A U.S. senator, likely Maryland Democrat Benjamin Cardin, is using an anonymous hold to stifle debate on a bill giving D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty control of the city’s public schools.
The mystery senator used the chamber’s prerogative to place a hold on the measure immediately after it passed the House on Tuesday, a mere week after its introduction by D.C. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton. Fenty’s school takeover, and subsequent demotion of the D.C. Board of Education, includes an amendment to the District’s Home Rule Charter and therefore requires congressional sanction.
A source in Fenty’s camp was “99.9 percent sure” it was Cardin, who the source speculated might be using the hold as a negotiating tactic to move the District’s Oak Hill juvenile detention center out of Laurel, Md. The District is expected to break ground soon on a new Oak Hill in Anne Arundel County, though Cardin has introduced legislation to stop construction.
In a statement, Cardin all but admitted to implementing the hold on H.R. 2080, the school takeover bill.
“H.R. 2080 affects the future of D.C. children, including those who are in public school at the Oak Hill Detention Center in Maryland,” Cardin said. “I have been working with the D.C. government since 2003 to resolve the placement of its new juvenile detention facility. I am fully prepared to support H.R. 2080 once the interests of the children currently located at Oak Hill are resolved.”
Talk in congressional circles that the tactic might be tied to the revelation that a chunk of Fenty’s education plan was copied verbatim from other jurisdictions appeared unfounded. Fenty on Wednesday called the copying matter “serious” and something that “should not have happened.”
The education reform bill had been placed on the Senate’s unanimous consent calendar, which would skip the committee process entirely.
