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Sharing lunch, and a fabulous view
MIKE DEBONIS
Late-owl Gray slammed for streetcar flip-flop
bound. Loves hearings so much he holds ’em on Saturdays. Huddles each night in his wood-paneled corner office, alone but for a stack of briefing books and a tank of midnight oil. It’s all great imagery for his campaign against
T
Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D), not especially known for his studiousness. Alas, it was one of those late nights that got the D.C. Council chairman in trouble last week. In budget language finalized in the small hours
last Wednesday, Gray highlighted for a swath of voters — well-off, mostly white, and inclined to vote — every doubt they ever had about him. That he’s not forward-thinking. That he’s an old-school, backroom operator. That his commitment to good government is mere lip service.
Back talk
“The voters Gray lost in this episode were peo- ple who knew he was right when he pulled the plug on the streetcar funding but who lost any faith in his ability to lead when he reversed posi- tion based on the reac- tion of a telephonic flash mob.” — Reader smithemb in response to this column, posted Thursday on
washingtonpost.com
At 2:27 that morning, a
Gray staffer e-mailed the final draft of the city’s 2011 budget that was to be voted on by noon that day. A few hours later, as caterers prepared made-to-order waffles for legislators’ traditional pre-meeting breakfast, an active and increasingly powerful
group of District voters got the bad news. David Alpert, who runs the blog Greater Greater
TRACY A WOODWARD/THE WASHINGTON POST
Larice Frederick of Boston and Pete “PJ” Hamilton of the District have lunch together on a sunny Thursday afternoon at the Washington Sailing Marina, south of Reagan National Airport. Friday’s forecast calls for intermittent clouds and a high of about 90 degrees, with thunderstorms possible throughout the day and evening. Saturday should be much the same, but a bit cooler.
We want your pictures! Got photos of a summer sunset over the Potomac? How about your favorite bag? Send in all those, and more, to our user photo galleries at
http://bit.ly/aWHVAf
Conversations
An article about a plan to create a day-labor center in Centreville was one of the top drivers of discussion on
washingtonpost.com Thursday, with readers taking various sides on the immigration debate.
Here are some excerpts:
Back-and-forth on Va. day-labor center
NorthernVirginia: “This is simply yet another in- sidious ploy to try to legitimize illegal aliens. Those illegal aliens lied and cheated to get into this coun- try, and they lie, cheat, and steal while they remain in this country. Quite obviously, their presence flouts our laws and is intolerable for the majority of Americans.”
shamken: “This is too funny. Some of the people who helped developers bring up Centreville are now the enemy.”
asmith1: “Democrats AND Republicans BOTH
support discrimination against American workers by offering illegal aliens preferential treatment through their omission. There are political rewards for looking the other way — and some in both par- ties can be bought.”
KBlit:“And you wonder why people are upset with illegal enforcement. This is a joke! Right?”
sarc04: “Instead of keeping tabs on Juan and
Maria, let’s keep tabs on the Johns and Marys that hire the illegals. They’re lawbreakers too!”
kchenx: “If your concern is that some of the day laborers are gang members, my question to you is why wouldn’t you want an organized day-laborer site? The alternative would be huddled masses in front of Seven11s and other common pickup sites where workers swarm drivers that pull up.”
Today on
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“
Q&A
There’s been a recurring theme these past few weeks of people wanting to drink in places they aren’t technically allowed to drink. Should we be worried?
— Going Out Guru David Malitz in
Thursday’s online chat with Post readers (after one suggested sneaking wine into the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden)
Reporter Paul Duggan took readers’ questions online about his two-part investigation into the March 30 shootings in Southeast D.C. that killed three people.
Why so violent?
