Fenty, phone home

Tell me one governor, mayor, county executive or chief dog catcher anywhere in these great, impoverished United States who is adding a layer of bureaucracy — and giving many new hires fat raises in the neighborhood of $25,000. I mean, anywhere besides here in the District of Columbia, our nation’s capital, where Mayor Vincent Gray has seen fit to pad his government with more middle managers. As my colleague Jonetta Rose Barras has asked, who needs a pair of high-paid deputy mayors when the government has just begun to balance its budget by furloughing front-line workers?

When a reporter asked one of Gray’s new hires why she had bumped up her salary to $180,000, she responded: “I like to deal in round numbers.”