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Last updated 25 June 1998
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Azaleas are in bloom and flowers are everywhere.
Welcome to Washington. You've always wanted to come here, and now here you are! Or maybe you're here.
1 January 1998
We're so glad 1997 has ended. It was a terrible year for Washington DC, in so very many ways. It may go down in local history as The Year Things Began To Change.
1997, among other things, saw Mayor Marion Barry largely stripped of power in the City of Washington. As part of a bailout package from the Congress, the District of Columbia Financial Responsibility and Management Assistance Authority "Control Board" received the power to hire and fire in nine essential agencies, the Police Department (already under the Control Board's authority), Fire Department, Emergency Medical Services, Public Works, Administrative Services, Corrections, Human Services, Health, Consumer and Regulatory Affairs, Employment Services, Housing and Community Development, and the Public Schools (already under the Control Board's authority). The Federal government agreed to pick up the tab on the staggering unfunded-mandate Pensions Fund for District government employees, and agreed to assume many of the responsiblities which would ordinarily fall not on a city, but on the state within which the city lay. This included an assumption of control over Lorton Reformatory, and an assumption of a much-greater share of Medicaid expenses.
The Federal government, as part of this District Revitalization Act, also commanded the Control Board to procure the services of management consultants, who were to have a 90-day period to assess the strengths and weaknesses of all aspects of the nine agencies now under the aegis of the Control Board. The management consultants found a cesspool of incompetence, infrastruture deterioration, mismanagement and in many places, the appearance of pervasive corruption.
In few places was the appearance of corruption, infrastructure deterioration, disarray of process, and managerial incompetence, so dismayingly revealed as in the Metropolitan Police Department. While crime, and even murder, declined greatly in Washington over the last year, this is seen as a mere conformance with a nationwide trend, which is mostly credited to the robust economy. In 1997 we saw reports from the management-consultants and from other sources which showed a police-department which had almost no inventory control in the evidence department, where only one out of ten officers made a single arrest or wrote a single ticket in any given year, where at one point in time over 80 police vehicles "could not be found", where one third of the vehicles were in dire need of replacement, and had working telecommunications in only one half of the vehicles; where an overtime-scamming scandal exploded from the ranks of the Homicide division to the very top of the department, where police chief Larry Soulsby resigned after Federal agents arrested his room-mate for embezzlement of police funds and extortion of married gay men.
Add to this recent disclosures of a corruption-riddled Water-works authority, where workers on city time used city equipment to do private business, regularly, and the whole city reflects an image not dissimilar to that of Zaire under Mobutu.
But it's not all corruption - a great deal of it is just incompetence, and an institutionalized culture of "not making waves". In some cases, this has allowed millions in potential revenue to go uncollected by the city's regulatory agency. In some cases, it's dangerous; it was also revealed this year that over half of the city's day-care and child-care facilities were operating without licenses. Incompetence in the housing and public-health authorities caused the Federal government to suspend payments to the city for the third time, when the city was unable to demonstrate where previous payments had gone. Simple mismanagement almost turned hundreds of sick people out of their houses at the start of winter. The City Administrator and a court-appointed receiver of the Child Welfare department both walked off of the job.
And the whole latter half of the year, as evidence came to light which exposed the rotting house of cards called the government of the District of Columbia, the man who had presided over the decay, Mayor Marion Barry, as he was stripped of the power to further wreck the place, complained loudly about the "rape of democracy".
There were a few good points. The District now has its first female Chief of Police, Sonya Proctor. The Petworth neighborhood, due to changes in investigative techniques and new attention to classification procedures in the office of the Medical Examiner, now stands revealed as the stalking ground of a serial killer. This is actually a good thing because now the residents are on alert, and the police will approach this problem from the right angle. Another good point about Petworth, Metrorail subway construction has been completed in the neighborhood, and soon it will be restored from its present warzone jumble of closed shops, destroyed streetfronts, and impassible trenched pavement.
Also useful, the US Department of Housing and Urban Development has started dispensing monies again, however it's going straight to developers and to a receivership established to renew some of the city's worst eyesore properties. The police have received a vast cash-infusion of Federal money, and new cruisers are all over the place. Police presence across the entire city has increased dramatically since the orders went out to get cops out of offices and onto the streets. The District's schools, which were delayed in opening by weeks due to unsafe conditions, finally reopened after a settlement in an ongoing lawsuit was arranged, mostly to the satisfaction of all.
Saving the best for last, the DCFRA also finally selected a City Manager, a top-flight self-styled "dragon lady" from Texas, one Dr. Camille Cates Barnette. Her exemplary credentials and awesome experience will be sorely tested starting roughly 15 January, when she officially takes her place at the helm of city management. As to police corruption, not only is the department's internal-affairs division looking into it, but so is the US Attorney General's office and the DC Council. There is also a newly-appointed DC Inspector General due to start work on 15 January. Mr. E. Barett Prettyman Jr, a man of impeccable character and a lifetime of experience, presently with the top-flight lawfirm of Hogan and Hartson, has served as special investigator for the White House and for Congress and is expected to have quite an impact. An elderly but active man, he has stated that he does not intend to serve for more than a year. He has been given broad latitude by the Control Board to expand his office as may be required.
Acting Chief of Police Sonya T. Proctor has gone on record as stating that she intends to give her full support to any effort to restore citizen confidence in the Metropolitan Police Department.
As of now, the District of Columbia is in a period best described as "the calm before the storm".
Over the last year, the population of the District proper dropped by a net-loss of some 10,300 persons. Ordinarily this would not be cause for great concern, however, this is believed to represent the net-loss to the District of some 5200 households, a great decrease in the tax base. Washington's population, which held steady at about 650,000 throughout the 80s, has suffered a population decline of approximately one-sixth over the past seven years. While the rest of the region has experienced a robust economy compared to the nation at-large, and continued population growth, the District has been increasingly abandoned by the middle classes. During the late 1960s through the 1970s, for example, the District lost some 180,000 persons, mostly through the flight-to-the-suburbs of the once-large black middle-class.
Interestingly, over the last year, home sales have risen, though increasingly these sales are to whites, and increasingly to childless professional couples. These persons would be less concerned than would be families, regarding a failing infrastructure, the lack of trustworthy public education, or a lack of city services.
As city services are restored through management reforms, as the schools are brought back up to (or beyond) national standards, as the infrastructure is rebuilt, perhaps Washington will again experience population growth... but as things now stand, fewer people are now in town to pay the bills for what must be done to bring the city back up to speed.
On Monday, 5 January 1998, the DRFRA Control
Board will send Congress their action plan for implimenting the reforms
mandated by the District Revitalization Act and other actions of Congress.
This is a slightly higher level of spending than had been previously
proposed. After a series of meetings, the previous figure of $125 millions
was revised upwards. This higher figure should stil allow the city to make
ample headway on debt-retirements.
The District Revitalization Act required that the Control Board hire
management-consultants and give them 90 days to investigate and assess
management and other practices in the nine agencies stripped from the
control of Mayor Marion Barry. Those reports inspired widespread dismay,
fear and loathing. The Control Board was given another 90 days to devise a
reform strategy, and report to Congress on their intended plan of action.
One primary failure seen throughout the District, in particular in the
Department of Motor Vehicles and the Metropolitan Police Department, has
been antiquated or dysfunctional information-systems. Rapid deployment and
integration of these systems is rated as a top-priority. Also in the
schedule is initiation of a program of reconstruction of the city streets,
which have been for many years falling into a state of disrepair hardly
better than would have been expected had there been no maintanance at all.
Along with the refurbishment of trafficked streets, there is to be at last
some attention paid to removing the thousands of dangerous trees that line
the streets. Many of these trees were once the pride of the city, but
unattended for decades, have begun to destroy the streets and sidewalks, and
pose grave risks to persons and property.
There is to be a major stress placed upon those reform activities which can
be implimented with little or no cost, secondarily upon those which can be
implimented with minimal costs, and finally upon those high-cost actions
which are simply unavoidable. A primary focus will be an increase in
efficiencies, many of which increases can be achieved through a simple
change of policy or routine, at little or no cost. A secondary focus will be
on deployment or upgrading of information systems.
As for information systems, my offer of assistance still stands. If the City
of Washington would like a full-blown Linux internet
host (operating system and applications, drive only), complete with all of
the standard features, for the cost of the brand-new Seagate 1.2gig
harddrive onto which it's just been installed. Remember, it's all under the
Free Software Foundation public license, and it would be perfectly-legal for
the DC Government to copy the system wholesale onto whatever computers they
might choose. This system includes some added functionalities, such as
PostgreSQL database software, a web-crawler/site-indexer, and mailing-list
software, and all source code. Interested parties in the DC Government
should send me mail. Price? I'll
sell it pre-installed on a harddrive, to the DC Government, for a mere
one-hundred and fifty dollars. It's all ready to go and can be installed in
a DC Government desktop in a few hours, ready to clone itself anyplace the
government needs a full-featured and state-of-the-art operating system with
no Year 2000 problems. They supply the computer, and I install the
drive, and it's ready to go! It's a lot less expensive than would be any
other option.
11 January 1998
However, the Court of Appeals declined to invalidate any actions of the
Trustees, and declared a "de-facto validity" of all of those actions.
Quoting Judge Laurence H. Silberman (as reported by the Washington Post), "We see
no benefits in plunging the District's school system into further chaos by
invalidating the actions taken by the Board of Trustees over the past
year."
The Court of Appeals also upheld the "quite extraordinary powers" of the
DCFRA Control Board, but declared a restriction on those powers. The DCFRA
cannot delegate its authority outside of itself.
While the Control Board does have practically unlimited power over the
District's schools, they do not have the power to fire the Superintendant at
will without stating a cause for the dismissal.
Essentially, the Board of Education is elected by the people of the City of
Washington, DC. The Board of Education, in turn, has the power to either act
directly, or to delegate their power, but that power can be delegated, by
law, only to the Superintendant of Schools. By creating a Board of Trustees
under the DCFRA-appointed "chief executive officer/superintendant", the
Control Board effectively gave that position control over a body which
supposedly has control over him. Judge Silberman wrote, roughly, that the
judges could not find any support within the law for such a circular chain
of power that would effectively leave the superintendant able to hire or
fire himself, becoming in effect a "loose cannon" in charge of children's
educations.
The DCFRA Control Board is, as a result of this decision, considering
whether or not to simply operate the District schools directly, possibly
retaining the appointed trustees as an advisory body rather than as an
administrative body. It appears that the chief executive
officer/superintendant, retired general Julius W. Becton Jr, will remain in
his position of managing authority for the District schools.
Washington DC's schools have long been troubled, with matters finally coming
to a head in the last year. While once considered among the finest public
school systems in the nation, and still the most expensive urban
public-schools in terms of per-student expenditures, in recent years the
schools have been plagued by a massive drop-out rate (quite often linked to
the District's astounding teen-parenthood rate; even in 1982, 56 percent of
all births in the District were to children), ridiculously low
standardized-test scores, and a tendency to graduate illiterates due to a
combination of a policy of "social advancement" and terrible administration.
For instance, in a report issued by Education Week, on the very-standard
National Assessment of Educational Progress test, only 20 percent of
District students reached or surpassed the standard of proficiency in
mathematics, and sciences, only 19 percent reached or surpassed the
standard. (However, the District can take some comfort in knowing that the
scores in neighboring Maryland were the worst of any State, largely due to
the poor showing of students in Baltimore, where the schools are even worse.
