Double dipping at a party might get you some nasty looks, but doing it when you work for the District's government will get you fired and prosecuted. more ›

Phew! It's been quite the year, huh? In this periodic end-of-the-year series, we look at the people and places that made 2011 what it was. In this installment, it's SUVs and CSFs. more ›

Despite the scandal faced by Councilmember Harry Thomas, Jr. (D-Ward 5), many of his colleagues have remained quiet on his fate. Even if they speak up, though, there might not be much they can do to him. more ›

We all know that federal prosecutors are still looking into Mayor Vince Gray's 2010 campaign, notably claims that campaign staffers paid fellow candidate Sulaimon Brown to attack Adrian Fenty and that they illegally accepted cash contributions and turned them into money orders. more ›

After what seemed like yet another scandal in-the-making for Mayor Vince Gray, the fight over grass-cutting contracts in the District seemed to largely fizzle late last week after a D.C. Council committee grilled city officials and two contractors that had bid to cut grass and clear snow in the city. more ›

Mayor Vince Gray, who has been historically prickly regarding media requests for comment on the Harry Thomas, Jr. scandal, unsurprisingly refused to call for Thomas to step down today. more ›

Harry Thomas, Jr., the Ward 5 D.C. Councilmember accused of improperly using $300,000 in city grant funds on personal expenses like a luxury SUV, golf outings, dinner at Hooters and overdraft fees, settled a lawsuit filed by the District's Office of the Attorney General today without admitting wrongdoing. more ›

Due to allegations that he diverted hundreds of thousands of dollars in city funds to his Team Thomas organization, Ward 5 Councilmember Harry Thomas, Jr. has stepped down as chairman of the D.C. Council's influential committee on economic development. Thomas stepped down in a letter sent to Council Chair Kwame Brown; Brown announced the around 6:30 p.m. this evening via email. more ›

Tomorrow, Sulaimon Brown will finally testify in front of Mary Cheh's Council committee on government operations. And there'll be something new to talk about: the Post's Nikita Stewart reports that while preparing for his testimony, Brown located the money orders he claims the Vince Gray campaign gave him to disparage former mayor Adrian Fenty during last fall's election. more ›

We've now passed the hour mark on Ward 3 Councilmember Mary Cheh's oversight hearing on the hiring policies of Mayor Vince Gray and his administration. But so far, the most notable news is who isn't testifying at the hearing: Sulaimon Brown, former Gray Chief of Staff Gerri Mason Hall, Gray campaign chair Lorraine Green and campaign consultant and alleged bag man Howard Brooks, who weren't even on the hearing's witness list. more ›

The quasi-governmental agency that's been at the center of D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty's parks contracting scandal will soon be under the financial supervision of D.C. CFO Natwar Gandhi, the Examiner reports. more ›

He doesn't think he did anything illegal, but Marion Barry has apologized for failing to use what he termed "good judgment" when he hired girlfriend Donna Watts-Brighthaupt under a personal services contract with his office, WRC/NBC4 reports. more ›

Ward 3 D.C. Council member (not to mention law professor) Mary Cheh is the first one out of the gate to call for formal action against Ward 8's Marion Barry. In a statement, Cheh said it was important that she and her colleagues vocally "condemn" Barry for his ethics violations, which appear to have once again put the former mayor on the wrong side of the law. more ›

It's a breaking news kinda Wednesday, apparently. As best we can tell, Marc Steiner was actually the first person to report that embattled Baltimore Mayor Sheila Dixon has agreed to resign as part of a plea agreement reached with state prosecutors. The AP has since confirmed the news, noting that the mayor's resignation comes shortly after she entered an Alford plea today on a perjury charge. Dixon was convicted last month of embezzling gift cards that were supposed to go to needy Baltimore residents. The AP says the mayor's resignation is effective Feb. 4. more ›

D.C. Council Chairman Vincent Gray's office today provided DCist with a letter from Peter Schultz, the president of Bowie landscaping company Eastern Gardens Maintenance, in an attempt to clear up allegations made by the Washington Times that Gray failed to obtain proper permits for the installation of an aluminum fence around the perimeter of his home in D.C.'s Hillcrest neighborhood. more ›

If you're following the ongoing saga of Vince Gray's home improvement debacle, the Washington Times's Jeffrey Anderson has filed yet another doozy. Apart from the more recent work supervised by William C. Smith & Co./WCS Construction, there's also long been the question of the big metal fence that Gray had installed around his property in 2008. That work turns out to have been performed by Mid-Atlantic Deck and Fence Co., of Gambrills, Md., a company that also does not possess a license to work inside the District. This quote, from company president Bruce Beauchamp, is fairly fascinating:

"How we got into this, I have no idea," Mr. Beauchamp said, adding that his company rarely, if ever, works in the District and did not obtain a permit. "Our contract says the buyer will obtain the permit. I don't even know where to get a ... permit in D.C."

