ABCDE METRO sunday, december 19, 2010 LOCALOPINIONS 28, 9 a.m. 33, noon 35, 5 p.m. 31, 9 p.m.
Obituaries Don Van Vliet, 69, performed avant-garde rock-and-roll starting in the 1960s under the name Captain Beefheart. C7
Dr. Gridlock brings you the latest on delays, construction and policies affecting your roads and rail. Get help getting around from his blog.
PostLocal.com
Medical-marijuana legalization. Same-sex marriage. Needle-exchange programs to combat HIV. These are progressive civic choices that Washington has made. But no step forward comes without concern that Congress could step in and push the city onto a path backward.
Seeing stars The Arlington Planetarium, facing a funding crisis, is integral to engaging young people with the limitless choices of a career in science. C5
VIRGINIA
Image booster The Alexandria school system is using a communications consultant to help it develop a “community outreach strategy” for securing private donations and other forms of support. C6
Mortgage fraud case in Va. might expand
REALTY FIRM’S DEALS PROBED
Employees cooperating with authorities
BY TOM JACKMAN The federal investigation into
a massive mortgage fraud scheme that ropedinhundreds of Washington area residents — in- cluding dozens of Fairfax County school employees — has escalat- edwith the arrest of a top official at aWoodbridge real estate com- pany and the sentencing of two of the company’s employees on Fri- day. Another of the company’s top
officials is cooperating with in- vestigators and has worn a wire to the home of a former col- league. The cooperation might
open the door into a wider feder- al probe of banks, developers and perhaps politicians allegedly in- volved in the type of mortgage fraud that led to the nationwide collapse of the real estatemarket. TheWoodbridge company, To-
tal Realty Management, was formed in the mid-2000s by real estate agents Mark Dain and Mark Jalajel. The company mar- keted vacant pieces of land in the Carolinas as investment proper- ties to be bought with no money down and no payments for two years. Buyers said Dain and Jalajel
told them that the properties could be flipped quickly for easy profit and that the modest sala- ries of a schoolteacher or a delica- tessen worker, who were already paying a home mortgage, were not a problem. But the buyers, and nowfeder-
al authorities, say that TRM was fraud continued on C4
WilliamNeville, left, and Daniel Rehbehn are pushing up their nuptials before the next Congress has a chance to interfere inD.C.’s marriage law.
PHOTOS BY JUANA ARIAS FOR THE WASHINGTON POST
Travel sites lobby hard over D.C. bill
BY TIM CRAIG The nationwide fight over
whether online travel services pay their fair share in taxes has landed in the District, pitting Web sites such as
Expedia.com and
Orbitz.com against local ho- tels and a majority of D.C. Coun- cilmembers. On Tuesday, the council is
Amore conservative Congress could object to medical marijuana forWashingtonians such as this HIV-positive patient.
Ravenia Boyd-Gordon had to rethink educational plans for son Jermel and daughter Ramella when the Obama administration rescindedD.C. vouchers to help pay for private-school tuition.
For D.C. residents, is there an up-Hill battle on the horizon?
In SoutheastWashington, single mother BY ANN E. MARIMOW The ColumbiaHeights couple planned to
spend the holidays mulling over seating assignments and experimentingwith apple pie recipes for the 80 guests invited to their spring wedding. Instead, William Neville and Daniel Rehbehn will head to the courthouse in the next fewdays to file their marriage papers, concerned that the newly elected Congress could undo the District’s recent lawthat allows gay couples tomarry. “While part of me wants to take a
principled stand and not change any plans, it’s not something I want to risk our marriage on,” said Neville, who will still hold a separate spring wedding with his partner. “Theremay be a limited window.”
Ravenia Boyd-Gordon was elated when her two children were awarded scholarships last year to help pay for private-school tuition. But the D.C. vouchers were quickly rescinded by the Obama administration because of uncertainty over funding from Congress. “I was in a jam,” Boyd-Gordon said.