But Baltimore has one of the lowest per-capita expenditures, and the
District's is the highest.) The schools were also the subject of a
longstanding lawsuit over school safety, which resulted in the fall-1997
judicial closures of the schools as unsafe. Eventually, an agreement was reached which would
provide for better oversight of the children's physical safety and
refurbishment of the various school buildings.
The District schools are in possession of some 60 former school buildings
which the schools would like to either sell or lease. At the present point
in time, there is continual opposition to any sales of these properties. One
the one hand, there is a great need for the District schools to generate
revenue for their cash-strapped agency, and also there is a need to attempt
to forestall the depreciation and deterioration of the properties. Selling
the properties "as-is" would tend to generate that revenue. On the other
hand, there is the issue of the District abandoning assets, although the
physical condition of some of these buildings could call into question
whether these buildings are assets or liabilities. On the third hand, many
of these building have associated open-acreage which are presently under use
as recreational facilities, or which could easily be opened as such once
some safety matters were addressed. There is also the issue of leasing these
buildings and facilities at a reduced rate, for use as community-oriented
facilities such as adult-education or community-group meeting places.
There are also issues over ownership of the land, since many of these
schools sit on land which was originally held as Federal-title lands, which
were dispensed to the District under a variety of agreements, which in
general specified that the land grants to the City were solely for the
purpose of education or recreation. Thus it seems that sales of these
properties are unlikely, however, the District will almost certainly lease
these properties if only to help avert the costs of depreciation.
In the meantime, there remains the issue of restructuring the education
system itself. One thing being tried is the time-honored solution of
incentives in the form of cash used to attract and retain the highest
caliber of administrative and instructorial personnel; and it was recently
revealed that this is indeed an approach being tried. In terms of
recruitment bonuses, Chief Operating Officer Charles E. Williams received
$30,000 and Arlene Ackerman, chief academic officer, received a $25,000
signing bonus. Both are paid $120,000 annually, and both are elegible for
performance bonuses in the $30,000 range. Elois Brooks, Ms. Ackerman's
deputy, received in addition to her $110,000 annual salary, a $15,000
recruitment bonus. There have been predictable expressions of outrage over
the size of both the bonuses and the salaries. If these people can turn the
District's schools outrageous decline into a return to even merely-acceptable
educational standards, it should be considered money-well-spent and a
bargain at that.
14 January 1998
It seems that for over a year, Assistant Medical Examiner Joseph P. Garceau
had ben practicing medicine without a license. No matter that his patients
were all dead, he was fired on the last day of his one-year probationary
period as a new M-E. Garceau is not pleased. He's had one of the heaviest
case-loads in the M-E's Office, and is understandably annoyed at the timing
of his firing. His medical license was in effect when he was hired away from
Alabama where he had served as a medical examiner, but the license expired
on 31 December 1996. Thus, for the entire year of 1997, he served without
a medical license and there is thus concern that many of the cases he
handled might turn out to be invalidated in court. Garceau's position is
that the medical license is in effect a technicality and does not in any way
reflect on the competence of the physician, but is merely a certification,
paperwork. He claims that he submitted the application to the District
Department of Health, on time and in good order with the proper fees. He
also claims that the District lost both the paperwork and the $300.00 fee.
Given the slipshod performance of much of the District Government, this
story does have a certain amount of credibility.
This affair is, however, possibly only the tip of an iceberg. In the
troubled Medical Examiner's office, Garceau was not alone in practicing
forensic medicine without a license. Deputy M-E Luis Sanchez has been
working unlicensed since his certificate lapsed on 30 April 1997.
This brings to light yet-another failing of the District's bureaucratic
processes. There doesn't seem to be any mechanism in place to either notify
the physician that it's time for renewal, nor does there seem to be any
mechanism for notification of expiration. One would think that a physician's
credentials and licence to operate would be seen as an essential assurance
to the patients and the physician's employer. There is certainly a
difference between the version of practicing medicine without a license
known as "quackery" and the version of practicing medicine without a license
known as "oopsie". Yet the possession of a license is an absolute necessity
if the public is to have confidence in the doctor. A doctor might be fully
educated and technically proficient, yet unlicensed and the public needs to
always wonder why that doctor is not licensed to practice. Were they denied
a renewal for misconduct? For incompetence? Malpractice? The public deserves
to know. The District Government must establish a new set of principles
governing the Board of Medicine and their interactions with the Department
of Health. When City-employed physicians and other professionals who require
certificates are due for a license expiration, they city must be required
to notify the physician of the expiration, and if the license expires
without renewal, the city should seek out and notify the employing clinic or
agency that the license is lapsed, and until certification is re-obtained,
all practice must cease. The city should be very aggressive about
investigating the status of recipients of their medical licenses, or the
medical license, as a state certification of a physician's credentials and
fitness for practice, becomes worthless.
Reportedly, this incident has prompted actions by District personnel, who
will check the licensing status of all city-employed medical personnel.
17 January 1998
However, lest anyone get the idea that all is well with the District, it
must be noted that some District agencies which experienced operating and
contracting problems did not spend as budgeted, accounting for much of the
surplus.
At one time, the city was running a deficit of roughly $500 million, and in
fact was unable to pay major contractors such as the local power company,
which was left so far in arrears that they began to power down
traffic-signals and halted street-light maintenance. At one point in time,
even the police were left barely functional and unable to secure office
supplies.
It must be noted that within anything so ponderous as even a
fully-functional bureaucracy, there is an effect akin to inertia. Some
agencies which had experienced a near-collapse of their internal
organizations, due to assorted layoff, managerial incompetence, and
questionable business practices, found themselves unable to function
sufficiently well as to be able to contract or spend as expected. The
situation is akin to a person being too sick to get out of bed to buy food.
The fact that they've got money in their wallet at the end of the month is
not an indicator that they've become thrifty, only that they're
bedridden.
However, one of the most-dysfunctional of the District's agencies, the
Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs, once characterized as
byzantine in its internal process flow and dysfunctional to the point of
bureaucratic collapse, has been a primary focus of restruturing and
streamlining, with a new primary mission of collection of fees and taxes.
Management consultant's reports had indicated that there was a vast revenue
resource which had not been adequately pursued and this at least has
changed. DCFRA Control Board Chairman
Andrew F. Brimmer has praised Chief Financial Officer Anthony A. Williams as
having done an "excellent job".
Interestingly, this comes at a time when a new City Manager, one Camille
Cates Barnett, PhD., has arrived and taken the reins of the nine largest city
agencies which were stripped, by the Control Board, from Mayor Marion Barry.
Her contract is scheduled to run for five years. However, the law which
created the Control Board requires that it disband and return control to the
elected City authorities once the District has run a balanced budget for
four consecutive years - of which 1997 was the first. Presuming that the
city can bring itself through the next three years under budget, that will
leave Dr. Barnett working for two final years under the authority of
whomever will be elected to the positions of Mayor and Council... unless
Congress changes the law.
Dr. Barnett, a city manager with an excellent reputation for placing the
needs of the citizen/consumer first, arrived in Washington last Thursday,
and began a whirlwind tour of the City's facilities. She is reported to have
remarked about the age of the facilities, the probable need for extensive
repairs and upgrades, and in particular seemed to be distressed over the
lack of data communications, specifically the lack of non-wireline data
communications between such essential groups as the Department of Public
Services and the Office of Emergency Preparedness. She met with various
officials and asked the to prepare statements detailing their perceptions of
problems areas and weaknesses in their departments.
There has been some considerable debate in Washington, very much a
black-majority town, regarding the appropriateness of the Control Board's
appointment of a white woman, and a Texan at that, to this position. The
Control Board's leadership has stated categorically that race was simply not
a consideration. Four of the Control Board's five members are black, and
most are of an age where they well remember desiring to be judged by their
abilities and the "content of their character, not the color of their skin"
as Dr. Martin Luther King once dreamt. Judging from her career in Austin
Texas, Dr. Barnett is certainly able, and possessed of quite a bit of
character as well.
In the meantime, while budgetary austerity measures have evidently had a
salutary effect, there remain many issues which have been to some degree
addressed, but which are far from resolved.
First and foremost among these issues is corruption, thought by many to be
not only city-wide, but entrenched from top to bottom. Last year saw immense
upheavals in the Metropolitan Police Department.
Among other things, Police Chief Larry Soulsby resigned under intense fire
and scrutiny when his roommate was arrested on charges of attempted
extortion of married gay men, and also on charges of misuse of police
facilities and embezzlement of funds intended to assist in Witness
Protection programs. Acting Chief Sonya Proctor has stated that one of her
primary goals is damage-control (or possibly spin-control) addressing the
public perception that the MPD is either incompetant or corrupt, and insists
that if there is any corruption in the MPD she intends to get to the bottom
of it all. In the meantime, a nationwide search for a new Chief of Police
continues, and while nobody has in any way suggested any complicity on the
part of Acting Chief Proctor (whose record is evidently quite spotless),
there is a great deal of sentiment in many sectors regarding the
impossibility of any person not-an-outsider being able to adequately address
issues of corruption, cronyism or favoritism in the District police.
E. Barrett Prettyman, an attorney of "unquestioned ability and integrity"
was, on 14 January 1998, unanimously confirmed as the new Inspector General
for the District of Columbia. He has vowed to do everything in his power to
root out corruption and waste within the District. He has proposed an
extreme expansion (sorely needed by any accounts) of the staff and
facilities of the inspetor-general's office. Presently budgeted for a mere
$5.7 million, and almost utterly unequipped, the office will be responsible
not only for dealing with corruption, but must spend at least $2 millions of
this budget for a statutorily-mandated audit of the city's books.
Prettyman's staff needs to be doubled, the staff vehicle fleet must be
at-least tripled, and commtech such as secure-mobilephone and computers must
be acquired, along with allocations for payment of informers. Perhaps some
of the District's new budget surplus can be instantly earmarked for the
inspector-general's staff; it's clearly the best way to assure that there
will be a surplus next year - by weeding out corruption and waste.
E. Barrett Prettyman will, however, not be alone in his efforts to attack
corruption in the District.
Now awaiting Senate confirmation as the District US Attorney for Washington
DC is one Wilma A. Lewis, a Harvard graduate and 15-year veteran of the
Washington legal system. Once confirmed, she will begin to aggressively
investigate and prosecute all corruption within the District, whether
purely-city level or of a Federal level. Her focus is expected to initially
be directed at shoring-up public confidence in the local justice system,
which has been the subject of a great deal of disrepute, disgrace, and
disrespect in all areas, ranging from the afore-mentioned alleged
all-pervasive police corruption and systemic mismanagement through the
laughable evidence management system, through the Medical Examiner's office,
which has been portrayed as the object of contempt and ridicule of
professional forensic pathologists nationwide.
Lewis is assembling a team of well-reputed attorneys and investigators, some
of whom are:
Ms Lewis succeeds Eric H. Holder, Jr, who has been named to the position of
Deputy US Attorney General.
On 14 January 1998 we reported that there was
some confusion as to the need for a medical license to practice medicine in
the District. In that report, we noted that there had been dismissals in the
District's Office of the Medical Examiner, which has been professionally
peer-reviewed as "a joke". We further noted that it might be a fairly good
idea to check the credentials of all of the medical personnel employed by
the District, and evidently we were taken seriously. (Or more likely,
someone else simply followed the dictates of common sense.)
It appears that the Director of the DC Department of Public Health has been
practicing medicine without a current license to practice within the
District. Dr. Allan S. Noonan is licensed in the commonwealth of
Pennsylvania, and his credentials and qualifications are not presently in
question. He is a member of the US Public Health Service's Commissioned
Corps, which provides services to medically-underserved areas under a
military-style management authority. Thus, so long as he remains licensed in
any state or commonwealth, he is considered as licensed to practice in any
other state, in the same way that a US Armed Forces doctor is considered
licensed to practice no matter where deployed. However, Dr. Noonan admits
that maybe he "ought to go ahead and get one"; certainly it would be a good
pro-forma move, considering that he, while technically practicing
without a District medical license, just fired a M-E pathologist (Joseph P.