Federal authorities believe former D.C. Taxicab Commission chairman Causton Toney participated in a long-running bribery scheme while he held that position from 2005-2007, the Washington Post reports this morning. A recently unsealed affidavit lays out the FBI's suspicions against Toney, who has not been charged with any crime, but whose home was raided in October. more ›

Tom already told you about Tim Craig's story in today's Washington Post, which outlines how D.C. Council Chair Vincent Gray used council stationery to solicit a $20,000 contribution from Comcast to help pay for Democratic Party activities at last year's national convention. But potentially even worse news for Gray also came today in the form of this story by Washington Times reporter Jeffrey Anderson, which alleges that some questionable work was performed on Gray's Hillcrest home by developer William C. Smith & Co. – a huge company that has a long list of contracts with the District government, and doesn't usually offer basic home repair services. more ›

With relations between Mayor Adrian Fenty and the D.C. Council as strained as they are, you'd think the city's chief executive might do what he could to make things just a little bit better. But if a hearing today before the council on the ongoing Department of Parks and Recreation contracting scandal serves as any indication, that doesn't seem to be the case. more ›

If you've been following the large-scale FBI investigation into attempts to bribe public officials associated with the D.C. taxicab industry, you've got to read Jason Cherkis's cover story this week in the Washington City Paper. Cherkis spent some time with a few of the 30+ men named in the indictment, and found that federal prosecutors may well be overreaching in their attempts to prosecute some of these guys. more ›

Ward 1 D.C. Council member Jim Graham is relinquishing his lead role in oversight of the city's taxicab industry, despite an earlier determination from Council Chair Vincent Gray that Graham should keep taxis in his portfolio as chairman of the public works and transportation committee. Graham has asked Gray to transfer taxicab oversight powers to the Committee of the Whole. more ›

When D.C. voting rights advocacy organization DC Vote launched its "I Am DC" ad campaign earlier this summer, it placed posters featuring the faces and stories of 10 D.C. residents (including our own Martin Austermuhle) on Metrobuses and other visible spots around the city. But recently we noticed that images of the posters available for download on the DC Vote web site now number only nine. Who was on that 10th poster? It was embattled Jim Graham chief of staff Ted Loza. more ›

A creepy new development today in the ongoing federal investigation into allegations of widespread bribery attempts inside the D.C. taxicab industry, courtesy the Post's Del Quentin Wilber: court documents released today detail how one of the 39 men charged in the bribery ring, Yitbarek Syume, allegedly threatened to murder FBI informant Abdulaziz Kamus when his name surfaced in media reports shortly after the investigation became public.

The papers reveal that Yitbarek Syume met with an undercover FBI agent and an informant on the day after the top staffer of a prominent D.C. Council member was arrested on bribery charges. The three men discussed the high-profile arrest and how to avoid detection of their scheme, which funneled more than $300,000 to a D.C. government official, prosecutors wrote in court papers, citing a surreptitious recording of the meeting.

Federal authorities have arrested 27 people so far in a massive bribery case tied to the D.C. taxicab industry. Two indictments released today accuse a total of 39 individuals of conspiring to bribe city officials in order to obtain fraudulent taxi licenses between 2007 and 2009. more ›

Even though a new Washington Post report today suggests D.C. Council member Jim Graham (D-Ward 1) may not actually be a target of the corruption investigation that ensnared his chief of staff, the D.C. Republican Committee keeps hounding him like he definitely is. more ›

After first merely postponing a hearing on his recently proposed taxicab legislation in the wake of related federal bribery charges against his chief of staff, Ward 1 D.C. Council member Jim Graham has gone ahead and withdrawn the bill entirely, Tim Craig is reporting at D.C. Wire. In a rich bit of political theater, Graham is also apparently trying to sell reporters on the notion that this decision has "nothing to do" with the charges against Ted Loza. "Graham said he is pulling the bill because of confusion and opposition within the taxicab industry to a medallion system." Suuuuuure. more ›

Two big updates today on the ongoing federal bribery probe into Ted Loza, chief of staff to Ward 1 D.C. Council member Jim Graham. more ›

Last week's arrest and indictment of Ted Loza, Ward 1 D.C. Council member Jim Graham's chief of staff, continues to put Graham in a rather unpleasant spotlight this morning. After WUSA9 first reported on Monday that the FBI investigation was also targeting the councilman, FOX-5 followed up last night with its own story, noting that Graham refused to go on the record all day on Monday in response to the allegations (earlier that morning when we saw him, Graham claimed he still hadn't read the story). more ›

Dimmed luster, my ass! Regardless of the brewing Ted Loza/Jim Graham scandal, the folks who participated in this year's Fiesta DC did a great job putting on a colorful, fun, well-attended event that deserves to be judged apart from anything else. Here's just a few of the shots our Flickr contributors grabbed on Sunday in Mt. Pleasant. more ›

Freshly delivered to our inbox is a press release from the office of D.C. Council member Jim Graham (D-Ward 1). The title? "Councilmember Graham Postpones Hearing on Taxicabs." Yeah, good call. more ›