If success is merely the avoidance of past catastrophe, then the D.C. Summer Youth Employment Program was a success this year. The program, started two decades ago by former Mayor Marion Barry, was designed to help underprivileged District teens earn pocket money while exposing them to the workplace. Under Barry’s successors, the program has devolved into a mismanaged disaster that paid youngsters just for showing up, and which routinely exceeded its budget. Under former Mayor Adrian Fenty, the program racked up a $30 million deficit that had to be covered by taking funds from welfare recipients, disabled workers and the homeless.
This summer, the program managed to stay out of the headlines and came in more than $5 million under budget. This despite the fact that unemployment for D.C. teens between 16 and 19 was 50.1 percent in June, according to an analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data by the Employment Policies Institute. That’s even higher than the 48.8 percent reported last summer.
