D.C.’s primary elections are still more than one month away, but the Senate has offered a no-confidence vote in its mayoral candidates.
In an appropriations bill that passed through committee last week, Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., tacked on a rider that extends the term of District Chief Financial Officer Natwar Gandhi for two years.
Gandhi’s term was scheduled to expire shortly after the new mayor is sworn in.
Brownback’s office didn’t respond to calls seeking comment. But the rider has support from the District subcommittee’s ranking Democrat, Mary Landrieu of Louisiana.
“This is not a commentary on home rule or on the candidates at all,” Landrieu’s spokesman, Adam Sharp, wrote in an e-mail to The Examiner. “It is a recognition that we are in unchartered territory — the first mayoral transition since Congress last loosened its oversight and created the CFO role we have today.”
The Senate rider has unsettled District officials, who say that D.C.’s top accountant serves at the pleasure of D.C.’s top executive — the mayor.
“I happen to like Gandhi. And if he was reappointed, and if I was on the District Council, I would vote to support him,” said Paul Strauss, D.C.’s shadow senator. “I don’t think it’s up to them to be making that call.”
Strauss is leaving his seat in the Senate to run for District Council in Ward 3.
District Council Member Phil Mendelson, D-at large, agreed.
“Dr. Gandhi doesn’t get as much credit for turning around the city’s finances as he should,” Mendelson said. “But I do think the decision should be a local one.”
Sharp said that D.C. hasn’t had an election transition since the Congressional Control Board was dissolved in 2001 and “continuity” in the finance office is vital.
