Morning Roundup: Goodbye, Abe Edition
D.C. Police Seek Suspect in Series of Bank Robberies
Suspect in 9-Year-Old's Murder Found Dead in D.C. Jail
Photo of the Day: November 25, 2009
Ballou HS Rocks the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade
Mayor Adrian Fenty held a press conference this morning to announce a slew of new cabinet-level nominations for his administration. Topping the list was his decision to go with current interim director of DCRA, Linda Argo, as his nominee to run the department. Argo was previously deputy director of DCRA, responsible for the agency’s public service enhancements. It's a somewhat uncharacteristic move from Fenty, who has tended to focus his hiring efforts on bringing in individuals from outside the existing, broken bureaucratic structures in the hopes they can cut through the mess more quickly. Especially with a department like the Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs, which Fenty has publicly compared to D.C. Schools as a measure of its state of disarray, we might have expected the mayor would pick someone more radical. Not to suggest that Argo isn't qualified -- she has a wealth of management experience, and has been seen as something of a reformer since she came to DCRA a little over two years ago. If anything, this appointment is a reminder that Mayor Fenty's management philosophy seems to be less a rigid theory and more a "whatever works" approach.
The other cabinet appointments announced this morning are:
- Sharlynn Bobo as director of the Child and Family Services Agency (also the current interim director and a former deputy director.)
- Clarence Brown as director of the Office on Aging. Brown was formerly director of the Howard University School of Social Work’s Multidisciplinary Gerontology Center and The Family and Community Resource and Research Center.
- Clarence Carter, from the USDA's Food Stamp program, will head up the Department of Human Services.
- Kelly Valentine, a veteran of D.C. government, as the director of the Office of Risk Management.
- Tori Fernandez Whitney as the director of the Addiction Prevention and Recovery Administration (APRA). Whitney's prior experience includes work with the National Minority AIDS Council, so she could be a good choice to head up a new needle exchange program.
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Good grief, we sure do have a lot of ``agencies'' in this town. reading that list reminds me of why my taxes are so high.
shelley, D.C. is running a state-like government with all the agencies associated with that, not just a city government.
And, yes about the taxes.
There are several more interim directors -- I wonder when he'll announce those.
And let's remember that the DC budget is in the billions, like most states. . . .
Perhaps it's time to review the hold-overs from the Barry cabinet. That's right, the Barry cabinet.
Clarence Carter, Clarence Carter, Clarence Carter.
Courtland Milloy's column today on the races of Fenty's cabinet picks was, as to be expected, assinine. Who cares what race each of the agency heads is so long as they make their agency work effectively?
I'm just glad Milloy isn't using that damned talking-to-my-cab-driver metaphor. That was getting about as stale as George Will's overuse of Latin phrases.
And Milloy should talk about people being black enough. His skin's lighter than Fenty's.
Office on Aging? Wtf??
Milloy's column was beyond stupid, I found it insulting.
Krisa - Unless you get shot when you're in your teens, everybody benefits from having an Office on Aging.
My question is, WTF does DC have an Office of Human Rights? Was there some sort of genocide in Tenleytown that I didn't hear about? I suppose you could make a case for the ethnic cleansing in Shaw in the 1990s. I mean, I understand that trannies in DC have a lot of political pull, hence the Office of Gay, Lesbian, and Transgender Affairs, but really. At least THOSE guys have a hot, hot internship program, complete with webcams.
I agree with monkeyrotica. WTF is with an Office of Human Rights?
I want an office for Comic Book lovers. Now that is something in the DC government I'd support.
I believe, as noted above, that the DC Office of Human Rights does the same thing that a state office would do: if you think there has been a discriminatory action somewhere, they conduct a hearing/investigation, and issue a finding.
Basically, it's a way to head off litigation. If you get upset about the Pearson litigation, you should be happy about OHR.
It's not like the office of human rights isn't included in many, many other jurisdictions. They provide a recourse for people who have been discriminated in housing, employment, or in public spaces.
As one of those "trannies" (a word you should not use, as it is pejorative), I only wish I had the power you speak of. It's only been in the last year that I can use a public restroom knowing that I can't legally be thrown out of it. Kudos to the OHR for working with people in my community to extend the protections to transgender people. Or did you miss the multiple murders of transwomen a couple of years ago? We're not exactly free from violence.
Thank your lucky stars you haven't needed such a recourse.
Under Mayor Barry, the major task of the DC Office of Human Rights was celebrating Human Rights Day on December 10th.
Mayor Williams expanded OHR capabilities to deal with language access issues.