D.C. Council members often criticize Mayor Adrian M. Fenty for ignoring their policy directives or circumventing certain established laws; there may be good reason for some of their complaints. Yet recently, when the administration appeared to be following local ordinances, legislators didn’t praise the executive. They blasted him. It’s clear that Fenty exists in a damned if you do, damned if you don’t world.
Last week, Councilman Jim Graham, chairman of the Committee on Public Works and Transportation, took to task the Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs for using what he called a “totally ambiguous general building code” to issue six tickets — $500 each. The citations were given to businesses that didn’t clear snow from the sidewalks in front of their establishments as required. The Ward 1 legislator pledged from the dais to get the administration to rescind those tickets.
“It was such selective enforcement that it suggested to me something questionable,” Graham told me during a telephone interview.
Interestingly, many residents, speaking at the hearing, decried the failure of individual homeowners, businesses and even governments to follow the city’s snow-removal law. Witnesses pleaded for better enforcement and urged passage of legislation introduced by Ward 6’s Tommy Wells and Ward 3’s Mary Cheh that would enhance penalties for violators.
“There was tremendous pressure on all city agencies to do something about the snow. Our inspectors were trying to do anything they could to help and used a very liberal interpretation of the International Property Maintenance Code, ” said DCRA Director Linda Argo.
But, she said workers shouldn’t have issued the tickets; they have been canceled. She insisted there wasn’t any selective enforcement.
Those violators probably can thank Graham for their free ride.
Meanwhile, at-large Councilman Kwame Brown and Wells initially planned introduction of emergency legislation this week that would have rescinded tickets issued to motorists who failed to remove their cars on Feb. 15 from various snow emergency routes throughout the city.
Brown told me the measure was Wells’ idea. He said residents claimed the emergency was lifted and then restored with little more than three hours notice. “We wanted to help a small number of people; it’s not like we were opening the floodgates.”
On Tuesday, the duo removed the bill from consideration. That was a good thing.
It’s election year. Everyone’s reading polls and analyzing favorability ratings. I get that.
But, the council, which creates local laws, shouldn’t attempt to undermine those local laws because it receives telephone calls from irate citizens or business owners, who might be voters or campaign donors. There are procedures to which people can avail themselves, if they have grievances. Legislators should insist that such processes are followed.
There already is the perception that D.C. is fast becoming a lawless municipality, where elected officials and their agents do whatever they want, whenever they want. Fixing tickets from inside the council chamber would have only underscored that impression.
Jonetta Rose Barras, host of WPFW’s
“D.C. Politics With Jonetta,” can be
reached at [email protected].
