Media coverage of D.C. Council Chairman Kwame Brown’s recent committee shake-up focused on his removal of Councilman Tommy Wells, D-Ward 6, as chairman of the Committee on Public Works and Transportation, describing the unusual midyear reshuffling as a vengeful payback for Wells’ investigation of the chairman’s order of not one, but two “fully loaded” Lincoln Navigators on the city’s dime. But Brown’s revenge doesn’t explain why 11 members of the 13-member council meekly agreed to exile Wells to the Committee on Libraries, Parks, Recreation and Planning. As head of the Transportation Committee, Wells should have been well aware of a District law that specifically prohibits the D.C. government from leasing “a sports utility vehicle,” except for those used for security or public safety purposes. Yet Well’s own preliminary report, released in February, showed that the city had been routinely violating this law since 2004.
Forty-two SUVs are pretty hard to hide in just 61 square miles, but Wells’ committee failed to exercise its oversight responsibilities until Brown and Mayor Vincent Gray ordered the same kind of luxury rides that Adrian Fenty, Michelle Rhee and Allen Lew were using to tool around the city while the entire council looked the other way. Ignoring the law just because your predecessors did is no excuse, but prior selective enforcement is the main reason government officials think they can get away with doing so, and Wells and his fellow council members deserve at least part of the blame.
