DC FRIDAY

COUNCIL COMMITTEE REJECTS GRAHAM'S DESIRE TO CRIMINALIZE YOUTH FOR DRINKING

JESSICA GOULD, CITY PAPER - At a Tuesday markup the Committee on Public Works and the Environment voted to strike a section of the bill that would make it a crime for minors to buy alcohol at ABC-licensed establishments. Currently, kids who buy alcoholic beverages at ABC-licensed establishments are subject to civil penalties and fines. Ward 1 Councilmember Jim Graham's bill would have taken that punishment a step further. Under his legislation, a minor caught buying beer at a bar or nightclub would have had that purchase written into his or her criminal record. . . Ward 3 Councilmember Mary Cheh offered an amendment to strike that section of the bill. In an interview, she called criminalization a "disproportionate and unnecessary" response to underage drinking at bars and clubs. "Who among us may not have tried to get a drink?" she asked.

COLUMBIA HEIGHTS BIG BOX DEVELOPMENT THREATENS LOCAL BUSINESSES

NATASHA ABBAS, DC NORTH - A massive construction project is underway on 14th Street in preparation for the big box retail complex known as "DC USA" set to open in March of 2008. According to Robert Moore, president and CEO of the Development Corporation of Columbia Heights, a community partner on the project, DC USA will be the largest neighborhood retail development in the country.

The $149.5 million, 500,000-square-foot retail complex with a 1,000-car parking facility will occupy a five-acre site at 14th and Irving streets, NW, in Columbia Heights and will feature mostly large chain stores, typical of what one finds at a suburban strip mall including a Target, Bed Bath and Beyond, Best Buy, Marshall's, Washington Sports Center, Staples and Caribou Coffee. . .

And what will this mean for a small business district trying to co-exist with large-scale corporate retail development just a few short blocks away?. . . Dominic Sale is the president of Mount Pleasant Main Street and feels there is more to be considered regarding DC USA's impact. "I think people just expect there is going to be this residual spillover effect, but without proper planning and proper attention, issues don't get resolved," says Sale.. . .

"I expected, probably wrongly so, that the city would have stepped in, in some way, to help support these businesses knowing that it's going to have an enormous impact on our business community; however, it just hasn't happened," says Sale. While the city has offered subsidies and enticements to the big box retail stores, many of them based outside of Washington, DC, Sale says, "We've got all these little local businesses that have gotten practically zero support.". . .

Ward 1 Councilmember Jim Graham, when questioned by DC North about his plans to address the concerns of Mount Pleasant's business owners regarding DC USA's impact, responded that he was not familiar with any concerns, but he said he would be open to meeting with business owners. . .

DC FINDS ANOTHER WAY TO SUBSIDIZE SUBURBANITES

DC EXAMINER - The District of Columbia will give some motorists $50 a month this summer if they switch to mass transit or ride-sharing programs instead of driving into the city. The program, which is known as Bridge Bucks, is aimed at drivers who use the Frederick Douglass Bridge to enter the city. The bridge, also called the South Capitol Street Bridge, will be closed in July and August for a major construction project. The $50 can only be used for mass transit fares or ride-sharing fees. D.C. officials are modeling the Bridge Bucks program on a similar effort established during construction of the new Woodrow Wilson Bridge from 2004 to 2006.

WHAT'S BEING HIDDEN IN THE DC MADAM CASE?

THE JUDGE IN the Jeanne Palfrey case has issued a temporary restraining order on Palfrey and her civil attorney to keep them from releasing more information about her clients to the news media. This strengthens suspicions that the judge and ABC News - which was given Palfrey's records - may be trying to suppress some of these names, especially since one the names being circulated around town is an extremely high White House official. Basically, the problem is this: if Jean Palfrey committed a crime so did all her clients and they are not entitled to the protection they are being given. In the best of worlds, prostitution would not be a crime but under the circumstances there is only one honest choice in this matter: either drop the case or open the files. Otherwise it is fair to wonder whether there is a cover-up going on of criminal activity by prominent Washingtonians.

DC SHORTS

CARL BERGMAN, who blew the whistle on the Fenty administration plagiarism in its school plan report, tell us that "what the Post didn't print in their profile was that I wrote an op ed piece laying out the whole thing. It went in on a Friday and got rejected first thing Monday morning. Who says they're not efficient?" A few days later, the Post ran a front page story on the matter that only gave Bergman and WAMU (which ran the first story) credit in the 13th paragraph, which is pretty graceless even for the Post.

