream of patients for months. Today, very few seek assistance and government computers work just fine.

In 2006, no one suggested repealing or delaying President Bush’s Part D plan which cost $1 trillion, hundreds of billions more than the ACA. Part D had no offsetting cost savings like the ACA has and uses private health insurance companies.

Ironies surround Obamacare. When it’s called the Affordable Care Act, rather than Obamacare – they are the same – people like it.
Another irony is that the ACA was the Republican’s private market response to President Clinton’s government-sponsored healthcare plan 20 years ago.

Mitt Romney extolled the virtues of how Massachusetts used Medicaid funds to buy health insurance for the uninsured with no change in cost and better results. He expected it to pave his way to the White House until the final iteration of Obamacare was his plan. Since then, he and Republicans were forced to argue how bad it was, even though it worked in Massachusetts.
The major complaint with Obamacare is its name. Despite complaints about government involvement in healthcare, few seniors or military complain about their government healthcare.

When a nation spends 18 percent of its income on healthcare – twice what other nations – and has 50 million people without healthcare, it has a problem that cannot be ignored.

Eighty years ago, Republicans opposed Social Security. Fifty years ago, Republicans opposed Medicare and Medicaid. Now they oppose the Affordable Care Act. They know that voters learn to like and rely upon government programs that make their lives better. Their nightmare is that Obamacare works.

Republicans were praying for something to wreak havoc on Obamacare. Their prayers were answered when that squirrel fried the Obamacare computers. But that squirrel didn’t prevail then, it won’t prevail now, and in the end, the squirrel will be fried.

Georgetowner •

By the time you read this, our long national and regional nightmare will be over.

Sorry, no, Obamacare has not been repealed, not for lack of trying. On the Internet, you can easily visit a dating site for farmers and ranchers, but not on the Obamacare site.

No, actually, we’re talking about the Commonwealth of Virginia’s race for governor, lieutenant governor and attorney general, a campaign during which District of Columbia residents have been bombarded just because of proximity with countless, perhaps more than countless, of television ads on an hourly basis.

This has been an annoying non-stop process for months, to the point where political junkies, to which we admit to being, are having a hard time to keep from pulling out their hair.

Here, in the Republican corner, we had Ken Cuccinelli, the Virginia state attorney general, who almost caused a GOP civil war in gaining the party’s nomination to run for governor, pitted against Terry McAuliffe, who never previously held public office but has helped many people gain public office with generous support and donations, especially President Barack Obama—who carried Virginia twice—and Bill and Hillary Clinton, his very own BFFs, who have stumped the state for him.

Here, we had Republican state senator Mark Obenshain, a low key social conservative, and Democrat Mark Herrin, running for attorney general, while Democrat and physician Ralph Northam was pitted against outspoken anti-abortion Republican E.W. Jackson in the race for lieutenant governor. Long will their names be not remembered in the District of Columbia.
We have watched this campaign—by force—spiraling away every day. Cuccinelli vowing to create jobs, touting his early attempts to get rid of Obamacare, lambasting McAuliffe with a variety of questionable and not questionable negative ads, returned in kind by McAuliffe who attacked Cuccinelli for his stands on abortion rights for women, his social conservatism, and his failure to back GOP Governor Robert McDonnell’s transportation plan.

With McAuliffe holding a lead in the polls almost from the get go—a Zogby poll had him ahead by 12 percent, most others by much less than that—Cuccinelli failed to find traction in Northern Virginia. Cuccinelli’s best bet might have been President Obama campaigning for McAuliffe, giving him a chance to slam Obamacare. But McAuliffe—with no political experience or governing experience—seemed to have grown during the course of the campaign. He actually seemed to enjoy campaigning, a sharp contrast to Cuccinelli and his ads. The last image of the last ad for his campaign had a grim, unsmiling Cuccinelli walking toward the cameras. He might as well have said, “Vote for me, or I’ll arrest you.”

The odd part of the campaign was that neither candidate ever described himself or was described as a Democrat or Republican. Cuccinelli is a conservative, who was painted with the tar brush of the folks considered responsible for shutting down the government, our friends the Teaists, while McAuliffe was generally looked at as a liberal. Could this be the end of the party system as we know it? Doubt it.

There was another so-called race going on in New Jersey where Gov. Chris Christie was expected to win re-election over Democrat Barbara Buono by a hefty margin. Buono said that she was not running for president but that Christie is. Duh. Christie is so popular about the only thing that could derail him is an encounter with a lemon meringue pie. Hmm, make that a Key lime pie.