ABCDE METRO thursday, july 8, 2010 POSTLOCAL.COM 84, 9 a.m. 92, noon 90, 5 p.m. 84, 9 p.m.


Obituaries Economist Juanita M. Kreps, 89, was named by President Carter to be the first female commerce secretary. B7


Senator’s disclosure forms not accurate


Md. legislator has history of financial reporting lapses


by Jonathan Mummolo Maryland State Sen. David C.


Harrington has repeatedly pro- vided false or incomplete infor- mation on government financial disclosure forms dating from his time on the Prince George’s Coun- ty Council in 2005, including fail- ing to disclose that his wife was a lobbyist for a firm that did busi- ness with the government, a re- view of state and county records shows. The forms, signed under oath and penalty of perjury, are man- dated to provide transparency about the financial interests of lawmakers and guard against im- proper influence. According to a review by The Washington Post, Harrington has not gone a year without omitting information or submitting an inaccuracy on a disclosure form since 2005 — the earliest year available on record — whether it pertained to his prop- erty holdings, his debts or his wife’s employment. The findings come as Harring- ton is being challenged for his seat in Annapolis by Del. Victor R. Ramirez (D-Prince George’s) in the September Democratic pri- mary. Harrington, a former Coun- ty Council chairman, was ap- pointed to the position in 2008 to replace the late Sen. Gwendolyn T. Britt.


On county disclosure forms for the 2005 and 2006 reporting pe- riods, Harrington (D-Prince George’s) checked “no” in re- sponse to a line asking whether he or his spouse worked for a com- pany that did business with the county. However, according to state records, his wife, Cheryl Harrington, was registered with the state as a lobbyist for G.S. Proctor and Associates beginning in late 2005 and into 2006, and the firm’s clients included the Prince George’s County Council and the county Board of Educa- tion during that same period. Reached for comment on the questionnaire Tuesday, David Harrington said, “I thought I did check ‘yes,’ ” to the question re- garding his wife’s employment. He declined to answer additional questions over the phone and asked that they be e-mailed. In e-mailed responses, he said


that his wife did no lobbying be- fore the County Council and that his wife did not work for the lob- bying firm when he filled out the 2005 form. He said he checked “no” in 2006, “because my wife had no dealings with nor did she lobby the County Council.” How- ever, the line on the form asked whether his wife worked for a company that did business with the county, not whether she con-


harrington continued on B5


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LOCAL LIVING


Your community Find your Local Living section inside today’s Post, with school and government news, volunteer and calendar listings, home sales and crime reports — and where to board your pets.


B DC MD VA S


JOHN KELLY’S WASHINGTON


Fur and feathers fly Some bird lovers and some cat lovers can get pretty emotional when discussing the damage that house cats can do when free to prey on the avian population. B2


In Md., anger about


by Carol Morello Any day, Roberta Jernigan


kept telling herself this spring, the census form will come in the mail.


PHOTOS BY MICHAEL S. WILLIAMSON/THE WASHINGTON POST James Russell, who lived under a bridge, organized the league. But after its first day, he vanished with more than $1,000, league members say.


The court of vanished dreams


After man disappears with money for D.C. basketball league, another fights to save it by William Wan


J


ames Russell had an idea so big and beautiful, he would talk for a good half-hour, if you let him, about his goal of creating a basketball league run by the homeless to keep teen- agers out of trouble. Homeless himself, living under


a bridge in Northeast Washing- ton, Russell said he thought it would symbolize the notion that even those living on the streets had something to contribute. He enlisted others to help him and then persuaded dozens of young players to pony up a $50 fee for uniforms and professional referees. Then, after the first day of the league, and having collected more than $1,000 in fees, Russell vanished last month. “There was a lot of anger,” said


Wade Simmons, 39, who met Russell when they were living on the streets and eating at the same soup kitchens. “A lot of people went out looking for this guy.” Simmons had agreed to coach the teenagers on one of the league’s teams, a decision that gradually gave Simmons, a recov- ering addict and convicted felon, two things he never thought he’d experience again: respect and re- sponsibility. In the short month he practiced with his team, Sim-


Simmons, the other coaches and the young players were furious. They waited for him to turn up


at the basketball court off Florida Avenue and First Street NW. Some tried to think up excuses for him. Maybe he was buying them uniforms. Maybe he was making arrangements for the tro- phy and the trip to Atlanta he had promised for the winning team. But two weeks later, all that


K.C. West, center, fights for the ball in a game at Florida Avenue and First Street NW. The league has carried on, but with no money for referees or uniforms and their trust breached, some players have left.