Garceau) for, technically, practicing medicine without a license.
In yet-another example of complete and inarguable senselessness in
Washington, the Washington
Post revealed in a Business Section article of 16 January 1998,
while the Barry-Cronies(tm) Administration's revilable Jobs Training Program
received millions, of which (according to a DCFRA management-consultant's
report) exactly none was spent on graduating exactly no trainees, a
privately run training program is about to fold due to its complete
inability to receive a grant from either the District government or the
Federal government.
Capital Committment, Inc, of Southeast Washington DC, has trained some 593
District residents, three-quarters of whom were on public assistance, to the
level where 90 percent of the graduates have been hired by local offices, on
average making $25,000 annually. At present, the company is subsisting on
corporate handouts. In many ways, this is the desirable model for all
future specialized job-specific training, whereby companies in need of
special skills will at least partially-fund the cost of training of workers.
However, when one contrasts the success rate (90 percent) of this shoestring
operation subsisting on the largess of their destination employment-pool, to
the success rate (zero percent) of a very-well-funded public training
program, the solution to the problems of both this company and the
District's floundering jobs-training progams is this:
I propose that absolutely all Federal funds which were earmarked for the
Barry Administration District of Columbia Jobs Training Programs be
immediately redirected to Capital Committment, Inc, subject to the proviso
that they train only District residents, that as part of their practice and
training projects they must assist in the long-overdue and hellishly
expensive commtech/infosystems wiring-upgrade so sorely needed by the
District government, and that (when financed) they also expand their
training program to make use of the facilities and staff of the
nearly-moribund Universiy of the District of Columbia, with an expansion
into instruction in serious computing. In this way, the District can afford
to pay underworked UDC academics, the academics don't get disgusted and seek
work elsewhere, wiring gets done on time and well-within budget, and the
students get not only lots of practice but also experience credits. Also the
District would have a ready pool of competent computer technicians,
cutting-edge-technology students, who would be working on systems that they
built themselves, and in the design of which they had major input. Money
flows into the District, work gets done, local residents are served not only
by the successful timely and inexpensive installation, but also by a growth
in technical skills taught to deserving low-income residents.
24 January 1998
The UDC has been suffering extreme attrition of the student body in recent
years. With an enrollment level formerly in the tens of thousands, UDC is
now lucky to approach an enrollment of 5000. Once blessed with excellent
public funding support, the UDC was once seen as a very beneficial resource,
particularly to the District's working-poor. Tuition at UDC had remained
very low, and was extremely competitive especially when compared to tuition
at other regional colleges, many of which are of international prestige and
charge accordingly.
Among other things, the consultants - who include KPMG Peat Marwick, Biddison
Hier, and the Institute for Higher Education Policy - recommended (as we
have) that the UDC tighten its academic focus towards promoting higher
education in areas that will enhance employment opportunities for students
and graduates. The UDC has proven extremely useful even to non-graduates, in
terms of employment potential, particularly through its remedial and
adult-education courses. These last are considered an absolute necessity
for a very large percentage of graduates of District schools. District
public-school students ranked among the worst groups of scores on
standardized tests, and many regional employers are reluctant to hire
persons educated in District schools who have not also acquired higher-level
academic credits. As a remedial resource, UDC has an excellent reputation,
and is an open-enrollment university.
(The District schools have requested to have $5 million budgeted for an
emergency implimentation of remedial programs, starting this summer. Federal
Matching Funds are also to be used. The days when District schools pursued
"social promotion" programs are over, and incompetent students will no
longer be advanced to the next grade.)
The report suggests that the UDC impliment a selection of courses which would
tend to fast-track students towards highly-technical and in-demand
specialties such as information systems technical skills, avionics and other
mission-critical technical disciplines, which are presently among the
highest-paying careers and are also critically undersupplied with available
competent practitioners.
Earth Operations Central has recommended and will continue to recommend that
in particular, students in such courses should, where possible, assist in
the desperately-needed information-systems and telecommunications upgrade
which must occur in the District. Everyone would benefit, students would
acquire extensive hand-on experience, job-well-done credits applicable to
future employment, UDC continues to serve the residents of the District,
both directly and indirectly and not-incidentally remains open as a
four-year school. Also the District gets wired on-time and within budget.
Believe it or not, he's running for Mayor.
Despite having run the District of Columbia completely into the ground,
despite having reduced the Capital of the Free World into a laughingstock of
the planet, despite having gotten his incompetent, corrupt and crony-riddled
government literally yanked out from under him by an irate and disgusted
Congress, Marion Barry is out stumping and preparing to run for Mayor.
Allow us to provide you with a perfect example of what the voters-for-Barry
can look forward to... In posh and fashionable Northwest Washington, there
is a bridge. It is the Duke Ellington Memorial Bridge. It traverses the Rock
Creek Gorge some 140 feet above the highest recorded flood stage of Rock
Creek. Considering that downtown Washington is below the "fall line" and its
Potomac River is in fact tidal, and that for this bridge to be submerged,
global warming would have had to melt not only every glacier but the entire
Antarctic ice-cap - yesterday, after a steady deluge of rain amounting to
several inches, the deck of the Duke Ellington Bridge was sufficiently
flooded as to be impassable by most cars. Why? Because under the
Barry-Cronies (tm) regime, the Public Works sanitation and water department
was so corrupt that it has provided private plumbing services while on city
time, and has so badly neglected essential public maintenance that the
drains serving the deck of the Duke Ellington Bridge were completely
clogged, and other neighborhood drains were so clogged that neighborhood
run-off was directed onto this essential thoroughfare. While the bridge is
solidly built, at least as regards the fine-cut stone arches, the decking
above was not designed to accomodate the intense traffic of modern times,
and adding enough water to float a Metrobus (literally) is like stacking
Toyotas three deep from end-to-end and side to side. There's no doubt that
the bridge was pressed to the edge of the design limitations, and this was
not the only bus-floating puddle seen around town yesterday.
It's a clear and visible statement about where the Mayor's priorities lie -
he'd really rather let graft, corruption and probably rake-off go on all
around him, while the city risks literal structural collapse simply because
his workers are too busy making double paychecks, doing private work on city
time, to be bothered to go unclog city drains.
Another of the Mayor's priorities was demonstrated, that being his intention
to be mayor-for-life no matter the cost to the city, much less the cost to
the Nation's Pride. He still has possession of and control of his "City Hall
On Wheels", a converted RV. This ponderous contraption was last seen in ward
7, east of the Anacostia, where the support for the Mayor is almost
universal.
While at present the Mayor's authority over the most essential (and most
dysfunctional) City Departments was stripped from him by the Control Board,
the DCFRA Control Board is by law scheduled to be disbanded after four years
of a balanced District Budget. Barry himself notes, "[w]hoever runs in '98
will have two clean years of democratic rule, as opposed to undemocratic
rule, as opposed to totalitarian secrecy," a clear shot as the DCFRA Control
Board, which he has derided as a "rape of
democracy." As usual, the Mayor's memory seems to be a little warped by
his own grandeur - he very conveniently forgets that under his
administration, democracy in the District (if allegorized to consensual sex
as opposed to rape) amounted to a cheap whore flat on her back for anyone
with cash in hand paid under the table - and while the locals might have
gotten used to this sort of antics, visitors to this city remain appalled at
the sight of the ancient and haggard pockmarked wreck begging all comers to
bring that money on.
The District is thus faced with a truly daunting conundrum - the DCFRA is
mandated to keep the budget balanced and has secured a top-flight city
Manager to "make it so" and thus there is no way to keep Marion Barry from
being re-elected. This sadly appears to be a mere re-play of the time he
spent out of power after his conviction for smoking crack on TV at the Vista
Hotel. Just like Dracula, no matter what you do to him, he just keeps coming
back, and the majority of the voters of the District, just like Dracula's
victims, love every minute of the experience being bled dry. As soon as
"forces of good" are gone, you just watch. We'll be back to the former state
of affairs within the year, and with Barry Risen Yet-Again From The Grave,
very quickly the whole of Washington DC will again suck, and again,
anyone and anything that hopes to stay alive will be bailing out in
droves.
The Metropolitan Police still haven't caught their
probable serial killer in the city's troubled Petworth neighborhood in
Northwest, but the rest of the city agencies are taking care of business.
Why Petworth? No neighborhood in the city has ever before been the subject
of such a massive concentration of Revitalization or urban-renewal efforts.
Again, why Petworth?
In our opinion, there could not possibly be a better target for a
neighborhood rescue. Petworth is immensely troubled, though this is nothing
unusual in Washington. However, it's right across 16th Street from the
Mount-Pleasant neighborhood. Mount-Pleasant and its adjacent neighborhood,
Adams-Morgan are settled, relatively
crime-free neighborhoods which are home to many thriving local businesses.
Yet across 16th Street to the East, fashonable and trendy Columbia Road
rapidly degenerates into a filthy hell of rat-infested alleys filled with
blowing trash. By the time you reach 14th Street, it's very evident that
you've made a wrong turn somewhere. The lovely neighborhood depicted in the
classic 1952 film "The Day the Earth Stood Still" is nowhere to be seen, and
the 1400 block of Harvard Street NW where the fictional Klaatu discovered the
good side of humanity has been replaced by a street where evil stalks the
alleys and early morning carjacking attempts have resulted in mutilation
attacks. When you reach 13th Street, things don't look so bad, the
houses are in general well-maintained - those which aren't boarded up. When
you reach Georgia Avenue (7th Street extended), and the Howard University campus, you probably
have no idea what is going on behind the almost-presentable facades and by
now you've reached the conclusion you don't want to know what's going on
back there... and you're right. But by now you've left Petworth proper, and
the worst is behind you.
For years, Metrorail construction has dominated the local topography,
turning the neighborhood into a no-man's-land of patch-riddled streets
filled with detours, barricades and blocked-off sidewalks. Such businesses
as there are have suffered, except of course for the liquor stores and the
back-alley entrepreneurs. The area is home to dozens of squatters shacks and
filthy nuisance properties. And people are getting killed, not merely shot
in some revenge killing or personal vendetta, but murdered, quietly, and
hidden by the stink of the filth that has piled up under the last decades of
conspicuous neglect, nobody could sort out the smells of the rot of the city
from the sickly odor of human decay seeping out from beneath the floors of
abandoned residences.
Obviously, it's time for a change.
First, as of the end of last year, the Metrorail station officially opened
in Petworth. Eventually, the Green Line of the Metrorail will link downtown
with College Park, Maryland, and before too long, there will also be a
Metrorail station near what's presently the worst of the war-zone, at 14th
and Columbia Road. while much of the neighborhood is presently in a state of
phenomenal decadence and inaccessibility, it could become immensely
attractive to professionals and families if it were only cleaned up.
It's being cleaned up.
An amazing increase in the police presence, including beefed-up vehicular
patrols, foot patrols, special operations units and even a National Guard
presence, have driven many of the worst offenders from the local alleys, and
buildings which had become infested with superjunkie squatters have been the
subject of massive cleanup efforts. Trash is coming out of the buildings,
along with human waste, discarded hypodermics, assorted paraphernalia, foul
bedding, and it's all getting carted away. However, it could be argued that
all this is doing is making the squatters' lairs into more attractive
and safer residences. Clearly, there must be an influx of taxpayers.
