Is D.C. Councilwoman Yvette Alexander running scared? That’s the question some have asked after learning the incumbent Ward 7 legislator expects to pull from the morgue Mayor Vincent C. Gray’s nomination of Elizabeth Noel to the Public Service Commission, which regulates the utility and telecommunications industry.
Noel’s nomination had languished in Alexander’s Committee on Public Service and Consumer Affairs for months. There were concerns Noel’s 30 year-history as the “people’s counsel,” representing residents in cases brought against the industry, would adversely affect her ability to serve on the PSC.
The city’s attorney general, an independent committee created by the AG, a Georgetown University ethics counsel, and retired U.S. District Court Judge Stanley Sporkin essentially reached the same conclusion: Noel must recuse herself from all open cases before the PSC in which she or anyone in her office participated when she was people’s counsel. Sporkin and ethics counsel Michael S. Frisch added that Noel “would be subject to motions to disqualify her from participation in any matters where she has demonstrated a predisposition or bias.” (She once declared Pepco her chief nemesis.)
With indisputable evidence Noel would be handicapped — unable to hear more than 50 percent of the PSC’s cases — while drawing a $146,000 annual salary, Alexander understandably didn’t move the nomination. Gray eventually pulled it, preventing its natural death. But he resubmitted Noel’s nomination, giving it a second life.
“I’m not in support of her,” Alexander told me earlier this week. “She’s a great person and is qualified. But she can’t function in the position.”
So why has Alexander scheduled a vote for Thursday?
Joslyn Williams, president of the Washington-Metropolitan Council, AFL-CIO, appearing at the John A. Wilson building Monday with Noel supporters, warned council members her nomination was a “litmus test.” He suggested the union might retaliate at the polls on April 3 when political parties hold their primaries.
“I’m mystified by how Yvette has played this,” said one council member. “The closer it gets to the election, the more it becomes an election issue.”
Alexander faces a tough re-election bid. Challengers Kevin B. Chavous, the son of a former council member, and Tom Brown, a popular nonprofit executive, have mounted aggressive campaigns.
I like Brown. The D.C. Chamber of Commerce Political Action Committee recently endorsed him. That could translate into money and other support in his campaign against Alexander.
“I always said I was going to bring it for a vote,” Alexander said, adding she isn’t worried about her re-election. “I am not any more vulnerable now than I was when I first elected.”
She said she expects to send to the full council next week a resolution to disapprove Noel’s nomination. But any council member could offer an amendment that could transform the disapproval to an approval; Mary Cheh, an avid Noel fan, is expected to make that move.
Alexander’s response will reveal whether she’s focused more on her political survival than the effective operation of an important District institution.
Jonetta Rose Barras’s column appears on Monday and Wednesday. She can be reached at [email protected].