“He said he was doing this for us, to teach us stuff and get better. But, you know, only thing I learned is


that you can’t trust nobody.” — Caleb Swann, 19


mons cleaned himself up, started working again as an independent energy consultant and rented an apartment. He wanted to help the teens on


his team so they wouldn’t turn to drugs and crime to cope with dis- appointment in life, as he did. So when Russell disappeared along with the teenagers’ money,


was left was anger — at Russell for running, at themselves for trusting him and believing in the league. Many of the 60 or so players, mostly ages 16 to 25, come from poor families in this largely black neighborhood. They had paid Russell with money scraped to- gether from part-time jobs or from parents who couldn’t afford to waste money on their chil- dren’s hoop dreams but did it anyway. Russell himself had talked about the players in an interview with The Washington Post before he disappeared. “It’s a tough life for them.


They’re facing drugs, gangs, vio- lence. They need some hope in their lives,” he said, sitting on his beat-up mattress beneath a New York Avenue overpass last month. He said he became homeless after someone stole his money


league continued on B10


When it didn’t, she expected a census worker to come to the 300-unit apartment building where she lives in College Park to count the residents in person. And now, with the decennial head count almost over, Jerni- gan’s apartment still hasn’t been contacted by the census. Although the Census Bureau


says it should reach everyone in the Westchester Park complex during a mop-up phase, Jernigan is miffed at being overlooked. “I kept saying, ‘What is going


on?’ ” Jernigan said, adding that she called a toll-free number weeks ago and was told a census questionnaire would be mailed to her. It wasn’t. “We want to be counted. It’s our civic duty.” It is unclear why the West- chester Park apartments and a small condominium complex nearby were initially missed. Al- though the bulk of this year’s work is over, it will continue un- til early September in an effort to minimize undercounts and over- counts. People whose addresses don’t match a master list will be called. Vacant homes will be checked. And omissions such as the Westchester Park residences, when discovered, will be count- ed. “We’re going to check, double- check and triple-check,” Census Director Robert M. Groves said Wednesday in an update on op- erations. “The whole purpose is to make sure we’ve gotten it right.”


Since May 1, census takers


have knocked on the doors of more than 47 million homes, vir- tually all the addresses for which nobody returned a form. They found 14.3 million vacant resi- dences, up from 9.9million in the 2000 Census — a reflection of the heavy toll the recession and foreclosures have taken on the nation. As the census winds down, more than three-quarters of the 635,000 temporary workers hired for it have been dismissed. The remaining 125,000 will be checking the work that has been done.


One of the remaining tasks is to re-interview about 5 percent of the households that each cen- sus taker visited, to confirm the


census continued on B4


Contradictions in style helping to shape D.C. mayoral race


A


s Mayor Adrian Fenty struggles to win back voters’ affection, one of his


biggest problems is his refusal in office to honor some of the old rules of D.C. politics. By contrast, D.C. Council


Chairman Vince Gray has built a lead in his bid to unseat Fenty partly because he embraces those traditions of consultation and outreach. Now Fenty is trying to counter Gray’s advantage by charging that he’d take the city backward. These contradictions are


shaping the campaign as it intensifies, with just under 10 weeks until the critical Democratic primary Sept. 14. Ideally, Fenty should show he can shed the aloof, dismissive style that’s surprised and alienated voters. Because there’s not enough time to overcome a reputation that’s three years in the making, he needs at least to convince people that they shouldn’t care about his attitude as long as the schools improve and the wait isn’t too long to renew a driver’s license.


ROBERT McCARTNEY For his part, the ever-collegial


Gray needs to fend off charges that he would bring back the fiscal mismanagement, poor city services and other blights that characterized the administration of former mayor Sharon Pratt in which he served in the early 1990s. Gray is ahead for now, according to analysts in both


mccartney continued on B6 Gray clearing up 2002 traffic ticket


Campaign discovered unpaid Md. citation, spokeswoman says


by Mike DeBonis and Michael Laris


A traffic ticket issued to D.C. Council Chairman Vincent C. Gray in 2002 went unpaid for more than seven years, court rec- ords indicate, and he sought to address the matter weeks after launching his mayoral campaign. The ticket was issued by a Maryland state trooper shortly


after 11 a.m. Dec. 29, 2002 — a Sunday — on the inner loop of the Capital Beltway south of Ardwick Ardmore Road, not far from Fed- Ex Field.


Campaign spokeswoman Traci


Hughes said Gray was on his way to a Washington Redskins game when he attempted to get around a traffic jam by driving on the right shoulder. Gray was among several drivers stopped and cited for the maneuver, she said. The Washington Post could not con- firm Wednesday whether other motorists had been stopped. At the time of the citation, Gray was not in public office but was serving as executive director of


Covenant House Washington, a nonprofit organization serving homeless youths. In 2004, he won a council seat representing Ward 7 as a Democrat. Two years later, he was elected council chairman. The ticket remained active through both elections. “He thought he had paid the ticket,” Hughes said Wednesday, adding that Gray takes “full responsibili- ty” for the offense. The outstand- ing citation was discovered in the course of “due diligence” research for his campaign, she said. Gray was ordered to appear in a Prince George’s County court


gray continued on B6


census SOME REMAIN UNCOUNTED


Director promises to ‘triple-check’


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