We therefor propose a Petworth Initiative. The City of Washington government
should develop a plan of action co-ordinating with the Federal Government,
in particular the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), to
offer tax-credits to anyone of a certain income level who is willing to move
into Petworth. Perhaps some variation of the DC Homesteading law could be
applied. Basically, if someone moved into one of the abandoned properties,
and made a certain amount of improvements, particularly if those
improvements or alterations promoted public safety and security as well as
restoring the property, title should be conveyed at a reduced or waived
price. One of the restorers of the property that had two murdered women
under the floorboards has already announced a major price-break for any
police officers who wanted to buy that place. The City should also pitch in
and do whatever's possible to attract quality residents.
Already, there are incentives for businesses to open or to relocate here,
both within the District Revitalization Act and under the authority of HUD's
Urban Empowerment Zones programs. If businesses can be assured of customers,
they'll be happy to come, and if they can be assured of upscale customers,
they'll come in droves.
If this process continues for five years, in a decade Petworth will be an
attractive residential neighborhood well-served by public mass transit,
populated by upscale young families paying into the public coffers, with a
thriving business community also paying into the City revenue base.
And at least in Petworth, the killings will stop.
Washington is, understandably, in a bit of a turmoil this week.
There is of course the immense (if purely Federal-level) soap-opera case of
whether the President did or did not engage in an affair with one Monica
Lewinski, or did or did not suborn perjury either directly or through
delgation to this or that high-ranking aide. Half of the Federal political
establishment is muttering about impeachment and the other half of the
establishment is clamming up tight and wishing it will all go away, or
pretending it has gone away. We will wisely also pretend that it has gone
away. We are trying to retain focus on local and regional issues.
Also, Washington is, and has been for some time, prepositioning itself to go
on a war footing. Washington is always an interesting place during wartime.
We will however refrain from any comment regarding the war effort, except as
extreme circumstances might warrant.
Mayor Marion Barry is still pondering whether or not to announce his
candidacy for another term as Mayor. Mayor Barry is reportedly considering
options other than a continuing policital career. He definitely needs to
find some way to make some money. His assets were essentially wiped out by
his legal defense against the misdemeanor cocaine-possession charges which
landed him in jail. He has considerable expenses, including his house,
divorce settlements, and so forth.
DC Chief Financial Officer Anthony A. Willams was reportedly considering a
run for the Mayor's office, but has refused to commit to entering the race.
He's doing a fine job where he is. In fact, there may be a potential $160
million growth in District revenue. Mayor Barry, always quick to
redistribute the wealth (generally into the pockets of his cronies) has
proposed a tax-cut targeted to increase District Tourism. However, the money
is not yet in the bank. As rapidly as the economy has exploded, it might as
quickly recede into recession, though it is agreed that this is not likely.
Still, it would be best to target the District's half-billion dollar debt
for early retirement, before allocating funds not yet in hand.
In the meantime, one of the Mayor's security detail accompanied him on a
vacation to Mexico, only to receive a page while in the air. Acting Chief of
Police Sonya T. Proctor decided a bit belatedly that he was not to accompany
the Mayor on his vacation.
The Metropolitan Police have made an
arrest in two of the Petworth Murders.
Concurrently, a new sentencing system for those convicted in the District of
violent offenses such as murder, rape, or armed robbery. Other crimes are
also covered. This "truth-in-sentencing" system would require specific
prison-sentences for specific crimes, with subsequent supervised release".
At present, though the District has some of the most stringent possible
sentences, application of these sentences has been extremely variable.
In other matters, for the second time this year, part of the bridge spanning
Rock Creek on Military Road, one of the major cross-town arteries suitable
for extremely-heavy traffic, collapsed.
Please don't forget to see the Metropolitan Police Page!
9 February 1998
After two weeks of initial assessment, amounting to a whirlwind tour of the
agencies she is now empowered to administer, Dr. Barnett has announced
herself dismayed but undaunted by the task ahead of her. She's quoted by the
Washington Post as
saying: "The biggest surprise is how bad it looks... Files in boxes,
facilities that are literally falling apart while people are working in
this, roofs coming down, carpets torn, walls that have not been painted in
forever, and you know, that's out face to the customer. Basements are
leaking and full of water. Trash everywhere. ...It's been a long time since
I've seen stuff like that."
Welcome to Washington, Dr. Barnett.
Dr. Barnett has stated that she's going to be evaluating the heads of the
nine city agencies over which she has direct control, and will probably use
a system of evaluation of performance involving the "performance contract",
wherein she will lay out a clear set of goals which must be accomplished to
a certain nicety within speific times. Presumably, if these contracts are
not fulfilled, "heads will roll".
However, Dr. Barnett does not have clear sailing ahead of her, not entirely.
There is a noted political or philosophical difference of opinion and
position between her and Mayor Marion Barry, whose major powers she has
assumed, and it must be noted that Mayor Barry is apparently again stumping
for office. If the city can be brought in on a balanced budget for another
three straight years, whoever is elected in the upcoming City elections will
enjoy unrestricted power for the last two years of that term of office.
Barry is expected to present the next-year's budget within a month. It must
be noted that one of the most sure ways that Barry could make himself look
good and make everyone else looks bad (Barry has long since demonstrated
this ability, and is considered better "tefloned' than even Ronald Reagon or
President Bill Clinton) would be to produce a budget that is clearly within
balance or running at a surplus, simultaneously hamstringing the ability of
the City Manager Barnett to fund necessary upgrades and re-organization.
Expect this, Dr. Barnett.
Dr. Barnett has other obstacles as well. The city workers had been promised
raises by the Barry Administration (which hadn't the capital resources to
buy toilet paper for the Metropolitan Police, at one time in 1996) and due
to the lack of funds they have gotten this raise from neither the
Barry-Cronies (tm) administration, nor from the DCFRA Control Board
oversight administration. Barry didn't have the money and the Control Board
was not funded to finance this. There are extreme issues here, and while the
city was hamstrung with a Personnel Policy little short of ridiculous,
useless workers could not be fired, only laid-off, and due to
collective-bargaining provisions, often the most-tenured and highest-ranking
workers were the most useless.
However, on Tuesday 4 February 1998, the DC Council, considered by many to
be a toothless tiger and essentially lame as well, passed hallmark
legislation which is seen by many as one of its first completely-relevant
acts in recent history. While the DCFRA Control Board oversight authority
may or may not technically be legally-bound to honor any or all of the
provisions eneacted by this legislations, the intent of the law is certainly
to be viewed as in concord with the needs goals of both the DCFRA, the City
Manager, and the District Revitalization Act. It also removes any question
as to the "democracy" of these policies. After all, the DC Council was
elected under Home-Rule authority and clearly the City Council can be viewed
as empowering the will of the People.
While taking the inordinately insulting (to Mayor Barry, whose cronies have
been getting top positions and top pay along with signing bonuses) step of
prohibiting Mayoral authority to issue signing bonuses, the law is otherwise
an excellent step. It provides a clear system of rewards and sanctions,
provides a requirement for employee evaluation based on written guidelines,
and raises or promotions would be possible only after conformance with, or
surpassment of, those guidelines. For the first time, the direct echelons of
management would be able to discipline or fire employees based on
performance, as opposed to their ranking of time-on-the-job or association
with the Barry-Cronies (tm) political machine. The passage of this
legislation lends total political legitimacy to any hirings or firings
within the District government, and makes them look more like due-process of
law under democracy, and less like an externally-imposed autarchy.
The DCFRA Control Board has reported to Congress that, with the exception of
rent-controlled housing occupied by low-income elderly residents, all
rent-control in the District should possibly be phased-out, and also is
requesting immediate lifting of rent-controls in all vacant apartments in
the District.
DCFRA Chairman Andrew F. Brimmer, an economist and a former Federal Reserve
officer, was quoted by the Post as saying: "Many of the existing
regulations and administrative procedures do impose unacceptable burdens on
businesses and citizens in the nation's capital... In the coming weeks, we
will determine which of those should be candidates for possible elimination.
We will then take whatever steps are necessary to achieve that goal."
The recommendations of the Control Board, itself majority black, are likely
to be ill-received by much of Washington's black majority of voters.
Rent-control is a hot-button issue in much of Washington, which has
historically been politically, socially, and especially financially divided
along lines of race. There is and has been much loose talk of "The Plan",
whereby "white america is out to dislodge the black man from Washington DC".
We will hope that an elimination or restructuring of rent-control in
Washington DC will not be seen as a part of "the Plan"; after all, the
Control Board is majority black as is Mr. Brimmer. If this is to be seen as
a class issue, therefor let it be seen as a division along lines of
financial classes, favoring the smallholders who have a room to rent, or who
may own a small building that they rent as apartments. A removal of
rent-control on these facilities would enable Washington's remaining black
middle-class to no longer be forced to either go broke fixing-up
falling-down apartments while limiting their incomes from rent, or to simply
stand by and do no refurbishing while they watch their rent-controlled
properties degenerate. The middle-class in the District has traditionally
invested in real-estate as it has been a "sure-thing" investment, but with
the advent of rent-control some decades ago, many middle-class families saw
the writing on the wall, sold their properties to anyone who would buy, and
moved out of town, predominantly to Prince-George's County Maryland. Rising
costs and inflation coupled with static controlled-rent to make real-estate
ownership of rented apartments economically-useful only as a tax-write-off
in a great many cases. In general it has become much more economically sound
to simply allow properties to remain vacant and to depreciate. As a result,
the District has become pockmarked by vacant eyesore properties owned by
absentee landlords while the properties themselves deteriorate and become
squatters-nests and "shooting-galleries" for neighborhood addicts.
Permitting renting one's apartments to become profitable would tend to
re-attract investment in the city's real-estate market.
The Washington Post reports that the former director of the Maryland
Department of Human Services, one Ernestine F. Jones, has been doing a fine
job rebuilding the District's once-chaotic Child Welfare and Foster Care
services. She's also been given good marks by the
Consortium for Child Welfare
and by For Love of Children, both of
which are local groups devoted to the protection of children and
families.
This has been a fun week for the District's schools, if your idea of fun is
a concatenation of disasters all rolling together into a simple
catastrophe. However, as it is said, "it's an ill wind that blows no good" -
and what might seem to be a horrible hurricane at first, often is later seen
to be a blessing that has washed clean the streets, to leave everything
looking new and clean and shiny.
First, the District Schools' Special Education Director, Jeff Myers, quit.
This might or might not be a good thing; he was hired by ex-General Julius
Becton primarily to impliment management reforms in the Scpeical Education
department. This department deals primarily with the special needs and
considerations of the disabled children of the District. Sufficient
improvement has been made that the US Department of Education has considered
finally paying in the fund it withheld in July, said funds being withheld
due to lack of compliance with requirements to give free and appropriate
educations to the special-needs students.
However, Myers' departure might not be a bad thing. He was after all
primarily a manager, with no particular background in education, and
certainly no background in special-education. There are active measures now
engaged in searching out specialists in this field, the need for whom is
characterized as "desperate".
In mainstream education, at long last the District Schools (long-plagued
with a deserved reputation for graduating illiterates, despite the nation's
highest per-capita spending of any municipal district) is reforming
their standards of grade-to-grade promotions. while still allowing "social
promotions" based on age and age-groupings, students who are
"social-promoted" will be admitted only to remedial programs unless and
until they can demonstrate their proficiency to be according to their
grade-level and age-group. Also, summer-school options will be significantly
expanded. If those students whose grades are acceptable are out in the
summer sun, that leaves the potential for intense concentration in the
remedial venue. Accelerated learning can be achieved when a much higher
ratio of specialists can be applied to students who are having dificulties
in learning. It properly done, summer-school programs can be used to either
help a student catch up to (or surpass) their proper level, and failing
that, can better identify those students who may have special needs which
had not previously been identified.
