Like it or not, and many don’t, Kwame Brown has remade the D.C. Council in his image in his first six months as chairman. Has it been pretty? No. Has he infuriated his colleagues and the press? Yes. But has he controlled the council in Machiavellian fashion? Absolutely.
“He’s the most powerful chairman in the city’s history,” a council member who’s not a fan told me.
Consider that Brown has kept education and economic development under his control. He could have parceled out education, which came to him from the last council. He could have given away economic development, which came to him because Tommy Thomas is under investigation.
“Let’s see what he does with them,” a veteran reporter told me. Brown has done quite well with most that’s come his way as a rookie chairman.
Take passage of the 2012 budget, which is, after all, the council’s major task. For the first time in decades, the city was faced with a $322 million shortfall, rather than figuring out how to spend plentiful tax revenues. Mayor Vince Gray sent the council a budget that included income tax increases, $18 million in cuts to public safety, reductions that would put homeless families on the street.
Brown relied on his new budget director, Jennifer Budoff, to craft the council bill. She had come from Chief Financial Officer Nat Gandhi’s shop and worked well with the mayor’s budget team. After two preliminary votes, the council passed a bill with no new income taxes, money to hire cops, funds for homeless families — and $14.4 million to replenish the city’s cash reserves.
It passed a series of votes 12-1.
“Quietly done,” Brown tells me. “but it happened.”
His reshuffling of committees was noisy. Brown tells me he thought he would make Capitol Hill’s Tommy Wells happy by moving him from transportation to parks and recreation — with the addition of planning. “He’s a livable, walkable guy,” Brown says. “Now he has the whole city to work with.”
When Brown told Wells of the change, he stormed out of Brown’s office. Lovers of bikes and trolley cars howled on blogs. Was Brown punishing Wells for investigating the chairman’s leasing a luxury sport utility vehicle on the city’s dime? Perhaps. But Brown gave the rest of the members what they wanted. The vote: 12-1. In political hard ball, that’s a win.
“Can’t make everyone happy,” Brown says.
Is he like John Wilson, who ruled like a Mafia don? Or Linda Cropp, the den mother who kept everyone happy? “A mixture of the two,” Brown says. “Individually, members have issues, but as an institution, we’ve made progress.”
The “issues” include six members recently or currently under scrutiny for corruption, including Brown: federal prosecutors are looking into fund transfers in his 2008 campaign. “It doesn’t bother me at all,” he says. “There’s no money missing,”
He expects to pay a fine for accounting errors but allows that U.S. Attorney Ronald Machen is investigating criminal charges.
“He’s the final arbiter,” says Brown.
Until then, Brown is the council’s main arbiter.
Harry Jaffe’s column appears on Tuesday and Friday. He can be contacted at [email protected].
