fhoward's blog

D.C. Council Chairman Kwame Brown arrived in a conference room for what he said would be a closed door council meeting because it involved personnel matters that he said were consistent with the open meeting act. 

But reporters refused to leave, saying the real agenda was recent feuding and cursing among council members divided over raising taxes on high income residents.

WTOP and ABC7's Mark Segraves shot a photo of Brown's agenda, listing decorum and communications and the handwritten word "profanity,” arguing it was a violation of the open meetings law to exclude the media.

After council members voted unanimously for reporters to leave and they still refused, Brown called police. Read more »

After a rough-and-tumble Tuesday, the D.C. Council did little to help itself today when its members opted to close a meeting to the press. Journalists present protested the move, which they claimed violated the District's Open Meetings Act. (Check out TBD's handy timeline on what happened.)

A picture of the agenda by WTOP's Mark Segraves showed little more than agenda points on "Decorum and Communication," "Internal Code of Conduct" and "Financial Disclosure and Forms for Members & Staff." A final bullet point simply said "Other"; "Profanities" was scribbled on the agenda in pen, a reference to some naughty words that were lobbed between councilmembers on Monday. Read more »

The D.C. Council ordered security to remove reporters while it held a closed-door session Thursday. The meeting came on the heels of what was reported as a contentious private breakfast meeting earlier in the week. It is still unclear whether the Council followed proper procedure to close the meeting.

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D.C. Council Chairman Kwame R. Brown on Monday pledged to revisit open-ended laws that govern how city legislators can spend money from constituent service accounts as part of a sweeping ethics reform bill that he says is decades overdue and intended to diffuse mounting distrust of city government.

There are expenses “that just don’t make any sense, that just shouldn’t be,” Mr. Brown said of recent disclosures that council members have spent money from the lightly regulated constituent service accounts for catering, rent payments and professional sports tickets. “But I don’t think we should throw the baby out with the bath water either.” Read more »

The District is suing a nonprofit for allegedly diverting more than $300,000 in city grants intended to fund a job-training center for people with HIV/AIDS to instead renovate what became the Stadium Club, a popular nightspot that boasts “five-star dining” and nude dancers.

The office of the D.C. attorney general filed suit Tuesday against Cornell Jones, a former drug kingpin who founded a nonprofit organization called Miracle Hands three years after he served nine years on a 27-year sentence for drug distribution.

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A special investigative committee formed by the D.C. Council concluded in a report released Tuesday that “nepotism and cronyism” in the hiring practices of Mayor Vincent C. Gray’s administration violated local and federal law and damaged the city’s reputation.

The report, released after a six-month council investigation, portrays Gray (D) as “disconnected” and aloof as he allowed several top aides to control critical personnel decisions in the early days of his administration.

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The District’s efficient corps of parking meter enforcement officers are raking in revenue for the cash-strapped city at a dizzying rate this year.

Their parking tickets reap $1.5 million a week, or $219,000 a day, or $450 a minute or $8 a second, according to the folks at AAA, who are fond of dissecting numbers like the overall $80 million in ticket revenue last year.

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 A recall is basically a vote to yank someone out of office before the end of their term, and January 2012 marks the start of the period during which elected officials not up for re-election that year can be subject to such efforts. Among those targeted are Mayor Vince Gray, D.C. Council Chair Kwame Brown and Thomas.

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