An aha! moment about why DC Government is "problematic"

(I wanted to say f***** up.)

If you read the classic works in sociology about bureaucracy, mostly by Max Weber, bureaucracy is:

characterised by an elaborate hierarchical division of labour directed by explicit rules impersonally applied, staffed by full-time, life-time, professionals, who do not in any sense own the 'means of administration', or their jobs, or the sources of their funds, and live off a salary, not from income derived directly from the performance of their job. These are all features found in the public service, in the offices of private firms, in universities, and so on. (From Max Weber on Bureacracy.)

The major problem in DC government is that most public officials, especially those that are elected, work diligently to prevent the regularization of rules, procedures, and practices.

They want to be able to have extra-normal influence, and make deals.

This is a problem with DC City Council and it is a problem with Advisory Neighborhood Commissions.

Three quick and two dirty examples from DC City Council:

1. Vincent Orange's bill on the Florida Market forces the dissolution of hundreds of businesses, the destruction of thousands of jobs, a minimum of $200 million in public monies, and the exercise of eminent domain to seize buildings and businesses, all to benefit one particular, not well funded, group of interests.

See:
-- Florida Market destruction legislation hearing, Weds. October 11th (now scheduled for Friday October 20th)
-- Out of the box thinking about Florida Market
-- Is the Florida Market going down?
-- AARGH on the Florida Market area

What blows me away is that no economic study of such is required. Any Councilmember can enter such a bill, and the Home Rule Charter doesn't require that the bill be vetted with analysis. Sure the Chief Financial Officer has to rule/testify about the financial implications, but a real study isn't performed.

To make this palatable they bandy about the phrase "affordable housing," but who wants to live (other than an artist) in an industrial district? And then the residents will end up banding together to complain about the traffic, noise, etc. of the industry.

But I digress, tell me what corporation would call for the expenditure of hundreds of millions of dollars with no study?

For example, in the fall out after the Kelo decision, some professors wrote a great op-ed in the Boston Globe, offering guidance on the ideal way for municipal agencies to approach the very difficult and seemingly sensitive issue of eminent domain. From the blog entry, "Speaking of City Revitalization...assets, assets, assets":

Big projects are not the only hope for center cities, and cities do need to continue to grow and change to meet new realities, and big projects are part of this process. And I will say that Eminent Domain is a tool that cities need to be able to use to push foward. But it is a tool that needs to be used with great care, and with a great deal of transparency. Too often it is seen, justifiably, as a tool to make already rich people richer, and so people paint it with the same "noxious use" brush that I call "blaming the building" in another context.

In the Boston Globe op-ed "Make eminent domain fair for all," the authors make some good points about how such takings should be evaluated. I think the suggestions they offer provide a good framework for considering public-private undertakings of all sorts:

From the article:

State court judges have emphasized in the past that, to comply with the Massachusetts Constitution's own requirement that eminent domain be for a public use, the government must demonstrate that eminent domain will really benefit the public. New legislation could respond to that by:

-- Requiring, as Justice Anthony M. Kennedy suggested in his Kelo concurrence, that any exercise of eminent domain for economic development have a primarily public purpose rather than a merely incidental one.

-- Requiring the government to demonstrate the public benefit through a full-scale financial analysis that could be challenged in court.

-- Requiring that eminent domain not be used for a solely fiscal purpose and that it instead must be part of a comprehensive land use plan.

-- Requiring that the affected neighborhood have adequate participation in the planning process, a right that would be backed up by state-provided technical assistance upon the neighborhood's request.

I think these are pretty good guidelines that appear to be blown off by too many jurisdictions. It is for this reason, not just ur-beliefs about the sanctity of property rights, that so many people are so concerned and worked up about eminent domain issues.

We need this set of procedures to be added to DC Law, providing for a vetting of such proposals before DC residents get saddled with the results of ill-formed proposals.

2. Councilmember Evans wrote a bill to give a building to the Peoples Involvement Corporation, an organization that is problematic in many ways and the recipient of many DC public assets, because PIC claimed that there was a verbal promise to give them the building. But verbal promises aren't enforceable when it comes to real estate. And PIC could provide no other proof to support their claim. How is this a sound use of DC's publicly owned assets? See the bill and the DC Council Calendar item.
Heurich Mansion.

3. Again this involves Councilmember Evans and it's not even something I am opposed to but is still problematic. The Heurich Mansion is scheduled to get $500,000 in the next budget to go towards paying off debt and building an endowment.

I am a preservationist and a cultural resources professional. I support spending money on such worthy projects as this.

BUT, the real problem is that the City of Washington and its government:

a. doesn't have a comprehensive Cultural Resources Management Plan (and the bare bones proposed element in the new Comp Plan is quite weak and not comprehensive);
b. hasn't set priorities for determining what is important to fund; and
c. hasn't created an open and transparent grantmaking process from which organizations can apply for funding from the DC Government.

