Throw All the Bums In
Dear Washingtonians:
Well, that’s over, and the small portion of the electorate who
bothered to come out to the polls has taken Mayor Gray’s last-minute
endorsements to heart and renominated all the current city
councilmembers, because they have done such a good job. We have
demonstrated our satisfaction with DC government as it is, and have
demonstrated that we do have the government we deserve.
Since Washingtonians won’t elect Republicans or third-party
candidates unless we are forced to by law, the general election in
November won’t change anything further, so we may as well turn out
attention to other matters, and fiddle while Rome burns.
Gary Imhoff
themail@dcwatch.com
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Professional Ethics, The Washington Post,
and Mike DeBonis
Dorothy Brizill, dorothy@dcwatch.com
Late Wednesday afternoon I sent the following E-mail to Vernon Loeb,
the Metro Editor at the Washington Post. As of early Thursday
morning, he has not yet responded. “It has recently come to my
attention that Mike DeBonis, one of the Washington Post’s lead
political reporters for the District of Columbia, has been dating Dena
Iverson for the past three years. During that time Ms. Iverson was a
senior press and communications person and a lead spokesman in a variety
of positions in Mayor Fenty’s administration, and she served as Mayor
Fenty’s press secretary during his 2010 reelection campaign. In
addition, following Mayor Gray’s election she briefly served as the
press and public information officer at the Department of Health. Most
recently, she served as the press secretary for Sekou Biddle’s
at-large council race in 2012.
“To my knowledge, never during this period of time has Mr. DeBonis
disclosed this personal relationship in any of his articles, even when
he was writing about agencies and public officials for whom she worked,
or about issues in which she had a professional interest. Has the Post
been aware of the relationship between Mr. DeBonis and Ms. Iverson? Has
it seen any need to reveal it to its readers? Was any attempt made to
erect a firewall between the issues and public officials about which Mr.
DeBonis wrote and those in which Ms. Iverson had a professional
interest? I know this is a sensitive matter, but I would sincerely
appreciate your response.”
For the past three years, Dena Iverson and Mike DeBonis have dated
and have been a couple. Iverson is a 2005 graduate of Oberlin College,
Mayor Fenty’s alma mater. Iverson joined the District government in
2007, and served in a succession of positions in the Fenty
administration (communications specialist in the Executive Office of the
Mayor, Press Secretary for the mayor, and press secretary for School
Superintendent Michelle Rhee at DC Public Schools). During the mayor’s
race in 2010, Iverson served as the press secretary for Mayor Fenty’s
reelection campaign. Following Fenty’s defeat, Iverson returned to the
District government and served as the press and public information
officer for the DC Department of Health until June of 2011. Currently,
Iverson is the communications director for the Sekou Biddle 2012
campaign.
Mike DeBonis covers local politics, political campaigns, and the
District government as a reporter for the Washington Post. He
writes the online column “District of DeBonis,” and frequently
tweets his observations. Prior to joining the Post in 2010,
DeBonis was a senior staff writer at the Washington City Paper,
where he wrote the Loose Lips column.
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DDOT and Greener Storm Water Infrastructure,
Part II
David Jonas Bardin, davidbardin@aol.com
DC has 8,058 acres of paved streets, roads, alleys, and sidewalks
(351 million square feet), mostly DDOT’s responsibility. They were
generally designed for speedy flow of rainwater away from paving and
down into the sewers. That seemed optimal to planners until recently.
Now DDOT is looking for change, as I discussed at http://www.dcwatch.com.columns/bardin.htm.
Although the city has not yet set numeric goals for reducing DDOT’s
impervious area or for guiding runoff from pavements into places where
much water can soak into the ground — for example, into “rain
gardens” (sometimes called “bio-retention basins”) — DDOT is
working to master such “low-impact development” (LID) techniques and
to implement them with available resources. DDOT’s Infrastructure
Project Management Administration (IPMA) constructs, maintains, repaves,
and reconstructs roads, streets, sidewalks, and alleys. IPMA has a Storm
Water Management LID unit staffed by Landscape Architect Meredith
Upchurch, with another position for a civil engineer as yet unfilled.
Their work includes a remarkable multi-agency collaboration to install
and test a mix of techniques in parts of Petworth and Chevy Chase, led
by the District’s Department of the Environment, which I shall
describe in a future posting.
A “green alleys” program attacks two of the 725 acres of alleys
by means of twenty-two current projects in Wards 3, 4, 5, and 7. DDOT is
trying porous paving, but that may not work everywhere because of clayey
soils underneath. DDOT’s Urban Forestry Administration took advantage
of $2 million of federal ARRA (“Stimulus”) money to remove three
acres out of 2,143 acres of sidewalk paving by means of 33 completed
projects in every ward. DDOT will need more resources to accelerate its
program and should also encourage private green infrastructure
investment.
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CLASSIFIEDS — EVENTS
DMV Director’s Live Web Chat About Organ
Donation, April 5
Kevin Twine, kevin.twine@dc.gov
Join DC Department of Motor Vehicles Director Lucinda Babers on
Thursday, April 5, at 2:00 p.m. for a live web chat on organ donation.
Rhonda Griffin from the Washington Regional Transplant Community will be
on hand to assist in answering questions related to this topic as DC DMV
celebrates National Donate Life Month. To join the chat, click here: http://www.dmv.dc.gov/about/ConnectwithDCDMV.shtm.