THERE has been some concern expressed about the number of people running in the recent council elections. There's a real simple solution to this which is gaining support across the land: instant runoff or ranked voting. As Fair Vote explains: "IRV allows voters to rank candidates in order of preference (i.e. first, second, third, fourth and so on). First choices are then tabulated, and if a candidate receives a majority of first choices, he or she is elected. If nobody has a clear majority of votes on the first count, a series of runoffs are simulated, using each voter’s preferences indicated on the ballot. The candidate who received the fewest first place choices is eliminated. All ballots are then retabulated, with each ballot counting as one vote for each voter's highest ranked candidate who has not been eliminated. Specifically, voters who chose the now-eliminated candidate will now have their ballots counted for their second ranked candidate -- just as if they were voting in a traditional two-round runoff election -- but all other voters get to continue supporting their top candidate. The weakest candidates are successively eliminated and their voters' ballots are redistributed to next choices until a candidate crosses a majority of votes." IRV is used in San Francisco, Burlinton VT, Takoma Park, Louisiana, South Caroline, Arkansas, and North Carolina

WE'VE been pretty tough on Barack Obama, but here's some good news. He appears to be the one major presidential candidate who supports DC statehood

PLANS TO TEAR down the Benning Library have been attacked by Rick Tingling-Clemmons, a Statehood Green Party activist and ANC commissioner. "We've been given no plans nor the opportunity to make any input into whatever plans there might be for the library. It's clear that the closing of Benning Library was motivated by a land grab and official generosity to developers and contractors. We've learned that [Vincent Gray has stated in several community meetings in this area that his idea is to tear our library down and have it relocated in the new government building that is currently under construction for DOES among other agencies on Minnesota Avenue, NE. This has made it crystal clear that the principal scheme is to gain control of our land." Despite public opposition, Tingling-Clemmons noted, "in 2004, Benning Library was boarded up, the books moved out, and the heating system ripped out. The community was outraged that there hadn't even been thought given to the fact that the library was a polling location that had not been replaced; our award-winning chess club had been disrupted, the loss of that safe place resulting -- either directly or indirectly -- in the death of one of the young men in the club; a local child care program had lost its graduation space; many seniors had lost their daytime haven; the community had lost a decade-old exercise class; our children had lost their homework help; and many other community supports thoughtlessly disrupted."

STATEHOOD GREENS are also calling for the reopening of Anacostia Library in Ward 8. A temporary structure was opened there in April, with over 20 computer stations in constant use with waiting lists. In a ward where speculators are salivating over the prospect of school buildings being declared "surplus," schools are without their own libraries, and the "great weight" provision allocated to ANCs has been violated, community leaders are calling it an "act of brutality" that the DC Public Library Commission left the Anacostia and Benning libraries closed for over two years, with no plan to date for permanent replacements.

CONSTRUCTION CREWS have started working on the new Georgetown waterfront park. Among other things, the park will have seats from which to watch crew races.

DC NORTH - The Lincoln Theatre can expect a check from the District government next year to keep operations running -- but not all operations. Included in the budget for fiscal year 2008, Mayor Fenty allotted the theater $250,000 -- half of what the Lincoln requested. The monies will come from the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, according to the Budget Support Act.

STRIKING PHOTOS FROM THE OLD ST. ELIZABETH'S

OVERHEARD IN DC: Guy: That's a cool necklace. What is it?. . . Girl: Oh, it's Lady Liberty. I'm a libertarian. . . Guy: Oh cool. I'm a Virgo.

FROZEN TOPICS - The Council gave preliminary approval to a plan that would relocate strip clubs displaced by the baseball stadium (and one club displaced by separate development on Alabama Avenue NE). Under this plan, the clubs would move to a tiny strip of West Virginia Avenue in the northern portion of Ivy City.

DOROTHY BRIZILL of DC Watch reports that Mayor Fenty didn't even had the decency to inform elections board chair Wilma Lewis that he was replacing her and even - in the neatest bureaucratic trick of the week - made her firing retroactive. Lewis kept her cool and wrote the mayor, "I fully appreciate and respect your prerogative, as Mayor, to designate a Chairperson of your choice, and congratulate Mr. Lowery on being so designated. I offer the observation, however, that the designation of a new Chairperson 'effective nunc pro tunc to January 8, 2007,' may raise uncertainty regarding the impact of the Order on the conduct of the Board's business during the period January 8, 2007, to the present when I was serving as Chair."

ALSO IN DC WATCH, Ed Baron wrote that it would make sense for supporters of a House vote for the city to wait until there was a Democratic president and Congress. "Until then all those running in circles should cool it since they are wasting time and energy on a fruitless quest." The letter shows how trapped in the token vote myth DCers are since if we had a Democratic Congress and a Democratic president we could also have full statehood.

ROSES TO Fenty for getting rid of discriminatory restrictions on old drivers renewing their licences

DC VOICES

ELIZABETH DAVIS - As a DCPS teacher of 30 years, I've concluded that city officials don't lose any sleep over what is happening in our schools because they don't care about what is happening in our schools. I have spent countless years sending emails, snail mail, faxes and petitions to their offices about the deplorable teaching - learning conditions in DCPS.

My students and their parents have taken our complaints to the print and electronic media; DCPS Board, DC Council, the Congressional Black Caucus and the Senate. We have photographed, written about, testified and published our concerns . . .

Eveyone who heard our message - from Janey to Sen. Kennedy, Pelosi, Cummings, Norton, etc - responded with band aid solutions. Nothing to address the real problem of congressional and local city government efforts to dismantle public education in the District. If we don't get the reason behind this effort, we will never understand the many ways and means of undermining and dismantling DCPS. The positive things that are taking shape in our school system will never be acknowledged by the powers to be. To do so would only serve to validate a public school system. The plan is not to validate a public school system in DC. The plan is to dismantle the public school system and replace it with a privatized school system of charter schools.