Sorry about the delay in this week's reporting!
I've been having some problems with the surly inbreds up here in Rockville,
and figured that I should let my skull-fracture heal to the point where I'd
be coherent in this dispatch, before composing it. Thank you for your
patience.
17 February 1998
Anthony A. Williams is the District of Columbia's Chief Financial Officer.
Appointed by Marion Barry (in an out-of-character pick of competence over
cronyism), confirmed by the DCFRA Control
Board, Mr. Williams promised to resign if he couldn't straighten out the
City's accounts books. Well, he's done that. In fact, he's brought the city
in at a record $185.9 million surplus. However, despite the fact that the
revenue stream has been greatly streamlined, this is no cause for
jubilation.
We have previously compared the situation of the District to that of a
person who is too sick to get out of bed. I myself was once so sick that I
literally could not leave the house for three weeks, other than to stagger
across the street once to buy some minimal food and lots of orange-juice
concentrate. I couldn't eat, and could hardly drink; I lost twenty pounds.
When my fever broke, I was ravenous, and at a point in the month when
ordinarily I'd have been counting my remaining pennies, I was flush with
cash... but as weak as a kitten - and prone to relapse.
This is the situation in which the District finds itself. Mr. Williams was
quick to note that not everything is perfect. He's reported by the Washington Post as saying,
"The District now has a performance problem as opposed to an overspending
problem".
Well, you'd think that with this much cash in hand, the District could run
right out and buy whatever it takes to fix everything. But this is not so.
The improved financial situation here is largely a fluke, despite the
herculean efforts of Mr. Williams and his staff. More than half of the
budget surplus comes from a Federal assumption of city-run functions which
would ordinarily be managed by the State within which a city lay, but which
had been saddled upon the City of Washington. The Federal government as part
of the District Revitalization effort plowed some $53 millions into
purchasing the District's Lorton Reformatory, and another $53 million into
Medicaid cost adjustments. This means that the actual improvement in the
District is closer to a budget surplus of roughly $84 millions. Of this,
some $40 millions were due to a failure by city agencies to spend as
budgeted, a result of "poor procurement practices" and spending limitations
imposed by the Control Board, which would not permit spending in certain
areas until it could determine exactly which money was going to which
vendor, and the circumstances under which the contracts had been awarded.
At any rate, even if some miracle can repeat this year's budgetary surplus
in future years, the city must still pay off some $332 millions in
accumulated bills from the previous years of deficits.
The District is in the process of streamlining its budgetary process. At
this point in time, there will be a fairly large chunk of budget dedicated
to managements reform, and it is indeed expected that within this, and
within the next, fiscal years, we will see the realization of a great deal
of increased efficiency and streamlining of the internal economy of
Washington. We expect to see the emergence of a sort of Troika, or of Troika
of Troikas, with one apex within the City Administration - with the
positions occupied by whomever shall be elected Mayor in a primarily
advisory role, with another position occupied by the Chief Financial Oficer,
Anthony A. Williams, and with the final corner being the City Manager, Dr.
Camille Cates Barnett. Another Troika can be expected to consist of the
DCFRA Control Board itself, acting as a unified body, with another corner
being the House District Appropriations and other Congressional ovesight
committees, with the final corner being the Troika of the City
Government. Another Troika is envisioned as the intergrade between the
elections processes now getting underway, with the second corner being the
media and their interpretations, and finally the public to be served.
The Mayoral race is heating up. Present contenders include Kevin P. Chavous,
a 41-year-old Democrat from Ward 7, chair of the Education Committee of the
DC Council. Mr.
Chavous' Ward 7 comprises most of Southeast Washington. Also in the
running is DC Council member
Jack Evans, a
Democract from Ward 2. Considered by some to be the "Federal Government's
Man-in-Washington", he's a strong supporter of reform, particularly with
regards to all public-protection issues. He also represents many of the
highest-income sectors of the City. Not yet declared, but expected to run,
is At-Large DC Council member
Harold Brazil, a
very widely-respected individual with a great deal of support city-wide.
He's been one of the biggest supporters of financial and regulatory reform
within the District, and also takes a tough stance against crime. Marion
Barry, commonly referred to hereabouts as "Mayor-for-Life Marion Barry", has
not yet officially declared, although as noted above he has been openly
courting the voters.
On 16 October 1997 we remarked
upon the pitiful state of Public Housing in the District of Columbia. We
have been for some time publicly harping in various newsgroups such as dc.general concerning the state of the District
and in particular Public Housing, public services to the poor and the needy,
and we have in particular sought to address the issues putting
it all together in such a way as to provide employment and training
opportunities for persons leaving Welfare.
Perhaps our prayers have been heard, or perhaps great minds think alike. Or
perhaps we're being a tad megalomaniacal today. At any rate, whatever the
source of ideas, as long as they're good and as long as they're implimented,
we must applaud sound judgement and
vision.
On 22 October 1997 we noted
that while the US Department of Housing and
Urban Development had on 16 October 1996 suspended a $36 million block
grant to the District because of shoddy recordskeeping, they had decided to
re-issue most of that money - along with another $170 million - to one David
Gilmore. Mr. Gilmore was in 1995 appointed by DC Superior Court Judge
Steffen W. Graae as receiver of the DC Housing Authority. When Gilmore came
onto the job, the District's public housing was essentially, where occupied
at all, a hodgepodge of falling-down rat-infested slums where anything and
everything was for sale except anything resembling hope or decency.
Mr. Gilmore has apparently done one bang-up job of getting it all together.
No, everything is not perfect, but he's made more than a good start. First,
the murder rate in public-housing projects has dropped by 50 percent within
the last year alone, thanks to his staffing of a new police authority for
the projects. Eyesores have been razed to the ground where they cannot be
repaired. And most importantly, many of the projects are being rebuilt as
mixed-occupancy facilities.
On 28 October 1997 we detailed
Mr. Gilmore's strategy for excluding criminals and drug dealers from
properties under his management, and in fact, he's done this.
Most importantly, he's also been putting the low-income residents to work
rebuilding their own places. We have in the past repeatedly proposed that
any move from Welfare-to-Work
would have to be accompanied by substantial retraining, and one of the
most-useful and easily-learned trades is that of construction, at least at
the apprentice and journeyman levels. We have consistently proposed that if
you're going to rebuild public housing, one should use the publicly-housed
to do the rebuilding, under the supervision of professionals, who would use
also use this as a training project. And Mr. Gilmore has done exactly that.
In a Washington Post article,
we see that his policies are successfully converting even former gangstas
into taxpaying constructive citizens.
Among other things, District school officials have requested a budgetary
increase of nearly 20 percent for the next year, citing a need for a
"mammoth reform" of the District's educational system. In the last two
years, while many other city agencies have received additional funding, the
schools instead have had their funding cut. Among the requests for an
expanded budget:
E. Barrett Prettyman, Jr., the new Inspector General of District of Columbia
has announced that there will be an expansion of his office. There are now
only 40 employees, and they'll be hiring another 20 or so, now that the DCFRA Control Board has authorized a
substantial budget increase.
Much of the budget increase will be spent on new equipment (they have
almost none) and also to create a specialized core dedicated exclusively to
investigations of the police department.
I have long been of the opinion that Washington DC could save itself a lot
of money and simultaneously develop a corp of local technical specialists,
by using the nearly-idle resources of the University of the District of
Columbia to train undergraduate and highschool students to do technical work
for the city, and then employ them in a technology upgrade initiative under
the city's Summer Jobs program.
Virginia, which is nowhere nearly as cash-strapped as is the District of
Columbia, has taken an interesting approach to their own technology
shortage.
The Commonwealth of Virginia has no shortage of technology. Northern
Virginia, long a hotbed of government-funded research and development
interests, has in the past three years leapfrogged to a position second only
to the fabled Silicon Valley of California, within the information
technology and high-tech manufacture and assembly industries. In the last
five years, more than 60 percent of the Commonwealth's growth in gross
product has come from growth in the hightech and infotech industries.
Yet this immense boom, which has practically overflooded the coffers of the
Commonwealth, is at risk of falling flat on its face, or at least it is
being brought up against wall thrown up by the laws of supply and demand -
there simply are nowhere near enough qualified workers to fill the slots
required.
A new bill, introduced by Virginia Delegate Alan A. Diamonstein (Democrat,
Newport News), is in many ways a state subsidy of technology companies.
Community colleges and technical institutes would be given very large grants
which would be earmarked for the development of programs which would
fast-track people towards a non-degreed specialty. At present, many
individuals who have full degrees in information technologies or in
engineering specialties are locked into essential support positions which
could probably be easily filled by someone with a specialized education
short of the graduate degree level. Demand for persons with certain
credentials such as local-network administration is so high locally that
persons who graduate local training courses, such as the Novell Network
Administration Certification courses, are beset by crowds of competing
corporate headhunters, before they actually graduate.
Virginia appears to be leading the way into a future where there is not a
universal insistence on a full degree as a prerequisite for any meaningful
employment. Instead, there may be work for anyone who can complete
highschool and another one to four semesters of accredited discipline or
task-specific training. As it is, desperation reigns in Northern Virginia,
where they are facing a current shortage of some 18,000 positions in
technically-competent essential tasks, many of which are presently being
operated in an emergency mode by overworked degreed persons. Over the next
five years, the Northern Virginia Technology Council estimates a minimum of
some 112,000 technical workers will be needed.
1 March 1998
The city now has 366 snow-removal trucks.
In recent years, piles of trash have grown and grown, with garbage often
rotting where it lay, feeding a population-explosion of the District's bold
and cat-sized rats. Now, the fleet of aging and decrepit trash trucks has
been shored up by the addition of 40 new trucks, which are scheduled for
delivery any day now. Recycling, which had been abandoned in the District as
a cost-saving measure even though it either forced eco-friendly residents to
recycle on their own or otherwise essentially doubled the volume of trash to
be hauled, will be resumed. And for the first time, the City will begin a
program of regularly cleaning alleys.
Back in the mid-to-late 1980s, Mayor ("for life") Marion Barry embarked upon
a campaign to lift Washington out of the seemingly-endless recession,
courting Republicans and Business with his rightly-famous "Washington: A
Capital City" program. He offered inducements to Business, and was very
successful in attracting some large capital clients to the District.
However, no matter the knock-offs on rents and taxes, by the mid 1990s
business was less-than-thrilled with the prospect of moving to Washington.
The byzantine tangles of the District's Department of Consumer and
Regulatory Affairs promoted a disorganized culture of regulation and
licensing in which what-one-did had little impact and instead relied
entirely on who-one-knew - and in the inevitable corruption and cronyism,
tax-collections necessarily suffered. When combined with the tax-breaks and
cash incentives (both above-board and under-the-table) we watched the city
go broke at the same time that the Barry Administration expanded a policy of
hiring incompetents so long as they would reliably vote to keep Barry in
power and themselves employed doing basically nothing.
The streets rotted. Potholes literally swallowed cars. Washington's pride,
its lovely urban park-forest, overgrew into an ill-trimmed thicket where
some 5000 tottering and moribund trees loomed threatening across schoolyards, backyards, and major
arteries, despite a catastrophic blowdown in the late 80s caused by a series
of major microburst storms. Trash collected in the alleys along with
abandoned and stolen vehicles (wrecks were never collected as they could not
be profitably resold at the legendary DC auctions). Fallingdown properties
seized for violations or as condemned properties were left unmonitored and
became havens for addicts, who congregated to terrorize the neighbors whose
repeated complaints to the City went unanswered while trash, debris, and
human wastes collected.