It's the wild wild west, with no rhyme or reason.

This is a major city. Even little towns have better procedures to handle such matters than does DC. It's embarrassing. And can we say that we are funding the priorities? Or just funding whoever is well connected?

Another very very dirty example from former Councilmember John Ray, who is representing the interests pushing the Florida Market bill:

The Gaming Referendum from a couple years ago which proposed an "emporium" on New York Avenue Northeast.

Whether or not you agree with gaming, it's reasonable to vote on a referendum.

But Ray's referendum was written to give a business franchise specifically to one set of interests. To be democratic and in the best interest of the city, such a referendum should have been written in a democratic manner that would have:

(1) allowed citizens to decide whether or not to approve gaming;
(2) created a gaming commission if the citizens voted to approve gaming;
(3) empowered the gaming commission to create procedures and processes for determining how to select franchisees in a transparent and above-board process;
(4) provided for a public process for determining where such facilities could be located.

The whole process reminds me of the great tv noir series "EZ Streets," which was about municipal corruption and crime. And it means from that point forward (2004) anything touched by John Ray and his law firm ought to be considered suspect.

The problem with (many) ANCs:

It took some dealings over the past couple days, plus my memory of other odious experiences to figure out what the problem is with many Advisory Neighborhood Commissions in places like Ward 5 and certain parts of Ward 6, where I am most likely to run across these issues, but is a problem in most every ward in the city, except maybe for Ward 3.

My joke about ANCs is that they can be great, or you can have 280 little Marion Barrys... what I mean by this is people who deal, who aren't fond of procedures and rules. People call this "social justice," but is it about helping the poor, or about benefiting a small, well-connected elite?

Anyway, government-bureaucracy is about procedures and rules. Under DC Laws, the "great weight" provision by which ANCs are "heard" on various matters brought before City Government, are held by the ANC not by individual Commissioners.

But to the average Commissioner, it's all about them personally, and their "Single Member District." It's not about openness, nor fairness, nor transparency, or democracy. It's but a short step to graft and corruption.

The way many of the ANCs that I deal with operate is an embarrassment to democracy, not a confirmation of it--even though I am fervently committed to deliberative civic engagement and the right of participation.

The Electorate shouldn't stand for this. (And my apologies and encomiums to those ANC commissioners that make great contributions to the city every day! Even though to my way of thinking, there aren't enough of you...)

But it goes on, year after year, same old same old. From fisticuffs to graft, it's not much different from the kind of politics witnessed in third world countries. (Maybe that's a good thing. Or perhaps I'm just overly genteel.)

One of my problems is that I am not good at deference, especially when I am so focused on merit rather than authority based on (too often undeserved) positions of authority.

Maybe it's courtesy to contact the SMD Commissioner, but at the same time, I expect that ANCs have procedures for addressing matters before them that must be followed, to ensure transparency and fairness.

To quote someone involved in one ANC as a community member of a committee:

These guys don't understand procedure. For them, everything is personal. They don't get it that the process is designed to be fair.

Which was written in response to something I wrote earlier in the day:

[Commissioners] claim disenfranchisement etc., but the notice requirements are what they are. It's true that I always don't think to immediately call a Commissioner of a particular SMD. This is perhaps a fault in my thinking, but because the "great weight" provisions in DC law connote to the ANC, not to individual commissioners, I always figure that it is the full body to which my efforts should be directed, and that SMD Commissioners operate within and subject to that framework.

So on to a couple examples:

1. A few months ago one of the Ward 5 ANCs voted to demand that the DC Office of Planning award a contract to an architect located in their boundaries. Given all the contract fraud we see in DC locally as well as related to the federal government, I was appalled when I witnessed this discussion.

The last thing I want to see, as a citizen of the District of Columbia, is even more corruption than that detailed over the past 20 years in various Post articles, books such as Dream City, and Inspector General reports, plus even the recent Examiner series on corruption in the DC Public Schools Charter Office, the whole Washington Teachers Union debacle, etc.

2. WRT two preservation matters I've been involved with, both involve ANC Commissioners (in different Wards) unwilling to respect the law and the procedures at hand. It's a lie to say you're disenfranchised because you don't like the law or you didn't deign to follow the procedures. And it's not my fault to follow those procedures to the advantage of the policy positions I take.

But I don't deal with this gracefully. When ANC Commissioners say--after my going through the procedures and the great weight provisions in great detail--"I'm going to get this overturned" etc. I merely reply, "Go ahead and try."

3. I can't even count on my fingers and toes the number of times I've suspected "green love" or witnessed shady dealings on development and zoning matters, plus similar events have been witnessed and written about elsewhere.

Index Keywords: civic-engagement; good-government