City Desk reports that reporter Mark Segraves was unceremoniously booted from one of the council’s administrative meetings yesterday, and by council Chair Vincent Gray no less. Gray claimed that the meeting was closed to press because it dealt with matters of the council’s operations, including personnel matters. Segraves countered that several issues from the council’s January 6 breakfast meeting—which was open to the press%mdash;were put off and were to be dealt with at yesterday’s administrative gathering.

Segraves is not a rabble-rouser, but rather a serious reporter obsessed with all things municipal. In 2006 he led the charge to have then council Chair Linda Cropp open up the council’s breakfast meetings, which until that point had been closed off to public scrutiny even though substantive legislative issues were discussed and laws hashed out. District residents are better off knowing that their local reporters can now make it into these sessions. In the legislative process, the devil is always in the details, and it’s only through guys like Segraves that we can get a better sense of just how devilish our lawmakers are trying to be.

Segraves isn’t the only WTOP employee to be kicked out of a government building. In late 2007, political analyst and voting rights gadfly Mark Plotkin managed to get himself ejected from the White House after he lobbed a few very direct questions at First Lady Laura Bush about the disenfranchisement of the District’s residents. There’s apparently something in the water over at WTOP, but we’re loving that these two guys keep drinking it.