The shenanigans that led to one of the more juvenile moments in D.C. Council history began with Police Chief Cathy Lanier’s need to leave town late Monday morning.
That led Attorney General Peter Nickles to request that he and Lanier be scheduled to speak first at Monday’s hearing on a pair of major crime bills working through the Council. Councilman Phil Mendelson had alerted Lanier to the hearing weeks ago and already had printed his schedule. He put Lanier last.
Nickles watched the hearing on live video from his office — and fumed. He e-mailed Mendelson and asked if he could testify at 5 p.m.
Mendelson’s nose was already so out of joint, it was visible from the White House. The chairman of the Public Safety and Judiciary Committee and his staff had carefully created panels of public defenders and prosecutors and citizens to hash out the complex bill.
Nickles believed it had been hashed into mush already. He declined to allow his lawyers to sit on the panels. “That’s no way to have a clear view of the executive’s position,” he told me after the hearing. “I refused.”
Which left Mendelson presiding over a few lame panels; thought to be soft on crime, Mendelson had to play the tough guy in some cases to balance the discussions.
Nickles showed up at 5 p.m. and delivered a harangue about how he was tired of the “namby-pamby” on the issue and didn’t want Mendelson to “deep-six” the bill. Mendelson was livid. He gave the floor to Councilman Jim Graham, who gave a minispeech in support of the bill and asked a few questions. Mendelson thanked the staffs for working together, said the record would remain open for two weeks, banged his gavel and ended the hearing.
Nickles stood up and sputtered: “I’m here to testify!” Mendelson walked. There’s delicious irony in the moment. The strident attorney general, more litigator than politician, had objected to lengthy hearings, yet here he stood with more to say. Mendelson, the devotee of process, played the man of action, rapping the session to a close and moving on.
Yet both men played the clown — petty ones at that — delivering tit for tat on matters so crucial to keeping the peace on city streets. Nickles thumbed his nose at Mendelson by not letting his lawyers testify; Mendelson was angry that Nickles refused to play to his script, so he felt compelled to gavel his disrespect.
“This wasn’t good for anybody,” one staffer told me. It certainly isn’t good for residents of Anacostia, where the blood of gunshot victims still soaks sidewalks every night. It isn’t good for women raped by men infected with HIV. It isn’t good for neighborhoods terrorized by gangs.
This crime legislation is the most important work the government will do this decade. Stay tuned for my take on how the next circus act is likely to play out in my next column.