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Monthly HHW/E-Cycling/Personal Document
Shredding, April 7
Kevin Twine, kevin.twine@dc.gov
The Department of Public Works’ monthly Household Hazardous
Waste/E-Cycling/Personal Document Shredding drop-off is Saturday, April
7, between 8:00 a.m. and 3:00 p.m. at the Ft. Totten Transfer Station.
District residents may bring toxic items such as pesticides, batteries,
and cleaning fluids to Ft. Totten, along with computers, televisions,
and other unwanted electronic equipment. Personal document shredding
also is available and residents may bring up to five boxes of materials
to be shredded. No business or commercial material will be accepted.
To accommodate residents whose religious beliefs prohibit them from
using the Saturday drop-off, DPW will accept household hazardous waste
and recyclables only the Thursday before the first Saturday of the month
(April 5, from 1:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m.). While DPW normally offers
personal document shredding on the first Saturday, it cannot accept
items for shredding on Thursdays because these documents cannot be
protected until the shredding contractor arrives on the first Saturday.
For a list of all household hazardous waste and recyclables accepted by
DPW, please click on the HHW link at http://www.dpw.dc.gov.
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Gardening Events at Tenley Library, April 9,
11, 14
Sue Hemberger, Friends of the Tenley Library, smithhemb@aol.com
Join the Friends of the Tenley Library for Henry Mitchell Week — a
series of gardening talks and demonstrations in memory of Tenleytown’s
own nationally renowned writer on all things gardening. This year, the
festivities will take place the week of April 8, with events on Monday
and Wednesday evenings and on Saturday morning and afternoon.
We’ll kick things off on April 9 at 7:00 p.m., with the Friends
annual Henry Mitchell Lecture, a talk by Lucinda Fleeson, on her book, Waking
Up in Eden: In Pursuit of an Impassioned Life on an Imperiled Island.
It’s a story about one woman and 999 plant species living in Hawaii.
On Wednesday, April 11, join us at 7:00 p.m. for a talk about plant life
closer to home as Barbara Glickman and Valerie Brown discuss their book
entitled Capital Splendor: Parks and Gardens of Washington, DC.
This presentation is cosponsored by the Tenleytown Historical Society.
Finally, on Saturday, April 14, we’ll have programs for all ages.
Upstairs at 11:30 a.m., Jane Redmon, an Ikebana master teacher, will
demonstrate the art of Japanese flower arranging. And at 3:00 p.m., in
the Childrens’ area downstairs, Annie and Veda, the young authors of We
Grew It, Let’s Eat It! will join their mother to talk about their
book and about garden tastes and smells.
The Tenley-Friendship Library is located at the corner of Wisconsin
Avenue and Albemarle Street, NW, just across from the Tenleytown
Metrorail station. For more information about the Friends of the Tenley
Library and other events we sponsor, visit our Facebook page.
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Woman’s National Democratic Club Meetings,
March 10, 12
Patricia Bitondo, pbitondo@aol.com
Thursday, April 10, luncheon. Liberal radio and TV pundit Bill Press
comes to the club to talk about his new book, The Obama Hate Machine:
The Lies, Distortions, and Personal Attacks on the President — and Who
Is Behind Them. The book looks at how the extremely personal,
negative, and ugly attacks on President Obama form an organized attempt
to bring him down. It introduces the reader to the Koch brothers,
briefly describes over sixty anti-Obama books, looks at how the media is
failing by not challenging the lies of the far right, and ends with a
plea for more civility in public discourse. Mr. Press is host of the
nationally syndicated radio program The Bill Press Show. He writes a
syndicated column for Tribune Media Services and is the former co-host
of MSNBC’s Buchanan and Press and CNN’s Crossfire and The Spin Room.
The Obama Hate Machine is his eighth book. A former chair of the
California Democratic Party, Mr. Press served as director of the
California Office of Planning and Research under Governor Jerry Brown
from 1975-1979. At the Woman’s National Democratic Club, 1526 New
Hampshire Avenue, NW. Bar opens at 11:30 a.m.; lunch 12:15 p.m.;
lecture, presentation, Q&A: 1:00-2:00 p.m. Members $25, nonmembers
$30; lecture only $10. Register at https://salsa.wiredforchange.com/o/5880/p/salsa/event/common/public/?event_KEY=35249
Thursday, April 12, luncheon. Barbara Slavin, Containment Can Work in
Iran. Some of you may remember how impressed we were when Barbara Slavin
came to speak to us just after her stint as a public policy scholar at
the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and the
International Institute for Peace, where she had written, Bitter
Friends, Bosom Enemies: Iran, the US and the Twisted Path to
Confrontation. She is a regular commentator on US foreign policy and
Iran on NPR, PBS, and C-SPAN. A career journalist, she has previously
served as assistant managing editor of world and national security of The
Washington Times, senior diplomatic reporter for USA TODAY, Cairo
correspondent for The Economist, and as an editor at The New
York Times Week in Review. She is currently a senior fellow at the
Atlantic Council’s South Asia Center. Ms. Slavin has covered the
Arab-Israeli conflict and has made seven trips to Iran. She was the
first US newspaper reporter to interview Iranian president Mahoud
Ahmadinejad. At the Woman’s National Democratic Club, 1526 New
Hampshire Avenue, NW. Bar opens at 11:30 a.m.; lunch 12:15 p.m.;
lecture, presentation, Q&A: 1:00-2:00 p.m. Members $25, nonmembers
$30; lecture only $10. Register at https://salsa.wiredforchange.com/o/5880/p/salsa/event/common/public/?event_KEY=35172
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