In the meantime, the residents of the District fled the jungle which the
District had become. As trash piled up, and the roads decayed, and the water
became unsafe, predators largely abandoned the decrepitude of the ruins of
public housing and took to the streets, turning Washington into a bloodbath
with the highest per-capita murder rate in a nation whose internal violence
outside of a declared Civil War has for thirty years astounded the rest of
the world. The District lost one-sixth of its population in a seven year
period, mostly the middle-class abandoning the District in a flight to the
suburbs.
Of that sixth of the population, some 50 percent were black, and largely
headed for Maryland, in general for Prince George's County, Maryland's only
majority-black county. Whites tended to head about half and half to Maryland
or Virginia, largely to upscale Montgomery County Maryland or to
equally-upscale and largely-rural Fairfax or Loudon Counties in Virginia.
Persons of foreign birth have trended more towards the suburbs in any case,
in general preferring Virginia if Latino or some southeast Asian groups,
with the close-in suburbs of Arlington and Alexandria witnessing the
formation of a great many ethnic enclaves, and with Virginia in particular
witnessing a huge rise in the numbers of, and membership in, ethnic youth gangs. Local authorities have
identified more than 200 local youth gangs, most of them ethnic in nature.
In particular the suburban police are detecting the presence and activity of
Asian home-invasion gangs which prey primarily on immigrants, and the
expanding influence of the dreaded 18th Street and Mara Salvatruca gangs,
which are primarily composed of non-citizens and are based abroad.
The suburbs themselves have increasingly been pressed to the limits of
infrastructure development. Fairfax County Virginia has experienced
explosive growth in the last decade and is pressed to the wall, and is able
to keep up only because of unprecedented expansion of industry, primarily in
the eminently-taxable and extremely profitable high-tech and
military-industrial sectors. In Virginia, Loudon County, until the last five
years known primarily as "horse-country", has in the last two years seen a
practically cancerous growth of tract housing catering to those people who
prefer a bucolic near-country life. However, all major transportation
arteries are already running to capacity, and cannot effectively be
disrupted sufficiently to effect new construction along those arteries,
which due to over-building is the only right-of-way avaiable for such new
construction.
Commutes have in general doubled or tripled between the farthest residential
suburbs and the central economic core. While the Edge City Effect has indeed
tended to remove the centers of business from the District into the
surrounding suburbs, still the majority of the residents of the Greater
Washington SMSA drive at least 30 miles of commute daily. While those who
raise families do prefer reliable services and infrastructure maintenance to
be found in the suburbs, "the suburbs have no charms to soothe the restless
dreams of youth", as the song says (Geddy Lee). In any case, recent studies
have indicated that somewhere between half and three-quarters of all local
traffic congestion is due to people running errands of less than five miles
travel. And here we see an essential equation between the availability of
parking in the suburbs combining with the inconvenience of all shopping
being restricted to zoning-regulated venues. One cannot shop without
driving, and one cannot commute effectively due to the cars of shoppers. It
should be noted that the regional paradigm outside of the District proper is
that of mini-malls, strip-malls, and mega-malls, all separated by very large
tracts zoned exclusively-residential, with the majority of middle-income
housing being on average more than a mile from the nearest shopping.
Washington and the inner suburbs are increasingly being repopulated by young
families, in general "Young Urban Professionals". Yuppies are, however,
notoriously uninterested in civic involvement except as it can provide them
a tax-break. However, they do have cash to spend, and they seem to prefer to
walk rather than to take a car, evidently feeling that 30 miles per day of
commuting in insane traffic is quite enough for them. They want convenience
in their shopping, in their entertainment, and as the are as a general rule
childless, issues such as schools are relatively unimportant. They also tend
to make excellent salaries. While it is traditional for the young and
wealthy to secure a major investment in housing, in the outlying suburbs
housing values are dropping rapidly, and in fact, new housing is
selling for very little more than the cost of materials and first resale
losses of ten percent are presently not-uncommon.
The vast population exodus of the last seven years has left a great many
properties in the District well within the purchasing power of even
late-twenties couples and "house-mates consortiums", almost exclusively
white, and very well-paid. Combine this with the Federal Revitalization
payments, and the newly-efficient tax-collection policies of the District
Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs, and the complete and
statutory inability of Marion Barry to foul things up, and we see the
District practically exploding into a new life, and
demographically-speaking, it's a young, white, and childless life. While
there has not been a great deal of forward motion in terms of rennaisance,
at least deterioration has been brought to a "screeching halt".
First and foremost, the roads of the District are under a crash-priority
rebuilding project. Where formerly on many streets a local need not look at
the surround to determine location, but need merely count how many
tire-eating potholes they'd bounced through, in some places they're now
rubbernecking for streetsigns. In the warzone badlands of Petworth, NW
Washington, we have seen the completion of a Green Line Metrorail station,
and a promise of intense locally-dedicated Federal funding to rebuild the
streets. Potholes are getting patched all over town, and that alone should
do wonders to speed commutes. Where before the City was responsible for the
repair of trenches dug by utility companies, as of 2 March 1998 the utility
companies digging the trenches are required to repair their cuts through the
streets and sidewalks, and will be held to strict codes and standards.
Work has resumed on "livability" projects outside the domains of
motor-vehicles and roads. A new trash-truck fleet should arrive almost any
day, and when the Alley Clean-Up project gets into full swing, the reek of
decay and the dangers of the trash-fed rats should become a thing of the
past. And within two years, once again Washington's urban forest should be a
well-managed parkland instead of a running-wild jungle of trash trees and
dying forest kings.
The City has also decided, through the Zoning Panel, to require
privately-owned waste-transfer stations in the District (seven are presently
operating) to have a 300-foot buffer-zone from residential communities, and
a 50-foot buffer-zone from other properties. Many of the transfer facilities
will essentially be put out of business in their present modes when forced
to comply. Over half of the trash in those facilities, insanely, has been
shipped in from the suburbs.
Meanwhile, back on the subject of revenue, the City has contracted to
replace or acquire some 15,000 parking meters, and is revising parking laws
and also providing for much more aggressive ticketing of parked vehicles. At
present, the District has a unique law permitting front-door loading and
unloading of delivery trucks, which is in many cases essential due to the
impassability of the alleyways. However, loading zones will in the future be
designated by signs, instead of the universal loading-zone default of simply
stopping the vehicle and starting to unload. The present law essentially
requires delivery vehicles to block traffic in order to avoid being
ticketed.
Cellerino C. Bernardino, who was fired by Marion Barry for "bothering the
Mayor with complaints about infrastructure" and who was reinstated by the DCFRA Control Board as the Director of the
Department of Public Works, is attempting to take a firm hand but is
hampered by a total lack of local talent. Under the Barry Administration,
infrastructure and public works took a back seat to almost any other issue.
The best talent has long since departed elsewhere, in particular, anyone
competent to train the newcomers is long-since gone.
This leaves, however, the massive prospect of fixing the city's antiquated
"weird-iron" computer systems. In the Department of Motor Vehicles, they've
got a computer so old that the manufacturer no longer makes anything like
it.
The District as a whole has been set with a budget for 1998 of $4.3 billion,
much lower than in previous years. The City is now meant to be self-funding
and will no longer receive any direct Federal payments other than those
which would ordinarily be paid-in in such venues as highway-maintenance or
such other programs, as a result of the District Revitalizaiton Act. Also,
in lieu of a generic slush-fund payment as in the past, many district
programs such as the courts and jails are being directly paid by the Federal
Government.
Earth Operations Central and TJH Internet SP have been offering quick-fixes
for this for over a year, however the District Government has instead
earmarked $2.7 millions over the next two years for a new computer system.
TJH Internet SP
suggests a Linux Unix-compatible system. We
believe that by a simple process of reading the entire database of the
Department of Motor Vehicles into a single file, that file could be very
easily converted into a multitude of HTML (web-page) files, one HTML page
per record. Served across the DC IntraNet, and indexed by such University
developed and internet-standard search-engines as the Harvest System for Information
Discovery. This would provide instant, reliable, and exceptionally
low-cost Intranet access to all authorized DC employees, in an
Internet-standard format which can include images, sound,
on-the-fly-generated content, in fact, anything that any web-page can
contain. Once the files were converted, some staff could be dedicated to
filling out HTML forms online at the offices, using any standard
web-browser that supports forms, which I do believe covers all browsers
issued in the last two years. It won't seem much different to them from the
present system, except that it'll be a lot easier to use, it will work
all of the time, will cost about one-tenth to one-half of what any
turnkey system would cost, and it will keep the customer happy at the
proposed one-stop service shop at the Department of Motor Vehicles. And with
a simple point-and-click at the appropriate Intranet link, police
information and drivers-license information become accessible to
appropriately-authorized users from other branches or Departments.
Cost per computer? Comparison shop in the Washington Post Monday
Business Section pullout. PCs are cheap. Where to find staff? Here I'll get
to the point and say that the City of Washington could save millions by
reading a story in today's Sunday Post A-section concerning the
burgeoning industry of high-school programmers. Young, hip, not out of
high-school, and making
$50,000 a year... and more cutting-edge than senior degreed software
engineers with 20-years of experience who get paid $100,000. "Why Pay
More?"
And yes, NT-serving, NetWares volumes sharing, and for that matter AppleTalk
and of course standard TCP/IP can all be accomplished over EtherNet LAN,
from a Linux box.
After long years of decrepitude, in fact near-death, the Office of the
Medical Examiner (DC Morgue) begins its climb back towards health and
utility.
Plagued by a long string of sorrows ranging from the merely disgusting (a
refrigeration failure left the dead rotting in 110-degree-F heat while a
drain blockage caused the fluids of the dead to collect in a festering
fly-blown pool inches deep) to the pettily sordid (the last Acting Chief M-E
was fired for practicing without a license) through the
professionally-laughable (the toxicology equipment is said to be so broken
you couldn't prove poisoning if someone arrived in a labelled box packed
with cyanide crystals), the Morgue has at last got a high-profile and
competent leader.
Up until the last year's revelations of implausibly-mismanaged conditions at
the Metropolitan Police Department's evidence-storage facility, the DC
Morgue has been considered for nearly a decade to be the greatest single
impediment to effective homicide investigation and prosecution in the
District of Columbia.
In possibly the most-important-to-date hire by Chief Management Officer (City
Manager) Camille Cates Barnett PhD, the Morgue has a new Chief Medical
Examiner. Barnett will have increasing control over the nine City agencies
stripped from Mayoral control. The Control Board has voted to decrease their
day-to-day scrutiny and control of those agencies, and pass much greater
oversight and responsibility to Barnett.
The new M-E is one Jonathan L. Arden, MD, recently famed for rebuilding New
York City's floundering M-E's office, also a specialist in child fatalities,
an alarming and increasing problem in the District. Over the next two years,
the morgue staff will increase from 32 to 45, and in particular, more than
$2 millions will be spent on modern equipment.
Dr. Arden (whose medical license is valid) will start work in mid-April and
will be paid $165,000 annually.
Washington's schools share the infrastructure problems of the rest of the
city. A citizens'-group court action had, earlier this year, resulted in a
very-delayed opening of the schools, due to school-safety issues. Repair
were made over the summer, ostensibly in a great hurry by the best of the
local construction trade. However, an audit of the costs, and an examination
of the work received compared with the funds expended raised troubleing
questions, which were compounded by an expose last week by a local news
channel, which followed school-repair workers for an entire day and saw
exactly no work being done. A confrontation with the supervisor on camera
brought only bald lies which were further revealed by surveillance film to
be not only bald lies but a clear indication that nowhere enough heads have
rolled, and that this is a remaining outpost of the endemic infection that
brought Washington DC to the edge of the third-world and the brink of
disaster - the disease of Barry-Cronies(tm)-itis.