“When you have children, you have to plan ahead. It set me back at least a year in planning a direction for their education.” Congressional oversight and budget con-
trol of the District means that the rules governing life in the federal city can change with the whims of Capitol Hill lawmakers. For gay couples, parents relying on private school vouchers, prospective medical-mar- ijuana patients and those trying to stemthe
spread ofHIVandAIDSwith clean needles, nothing is ever settled, it seems. With a new,more conservative Congress
taking control next month, many in the District fear a rollback of new city laws, including same-sex marriage and legalized medical marijuana. Although local issues are not necessarily on the priority list of incoming congressional leaders, District policies will be when the Republican-con- trolled House reviews annual funding for the city in the spring. Robert J. Kabel, chairman of the D.C.
Republican Party, said he expects some push-back fromGOP newcomers. “D.C. should be left to run its own house,”
said Kabel, who last year urged congressio- social continued on C4
Metro board changes augur well for transit system in new year
is leaving himor her a Christmas present in the formof amini-rev- olution on the transit system’s board of directors. The Metro board’s longest
W
serving member, Arlington County Board Vice Chairman Chris Zimmerman (D), an- nounced unexpectedly Thursday that he is resigning from the Metro position at this year’s end. Inaddition, theboard’s second
longest serving member, D.C. Councilmember JimGraham(D-
e don’t know yet who will beMetro’s next gen- eral manager, but Santa
ROBERTMCCARTNEY
Ward 1), is virtually certain to be ousted from his seat by the in- coming D.C. Council chairman, KwameR. Brown (D). Grahamis probably theMetro
board’s best-known member. Wearing his trademark bow tie and oversize eyeglasses, he was
constantly in the news in 2009 when he served as Metro board chairman at the time of the Red Line crash that killed nine and jolted the region out of its com- placency about Metro’s prob- lems. The twindepartures represent
a significant andwelcome shake- up in Metro’s leadership. Al- though both men have been hardworkingandknowledgeable advocates for the system for more than a decade, their time has passed. Metro needs fresh oversight, especially as the board prepares
to pick a new, permanent general manager in early 2011. It needs directors eager to embrace new approachesnecessary tofixprob- lems that have been building for years, especially to improve safe- ty andmaintenance. Graham and Zimmerman are
not the right fit for those tasks. They were two of the board’s most engaged and influential members during the years when Metro failed to build a safety culture and allowed mainte- nance to erode.
mccartney continued on C6
scheduled to take a final vote on a bill that would require online vendors to pay the District’s hotel tax on the full price cus- tomers pay for hotel or motel rooms in the city. The vote comes on the heels of efforts across the country, often unsuccessfully, to get online travel vendors to pay. Council members said that
online travel sites charge con- sumers the city’s 14.5 percent tax
based on the final selling price of the room. But city officials say Web-based companies are remit- ting back to the District the tax collected only on wholesale pric- es, not retail. The online sites keep the
difference and call it an “admin- istrative fee,” according to coun- cil member Michael A. Brown (I-At Large), the chief sponsor of the legislation. “If you buy a room online for
$100, but it only costs them $90, they charge the tax on $100 but keep the [tax] on the $10 differ- ence,” said Brown, who intro- duced the legislation at the re- quest of local hotel executives. “They charge the full tax, but keep a portion meant for the District.”
travel continued on C6
Will Webb run again? Anticipation building.
BY BEN PERSHING James Webb often points out
justhowmany jobshe’shadin his 64 years — soldier and Navy secretary, lawyer andHill staffer, journalist and novelist, among others. The question now worry- ing Democrats is just how much longer Webb wants to remain Virginia’s seniorU.S. senator. Webb’s decision on whether to
run for a second term in 2012 could have a big impact on whether Democrats are able to hold his seatandeven control the Senate, as the party braces for a bruising election cycle in which Democrats will have to defend more than twice as many seats as
Republicans. On the Republican side, for-
mersenatorGeorge Allen is mull- ing over a bid, as are a fewothers. And Democrats are praying that Webb will run, knowing their bench of viable statewide candi- dates is thin. Both parties are eager to hear Webb’s decision, and they won’t have to wait long. “I’m going to be sitting down
with my family through this break,” Webb said in a recent interview in his Senate office. “We’re going to sort this out fairly soon. . . .We’re looking to make a decision during the first quarter [of 2011], if I don’t run, out of
webb continued on C4 What do you call cats like that? C EZ SU
ASTRID RIECKEN FOR THE WASHINGTON POST
Lion cubs play in their den as theNational Zoo reveals its seven cubs’ names, determined by a contest, lion keepers and others. Story, C6.
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