Mayor-elect Adrian Fenty filled out his Cabinet Friday with a litany of permanent and interim appointments, including three new members to the Board of Education — one of whom immediately backed a schools takeover by the executive.
In his last scheduled news conference before taking office Tuesday, Fenty named 11 new agency directors — among them transportation, motor vehicles and property management — in addition to a new chair of the D.C. Sports and Entertainment Commission and three school board members.
Fenty, who is expected to announce within weeks that he will move to take over D.C. Public Schools, appointed Laura Slover, Tonya Kinlow and Herb Scott to the board. Under District law, the mayor appoints four of the nine members.
Slover, director of content and policy at Achieve Inc., immediately backed Fenty’s anticipated proposal to turn the board of education into an advisory body and have the superintendent report directly to the executive.
“Clear lines of authority and accountability make a lot of sense,” Slover said. “Having the superintendent report directly to the mayor would go a long way toward clear lines of authority.”
Though the takeover move has been rumored for months, Fenty said he’s not rushing to make a formal announcement.
“If we’ve been over-deliberate in dealing with the City Council, guilty as charged,” he said. “But we want them to be on board in this effort.”
Among his other announcements, Fenty named Matthew Cutts, a lawyer with Patton Boggs, as the new chairman of the D.C. Sports and Entertainment Commission.
Cutts replaces Mark Tuohey, who led the commission through the Washington Nationals’ saga — winning the franchise and securing stadium financing.
Barbara Childs-Pair was reappointed as director of the Emergency Management Agency. Emeka Moneme, Fenty’s appointee for director of the Department of Transportation, most recently served as chief of staff at Metro under the transit agency’s former director — now Fenty city administrator — Dan Tangherlini.
He appointed interim directors of the Department of Motor Vehicles, the Office of the Chief Technology Officer and the Department of Housing and Community Development are all deputies under the current leadership. Whether they’re selected as permanent chiefs is to be seen.
Other Appointments
» Lars Etzkorn, director, Office of Property Management
» Lucinda Babers, interim director, Department of Motor Vehicles
» Robert LeGrande II, interim chief technology officer
» Victor Selman, interim director, Department of Housing and Community Development
» Eric Moses, interim director, Department of Small and Local Business Development
» Nebiat Solomon, director, Office on African Affairs
» Merrit Drucker, director, Office of Neighborhood Services and Community Affairs
» Kerwin Miller, director, Office of Veterans Affairs
» Carla Brailey, director, Office of Boards and Commissions