All of this has combined into a howl of public outrage, at least amongst the
parents who have had to either stay home from work to watch their kids
during the closings, or those who have had to fret over whether or not it
would be their child who stepped into an electrified puddle in the school
halls or be struck by falling debris or collapsing structure.
On 24 February 1998 Charles E. Williams, a retired Army General, resigned
from his position as Operating Officer and Director fo Facilities. Also
resigning was the school system's chief lawyer, General Counsel Cecilia
Wirtz. Williams had come under intense fire, in particular for his failure
to consult with the City's bewildering and contentious special-interest
education groups. Williams had essentially stepped into a thankless and
nearly-impossible job of juggling nukes in a minefield while being shot at
from all directions in a total fog during an earthquake, and dropped no
nukes and only stepped on those mines that were completely unavoidable. And
due to his efforts, while the earth is still shaking, the fog is beginning
to clear. We can only pray that his successor can do half so well.
9 March 1997
It must be remembered that investors, and the professional analysis firms
such as Moody's to which those investors turn for advice, are impressed very
little by talk. They do prefer to deal with facts and figures, and have
gotten very good at cutting through rhetoric and spin. The facts and figures
with which they are most impressed are those which appear on balance sheets,
and nothing impresses better than money in the bank.
The Chairman of the Control Board, Andrew F. Brimmer, a longtime financial
expert, economic theoretician and former member of the Federal Reserve, has
interestingly proposed a tax-cut for the District. It is our opinion that
this would be hasty in the extreme. While the combination of Control Board,
international-caliber business and management consultants, and Chief
Financial Officer Anthony A. Williams has indeed managed to post a surplus
for this year, it remains to be seen how well any future budgets will
continue to generate surplus. This year's surplus comes in a climate of
economic prosperity unprecedented since the boom years after the Second
World War. Such economic summertimes can be expected to be rare and indeed
may be limited in growth and inherently recessionary in most circumstances.
Nationally, the economy has benefitted by a unique concatenation of
circumstances including a free-fall in the economies of the Asian Rim.
Washington's uncertainties as to future surplusses are further compounded by
the fact that most of this year's surplus comes from a one-time Federal
payment and assumption of old-debt, combining with a gross upsurge in
tourism. The City of Washington can never again count on a Federal bail-out
of such epic and indeed astounding proportions.
Board Chairman Brimmer doubtless realizes all of this, and has considerable
more information as his disposal than most of us. Perhaps he is aware of
factors which would tend to favor a redistribution of wealth from the public
coffers into the hands of the District's taxpayers, both business and
residential. We, however, would tend to point out the old adage, amply
demonstrated by the experiences of DC Schools's Gen. (ret) Julius Becton,
that "nothing ever gets done on time nor within budget". the schools has
massive cost-overruns in the emergency roof-repairs last summer, resulting
in substandard work at a gross overbudget. The District has a profoundly
entrenched culture of cronyism, "fix-it-later disease", and very poor
quality control and oversight processes. Our advice is to let the surplusses
pile up and ideally earn interest or pay-down debts. Saving for a rainy day
is something the District has never (to our knowledge) done, and as long as
there is so much experimentation going on in this City's finances, let's try
the old tried-and-true of cash in the bank.
A group called the Fair Budget Coalition (a group of social-service
providers) notes that while other needs have seen increasing budgets, over
the last five years the Distrit has consistently slashed costs on the
budgets by increasingly abandoning those populations which are most in need
of services and at the highest risk. Issues of homelessness, drug-addiction,
child safety and child health, have consistently been the targets of budget
axemen. In many cases, the money has been available through Federal sources
but was not diligently applied, and in other cases, the money was simply not
there, or was administered extremely inefficiently. In any case, the poor
have been tending to move out of the District, in particular the
working-poor, who have largely tended to move into Prince George's County,
Maryland. While the District's population has declined by approximately
one-sixth in the last seven years, those persons who are moving into the
District are largely considerably more affluent than were the populations
which departed. The District is seeing a decline in the need for budgeting
for social services such as aid to working-poor or Welfare families, and
this combines with a higher-income taxbase to increase the potentials for
surplusses. However, there are a great many improvements possible in the
social services arena.
Other sources of less-than-rosy future budget pictures could be the extreme
need to give raises to the employees of the District, many of whom have not
seen raises in five years. Also, it is quite possible that the District has
grossly underestimated the cost of a technology upgrade which is very badly
needed.
DC Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, the non-voting Congressional
representative of the City of Washington, proposes a tax-break of another
sort. The US Department of Housing and Urban Development's Urban
Empowerment Zones concept has been applied in the District to give major
Federal tax breaks to employers operating in zones where there is a high
level of poverty. However, the poverty-level is determined by census-tract
zone boundaries, which are quite artificial and have very little to do with
the actual boundaries of neighborhoods and which thus grossly misclassify
some businesses. One side of a street might lie in a "poverty zone" and thus
qualify for the tax-breaks, yet the other side of the street might be in
worse condition, but be in a census tract which contains enough high-income
persons to disallow the grant of the tax-breaks. Delegate Norton seeks a
global inclusion of the entire District of Columbia into a tax-reduction
empowerment-zone. With some reservations, we concur, and also concur with
her proposal that as District denizens are not blessed with full
Congressional representation, at the very least they should have their tax
schedules readjusted from the standard IRS schedules, to a 15-percent
Federal flat-tax on all income.
In the City of Washington DC, after the long years of the entrenched
Barry-Cronies(tm) administration, where positions were quite-often awarded
at the behest of Mayor Marion Barry and underlings served at the pleasure of
these appointees, with absolutely minimal personnel legislation either
protecting the worker or ensuring their performance, it was not uncommon to
discover upon close examination that entire departments were essentially an
extension to adults of Barry's famous (or infamous) Summer Jobs for
Disadvantaged Youth programs.
In City of Washington local politics, the fastest and best way to get and
keep votes, which Marion Barry did with consummate grace if not the best of
sense, is to award jobs. If jobs cannot be awarded directly, the next-best
thing is to assure District voters that District jobs are reserved
exclusively to District residents.
This is exactly what has been proposed by DC Council Member Kevin P.
Chavous, who says (according to, as always, the Washington Post), I think
it's appropriate that, as part of this reform, we express our
sovereignity..." as the excuse for inserting a residency requirement into
the sweeping new personnel-reform legislation now pending. Thus continues
the always strident and often-acrimonous debate regarding Home Rule for the
District, and the potential for Statehood of the District of Columbia.
Notwithstanding the fact that, since, according to the US Constitution,
"Section 8 The Congress shall have Power .... (17)To exercise exclusive
Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten
Miles square) as may, by Cession of particular States, and the Acceptance of
Congress, become the Seat of the Government of the United States", the
District by definition in no case whatsoever has Sovereignity, nor may it,
without a Constitutional Amendment.
Congress is in a generally foul mood over the District of Columbia, and not
surprisingly so. After essentially getting locked out of work some two years
ago by the Barry-Cronies(tm) administration's complete inability to get the
streets cleared of snow, Congress has taken a rather dim view of allowing the
City that houses the Federal Government to be pretentious. Time and time
again, Congress has made it clear (and in our humble opinion should continue
to resoundingly so do) that any pretensions to sovereignity in the District
should be greeted with the sound of a very large flyswatter.
With few naysayers in the DC Council, the rider was added to the personnel
reform bill. One can only ask, "what were they thinking?" - Congressional
sources have made it quite clear that rather than passing the much-needed
personnel reform bill and accepting this rider as a concession, they will
view the rider as a "poison-pill" and will scrap the entire package. This is
clearly an act of presumption, megalomania and insanity on the part of the
DC Council. Control Board Chairman Brimmer believes that after the bill
leaves the DC Council to be reviewed by the Control Board, the Board could
then pass on the rest of the bill after striking the residency provision.
According to the Chairman of the House Oversight subcommittee on the
District, Rep. Thomas M. Davis (a Virginia Republican): "You can always tell
wen it's an election year in DC... The city ought to be worried about giving
people the best quality employees they can at the best price and delivering
the best services instead of trying to make the city a job corps, which is
what this seems to be doing." The subcommittee's James P. Moran Jr (a
Virginia Democrat) said "What they ought to be doing is passing a resolution
that they hire the most-qualified people." At the present time, one of those
qualifications should be something resembling common sense, which would
obviously be lacking in anyone who moved to the District exclusively to get
a job with the District Government. If there are already qualified residents
who are interested in City governmnet positions, why haven't they been
hired? Maybe because they don't want a thankless job with the potential of
an instant return to the former days of the Barry-Cronies(tm) administration
should Barry be re-elected, and the Control Board step down. Under a
residency requirement, in such a situation, anyone moving to town could
suddenly find themselves jobless in a grossly-overpriced city where
real-estate is very much a buyer's market. And the only people who would
speculate enough to move into town in the face of such a possiblity would be
obviously Carpetbaggers.
Meanwhile, in the other Chamber of Congress, Senator Lauch Faircloth -
derided by many as the main bugbear of DC Statehood hopes, and cheered by
many more as the man who may save the city from the Rapist of Democracy (an
allusion to a speech by Barry decrying his loss of ability to further wreck
the city as a "rape of democracy") - appears to be gearing up for a
Bye-Bye-Barry push that could reduce the office of the mayor to a status
even closer to the level of mere cheerleader and powerless figurehead. This
may be somewhat hasty, as there is a possibility that Marion Barry may not
be re-elected to office in the upcoming mayoral elections. However, right
now, Barry is effectively in charge of the appointment of a new Chief of
Police for the District. Under District law, Barry has the right to make a
selection (or to fail to do so, or stall forever) for Chief, which selection
must be approved by the DC Council and Control Board. Also, once hired,
although the new chief cannot be fired by Barry, s/he would report to Barry
and the MOU, or the "memorandum of understanding partners", which includes
not only Barry but also a group of law-enforcement professionals and city
officials. This, taken along with other recent Barry efforts to gain control
over the appointment of a city Inspector General, demonstrates a propensity
of Barry, who might well be the target or a bystanding-casualty of any new
police investigations into corruption within the police department or the
wider city government, to "put the fox to guard at the henhouse." There is
little doubt in the mind of any serious student of recent District history,
in particular the history of local governance, that a web of cronyism if not
outright corruption extends throughout the entire city political system
captained nearly uninterruptedly by Barry for the last two decades.
Senator Faircloth, of the Senate Appropriations Subommittee for the District
and a major player in the District Revitalization effort, reportedly
believes that many of the best applicants for the position of Chief of
Police have been discouraged by the prospect of reporting to Barry. Senator
Faircloth is considering having all agency heads report, not to Barry, but
to the new Chief Financial Officer, Camille Cates Barnett PhD. In any case,
time alone will tell what the City of Washington itself would choose; the
elections are not far away. My own presumption is that the city will again
vote for Mayor Marion Barry, expecting that when the Control Board disbands
after four successive successful budgets, Marion Barry will again take the
helm of the District's ship-of-state, and again the denizens of the District
will party on into the long long night as we see the resurrection of the
Barry-Cronies(tm) Crew, once more to drunkenly binge-pilot the ship-of-state
directly towards the reefs that none profess to see, but which all know lie
there in the murky waters of political self-determination.