Q:Why do you think the youth of today have become so violent? A: Your question is an age-old one, and I sure
don’t know the answer. I guess it’s a confluence of a hundred things, all of them bad, in terms of environment, upbringing, influences, and on and on. Throughout the reporting of this, I couldn’t help thinking: Every one of these guys, years back, was a harmless infant, an innocent blank slate. Q: The amazing thing to me, although not surprising, was that one of the offenders had a history of violent crimes and was still out walking the streets of D.C. Part of the problem here is that people that are committing these crimes see no real punishment for their offenses. Okay, one offense, maybe we are lenient. But if there are multiple violent offenses, why is that person not in jail? Are there structural changes you could see in the D.C. justice system that could help stop this? A:Well, it’s not up to me to propose a better justice system. But I’ll tell you, the paths that these fellows traveled were generally no different than the routes countless other young guys out there take toward oblivion. From, say, ages 9 to 16, they’re arrested again and again as minors, and, generally, they are merely inconvenienced by the juvenile justice system until they hit 18. Then, as a practical matter, the juvenile system washes its hands of them, as they enter the grown-up system. And judges in adult courts, abiding by the laws they have to abide by, turn them back out again and again, on probation for what are relatively minor crimes . . . until the day comes when they finally commit truly heinous offenses. And then they don’t get out anymore.
Read more of this Q&A at
washingtonpost.com/
liveonline. Paul also discussed his reporting with colleague Brigid Schulte on the Story Lab blog at
washingtonpost.com/storylab.
Washington and who serves as the de facto ringleader of a group of dedicated transit and planning activists, found out that the draft sliced millions from the city’s streetcar program — delaying its debut by at least a year. Shortly after 9 a.m., he posted the news, linking it on Twitter, and the activists went berserk. Gray was able to save the streetcars by 3:30 p.m. — by squeezing about $50 million in scarce capital dollars out of Chief Financial Officer Natwar M. Gandhi — but his mayoral campaign blog already hosted dozens of nasty comments. Like this one: “You’re a moron. Fenty it is.” Budgets, of course, are messy things. When you spend more than $5 billion in local taxpayer funds in a plan hundreds of pages long, that doesn’t typically get done on a 9-to-5 schedule, as Gray pointed out. Late nights, he said, are “often the case with the budget. There’s a lot of work to do.” But with Gray (D) in a mayoral race in which he boasts that he’s “governed in an open and transparent manner,” as he said at a candidates’ forum Wednesday evening, and trying to position himself as the deliberative alternative to what he sees as Fenty’s manic impatience, it’s hard to defend late-night shenanigans of any type. And the streetcars might not even be the worst of
it. Gray’s late-night budget also transferred a 358,000-square-foot former school from the city — which had been using it to train firefighters and social workers — to the University of the District of Columbia with virtually no public participation. In an interview Wednesday night, Gray suggested for the first time that the streetcar change was due to a staff error and that he did not approve the wee-hours reshuffling. He also defended his decision to include the Harris transfer in budget legislation, rather than move the school via a separate bill — which would involve an open hearing. “The community college is a huge part of our budget,” Gray said. The bad news for Gray: Neither explanation bolsters the image he’s trying to project over the next 100 days. The good news: Gray actually came out of this pretty well. Leaders on both sides of the issue say he managed not to completely squander their goodwill. Meg Maguire, whose Committee of 100 on the
Federal City has opposed overhead wires in certain historic areas, says she’s pleased that Gray’s compromise included a requirement for more comprehensive planning. “It seems to be moving in a direction that is going to end up with a reasonable set of policies,” she said. And Alpert credits Gray for “listening to what the residents thought.” Never mind the flip-flop: “The 2 a.m. part of it was certainly color that drove the point home a little bit. But what people really cared about was the outcome.” And the outcome is what Gray — usually just as
occupied with process — would like to focus on in this case. “I am where I said I was,” he said. “At the end of the day, I’m supporting streetcars.”
debonism@washpost.com
Read DeBonis’s blog, contact Mike directly and share your thoughts on area politics and government at
washingtonpost.com/debonis.
he legend of Vincent C. Gray goes something like this: First at the John A. Wilson Building, last to leave. Forges consensus in a single
FRIDAY, JUNE 4, 2010
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