Muriel Bowser describes herself as “a big, whomping Democrat.” Normally, I’d consider that an admission of some kind of guilt. But if I lived in Bowser’s Ward 4, I’d have voted for her back in 2007.
Bowser is the Washington, D.C. city council representative from Ward 4. She stumbled on to my radar in early June, when one of her aides e-mailed me a Bowser press release about an escape from the New Beginnings Youth Development Center in Laurel.
On May 29, the facility – which houses D.C.’s juvenile offenders – opened. One day later, a youth escaped by scaling a fence he wasn’t supposed to be able to climb. That didn’t sit well with the “big, whomping Democrat” from Ward 4.
In her press release Bowser chided Vincent Schiraldi, the director of the D.C. Department of Youth and Rehabilitation Services, for touting New Beginnings as an “anti-prison.” She called Schiraldi “short-sighted” in her press release, and then elaborated.
“I, too, want the youth in detainment to want to aspire to something other than a life behind bars and cinderblock walls,” Bowser wrote. “We must remember, however, that they are still inmates and must be secured.”
I read those words and immediately fell in love with Bowser. An elected official in a liberal, Democratic city who believes prisons should be called prisons and that inmates should be secured? Could this woman be a Democrat?
I caught up with Bowser for a phone interview last week. She assured me she was, indeed, a Democrat. A good one. A “big, whomping” one. And one who, judging from a hearing she and fellow city council rep Tommy Wells of Ward 6 held in early June, demands accountability.
Wells, the chairman of the council’s Committee on Human Services, held the hearings to clear up questions about security after the May 30 escape. Several witnesses testified. On two occasions Bowser revealed how independent her ideas are from some in what might be called the Democratic mainstream.
Eugene Kinlow, the chairman of the DYRS advisory board, talked about flooding at the new facility. In so doing, he revealed the cavalier attitude some folks have about taxpayer money. Kinlow seemed to dismiss concerns some witnesses had about the flooding, which occurred after earlier deluges of rainfall.
“My house takes on water,” Kinlow told Wells and Bowser. “I’m sure yours does too.”
Perhaps true, but quite beside the point. Kinlow’s house wasn’t built with taxpayer money. Nor, in all likelihood, was Wells’ or Bowser’s. New Beginnings WAS built with taxpayer money, some $45 million of it, according to statements made at the hearing. For that kind of cheddar, taxpayers – at least the more discerning ones who demand accountability for their tax dollars – have every right to expect and demand that buildings paid for with those funds not flood.
“We have to follow up with that,” Bowser told me during our telephone interview. “Sometimes the city just gets the shaft with contractors. We need to know that the contractor lives up to his obligations.”
Bowser sounds like one of those silly elected officials who ask that programs or things funded with taxpayer money actually WORK. And the “big, whomping” Democrat takes it a step further: she has little patience with people who falsely claim that certain programs aren’t funded well enough.
Rodney Newman, a member of a group called the Alliance for Concerned Men, tried to pull that fast one during his testimony at the hearing. By now he knows better than to try that when Bowser is around.
Wells asked Newman if he was concerned that unsecured juvenile offenders might be a menace to the communities where they live. Newman said that he was, but felt compelled to add that programs to serve those juveniles aren’t funded adequately.
Bowser refuted that claim. She said she knows of many community programs that are, in fact, very well funded. That juvenile crime persists in spite of well-funded youth programs hints at a little-known truth.
In my younger days, juvenile offenders were called “knuckleheads.” And the truth about knuckleheads is that no amount of taxpayer money will keep a knucklehead determined to be a knucklehead from being a knucklehead.
Isn’t that why we need juvenile detention facilities?
Examiner columnist Gregory Kane is a journalist who lives in Baltimore.