10 March 1998
It's perhaps more emblematic of America than of Washington, or at least it's
perhaps more to blame - Washington despite any other problems does largely
remain eager to give America what it wants. And if America prefers style of
substance, or appearance more than health, one cannot lay the entirety of
the blame on the vendor who gives the customer what they want.
So we have seen Washington divide into two cities. The Federal Enclave, the
facade, the alabaster city gleams with the constant expenditure of Federal
funds, and indeed there are few sights more inspiring than that of the
Capitol building looming atop the Hill, surrounded by the various executive
office buildings, backdropped by the Library of Congress and the Supreme
Court. Over all presides the Washington Monument, the shadow of which daily
sundials across the Rose Garden at the White House. The Mall is maintained
scrupulously, and any American can puff with deserved pride to see how the
icons of our way of life and our emblems of freedom glow amid a
cherryblossom-clad new spring.
And then there is the real city of Washington. The vendor of the image, the
gatekeeper at the themepark, the management of this city can indeed himself
puff with a bit of pride, for after all he's done a fine job of helping keep
the customer happy, of keeping them in the public areas of the theme park,
and what matter that should the customer stray from the public areas they
might be confounded and dismayed to see that behind the facade, all is not
so pretty as one would hope. For those who have been curious, who refuse to
"pay no attention to the man behind the curtain", a visit to Oz could
quickly go from shocking revelation to a sort of quiet terror when one took
the wrong turn on the leg of the tour leading to the Washingotn Navy
Yards.
Washington DC is built on the confluence of two rivers. At one time, the
Potomac river was so polluted that visitors to the Great Falls section of
the Chesapeake and Ohio (C&O) Canal National Historic Park were advised that
it was dangerous to go near the water, not simply because of the awesome
flow of some tens of billions of gallons of water through a narrow defile,
but also because of the tiny things that lived in the murky frothing soup.
But three decades of environmental regulation and accelerated remediation
have combined to restore the Potomac and most of its feeder streams to the
point where one may safely eat the fish caught off of Haines' Point
downtown, and the rowing-crews no longer risk hepatitus with each splash of
the oar.
The Anacostia River, Washington's "other" river, has not been so fortunate.
At one time it was so polluted that it, like the infamous Cuyahoga River in
Ohio, was occasionally at risk of catching fire. The lovely Botanical
Gardens were at one time a feast only for the eyes, as a wind blowing from
the Anacostia could be almost guaranteed to either make your sinuses clog or
to make you wish they had. The Anacostia has been cleaned up to the point
where you can no longer walk from one shore to the other atop a pile of
festering sludge, but it is not exactly a healthy river. This is sad, as the
Northwest Branch of the Anacostia starts as spring-fed runoff watershed
running through scrupulously-maintained parklands and private pasturages in
upper Montgomery County Maryland, and in some parks remains a haven for
trout. By the time it has reached the District, however, it has passed
through some fairly industrial territory.
The territory bordering the Anacostia River, therefor, has not for some time
been though of as desirable nor even healthy. Southeast Washington, in fact,
has for years been considered one of Washington's main hazards. In deepest
Southeast, one sees some lovely rolling hills and a great deal of urban
forest, but when the wind blew east across the Anacostia in recent years, it
carried with it assorted vapors and fumes that were not exactly conducive to
health. This may be one reason why the cancer rate for people living across
the Anacostia from downtown suffer death from certain cancers at something
like 11 times the national average.
On the downtown side of Anacostia, between Pennsylvania Avenue SE and the
river itself, there was, in 1990, nothing much but either industrial
wastelands in dire need of bulldozing, or equally blighted public housing,
much of it abandoned or inhabited only by the most desperate of the homeless
or serious junkies. If one left the Capitol ground eastbound on Pennsylvania
Avenue, and took a right on 6th Street SE, one passed by a number of forlorn
and abandoned dead housing buildings, crossed under the Southeast Freeway
(I-295) and suddenly one was smack in the middle of a genuine Hell. The
Carrolsburg Public Housing Project was possibly the single most-emblematic
edifice ever raised to the failed legacy of Johnson's Great Society.
Abandoned cars took up more parking on the street than did workable ones.
Nearby, a solid-waste transfer station piled up into a veritable mountain of
filth locally known as Mount Trashmore. Noplace in town is more emblematic
of the decay that is Washington-behind-the-facade than is "downtown
Southeast".
But it needn't be this way. And in fact, change is afoot. Mayor Marion Barry
has reiterated already-circulating proposals to develop "downtown
Washington", generally defined as the area a few blocks to the north of
Pennsylvania Avenue NW from roughly the White House (16th and Pennsylvania)
to the environs of the Capitol Building ("0" and Pennsylvania). Extending
north to roughly Chinatown (itself centered around 8th and H Streets NW),
this is the site of the new and highly-acclaimed MCI Center. This is largely
a business district, and largely a failed one at that. When the Federal
workers go home at night, this is a ghost town. There are few residents
outside of the wandering homeless, and even those trend towards the Mall,
finding this area just a bit too much like a set in some "after the plague"
science-fiction movie, left with all buildings standing but utterly
abandoned. There's simply no money walking around out on the street. A
downtown without residents is a downtown where the shopkeepers, especially
retailers, simply close up shop when the sidewalks roll up after the Federal
workers all return home to the suburbs.
Yet there are few sites available to house residents, due to a former
extreme-emphasis placed on attracting businesses, generally non-retail,
downtown. There are some plans afoot to convert former office buildings into
residential spaces, such as condominiums or luxury apartments. These
facilities will be, however, largely outside the reach of any but the
highest-income of Washington area residents, who by and large have been
flocking to the suburbs to ensure adequate services and safety and decent
educations for their families.
What's needed in Washington is affordable, but not publicly-subsidized,
housing, within easy reach of Downtown.
While residential housing may be very difficult to provide, due to space
limitations, in "downtown Northwest", in "downtown Southeast" we see an
entirely different situation.
A new vision for the Monumental Core was proposed last year. It may be
quickly summarized thus: where the Monumental Core now appears on a map as a
large east-west swath of greenspace (the Mall) edged-in by various buildings such as
the White House, Capitol Building and the various National Museums and
suchlike, the new and modernized Future Core will have an additional
north-south axis of building-edged greenspace, running along South Capitol
Street. It will probably extend to roughly 2nd streets SW and SE and down to
Buzzard Point. In the map below, (courtesy of Yahoo),
the leftmost blue swath is the Potomac River, the rightmost is the Anacostia
River, and between the two is the Washington Channel, home of the Washington
Marina. The green area between is Haines' Point, a popular recreational
parklands area, and Buzzard Point is the southmost point between the
Washington Channel and the Anacostia River. The SouthEast Office Center
lies between the red "plus" and the Anacostia, bounded east to "M" and 6th
Streets SW, where it becomes the Washington Navy Yard extending roughly to
10th Street SW (extended) bridges across the Anacostia.
In March 1997, the Environmental Protection Agency ordered the Washington
Navy Yard to begin a cleanup of its facilities. The Navy Yard has begun to
comply. This should make the Anacostia smell a little better, especially as
the EPA begins to enforce much-greater compliance in the upstream watersheds
of the Anacostia.
The sad and forlorn abandoned and infested housing projects along 6th Street
SE between G Street and the Southeast Freeway have been razed to the ground,
and townhouse construction is now underway, under the auspices of David I.
Gilmore, the court-appointed reciever for the once-decrepit Department of
Public Housing. Mr. Gilmore may turn out to be one of the most influential
people in recent Washington history. He has presided over the deconstruction
and reconstruction of many of Washington's worst public housing, including
the above-mentioned ticking time-bomb Welfare Culture Enclave of the
Carrolsburg Projects. These are presently the center of a high-priority
renovation effort. They are, it should be added, a mere block away from the
Washington Navy Yard. The Navy has
269 Projects for $185 Million
Personnel, Contracting, Technology, Assets-Management Top List
Court Strikes Down School-Trustee Board
Some District Schools History and Status Reporting
In the first legal setback to DCFRA Control
Board authority, the US Court
of Appeals for the DC Circuit decided that the Control Board had
exceeded its authority when it appointed a Board of Trustees to oversee the
District's troubled schools and fired, without stating a cause,
Schools Superintendent Franklin L. Smith.
Washington's Medical Exmainer's Office has gone through more changes in the
last week.
Control Board, Reforms Credited
From Staggering Deficit to Slight Surplus
Improved collections procedures and tax monitoring have combined with a
robust economy, dramatically-increased tourism, and an increase in the
population of young urban professionals, to leave the District government
with a surplus of some tens of millions of dollars.
Obvious Solution to District's InfoSystem Woes Pointedly Ignored
Barry Stumping For Continuance in Office
Judging by His Reception Washington Voters Are Clearly Quite
Mad
A report issued by consultants to the DCFRA
Control Board indicates that the University of the District of Columbia
should be retained as a four-year university, complete with graduate
programs.
Stay tuned for up-to-the-minute tracking reports.
Few Major Developments Locally
Implimentation Phase Set to Begin
Personnel Reforms Enacted
Armed with a bare-bones staff of nine former employees of the DCFRA Control Board (the oversight agency
empowered by Congress and selected by President William J. Clinton), the new
City Manager of the City of Washington, Camille Cates Barnett Ph.D., has
embarked upon a career of surveying the field, presumably preparatory to a
career of taking names and then kicking some fat behinds out of their
overstuffed and undeserved chairs.
He's amazing. He could probably be the single perfect competitor against the
incumbent-for-life Mayor Marion Barry. Probably no single individual has
done more to Revitalize the district of Columbia, but his job is not yet
complete. He was practically drafted for the Mayoral race, but he knows that
he can best serve where he is, completing the job that he's started so very
well.
This has been an exceptionally slow newsweek regarding Washington DC
internal politics, aside from a fairly vociferous debate over the recent shake-up in the Metropolitan Police
Department, wherein Acting Chief Sonya T. Proctor dismissed three
25-year veteran District Commanders. This has not in any way been a slow
news-week in Washington itself, which has of course been quite abuzz with
fallout from the Monica Lewinski Affair, and also quite steadily preparing
for the likely showdown in Iraq.
Regional Demographics Changing
Social and Economic Conditions Forge Strange Attractors From
Chaos
Slightly more than two years ago, nearly three feet of snow in consecutive
falls literally paralyzed the City of Washington. While the suburbs had
largely struggled free within two days, Washington itself, no stranger to
snow, still remained largely unplowed until the "February thaw"... and still
that thaw left most of the residential streets of the District merely buried
in slush and ice.
Financial Status Improving By Leaps And Bounds
Caution is urged, we're not out of the woods yet
Washington's financial future looks a little brighter. After this year's
record $185.9 million surplus (largely the result of a one-time Federal
payment under the District Revitalization Act), Moody's Investors Service
has moved the District's city bond issues to the highest rating of
junk-bond. However, it is not yet time to raise a cheer nor to tout the
District as financially sound. Among other things, a statement from Moody's
Assistant Vice President Kathleen Holt indicated that it would not raise the
bond rating further until they can see how much input elected officials have
in the city's financial administration and budget planning. Once the DCFRA Control Board's term expires, elected
officials will have no checks nor balances against a return to the
decadently wasteful practices which allowed the District to slide into total
insolvency requiring a Federal bail-out and effective occupation. Moody's,
and other investors in the District, evidently presume that if these elected
officials can provide the majority of input and decision-making in budgeting
processes now, it might be safely assumed that similar practices would be
followed once the Control Board steps down.
Anyone would agree that the District of Columbia is in dire need of
Revitalization. Long years of mismanagement, in some cases a sort of benign
neglect, has led to a division of the city into two zones, best classified
under architectural terminology: the edifice or corpus, and the facade.