Let’s follow the money to the sweet pots of dough that D.C. Council members refer to as their discretionary funds.
The dollars begin their journey to council coffers in the pockets of taxpayers; some are residents like me who pay personal and property taxes; some are business folks who pay taxes or sell goods or services or property.
Council members get $350,000 of those tax dollars every year to staff their offices. Each committee chairman receives another $350,000 to finance his or her oversight duties. Let’s do the math: 13 members, each has a committee, so they can draw down $700,000.
This tidy number puts serving in the city council in a whole new light. For what is still defined as a part-time job, our elected ward representatives receive a salary of $115,000, and they are entitled to that $700,000 to use as they wish.
Add it up and you find that council members have $815,000 at their disposal. For the whole council, the discretionary funds amount to $9.1 million.
Who watches over these precious tax dollars?
The question has come up because Marion Barry has allegedly used the dough as his personal slush fund. The indomitable former mayor used his pot of dough to bestow a $60,000 contract on his girlfriend, and he’s funded nonprofit groups that appear to be shams run by his aides, according to a terrific article by City Paper’s Mike DeBonis.
So who’s minding the $9.1 million?
I put the question to Council Chairman Vince Gray on Monday, directly to him and through his press secretary. No response. Gray promised to provide some perspective on how other jurisdictions handle these funds in a report last Friday. He didn’t.
Short answer: No one accounts for the $700,000. Can you spell slush fund?
“Each member self-polices the way in which they spend their funds,” at-large member David Catania told me. Catania says he barely has enough money to staff his health committee, which does great work. I believe him. He says of Barry’s alleged indiscretions: “We are sullied by these accusations. We’re not going to get good people to work for us if it appears we are a confederacy of larcenists.”
Bottom line is there are no rules or regulations, and since there are none to violate, Barry will skate. Catania asked the D.C. inspector general to investigate. Unless he finds fraud, Barry will slide. Gray has asked attorney Bob Bennett to look at Barry’s payments to his sweetheart. Again: No harm, no foul.
Jacqueline Byers, director of research for the National Association of Counties, says it’s not unusual for legislators to have discretionary funds. “But they must be operated in accordance with state or county laws.”
Since the D.C. Council is scared of Barry, and it has no mechanism to govern its ethics, and it has no method to monitor the discretionary funds, it invites scrutiny.
No wonder Congress wants to keep control.
E-mail Harry Jaffe at [email protected].
