Photo by JosephLeonardo.Good morning, Washington. Last night, Mayor Vince Gray gave his State of the District address. It was…long. Eight thousand words long. We’ll have more about it later this morning, but suffice it to say, there wasn’t a whole lot of news made. (People were sleeping. Not kidding!) You’d think that after a day-long hearing in which Councilmember David Catania dressed down a whole bunch of government workers, Gray might have addressed the scandals that have circled around his administration during the post-speech presser. But he didn’t, telling reporters that didn’t want to distract from “talk about the issues facing the city.” Such scandals aren’t part of “the issues facing the city,” apparently.
Lessons Learned From Yesterday’s Day-Long Oversight Hearing: Hmm, where to begin? Well, let’s see. Both D.C. Inspector General Charles Willoughby and Department of Health Care Finance Director Wayne Turnage said that former Gray chief of staff Gerri Mason Hall pressured them to meet with Sulaimon Brown about jobs. Talib Karim — who also resigned from the Department of Health Care Finance recently — said that Brown was fired in part because he harassed a woman around the office. Brown himself was in attendance at the hearing, but said he would only consider testifying at the second hearing on the topic if Mayor Gray also agreed to testify. Of course, the most dramatic part of the hearing probably came when Marion Barry — who apparently had not yet had enough of sparring with David Catania during the morning — came back, told Catania that people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones and that he wasn’t “sticking around to listen to [Catania’s] bullshit” on the dais. (Suffice it to say, Barry wasn’t as apologetic to chair Mary Cheh as he was the last time he cursed on the dais during a hearing helmed by Harry Thomas, Jr. in 2009.)
Man Attacked On National Mall: Here’s a rare story — a man told police that he was attacked by two masked men while standing in the Castle Garden at the Smithsonian Institution Building yesterday. It’s the first attempted robbery in some time on the Mall, as the men allegedly went through his pockets after attacking him. The man suffered minor injuries.
Housing Hardships: Some heartbreaking stuff from Jason Cherkis, who shares emails obtained from Department of Human Services administrators, desperately trying to locate housing for the city’s homeless during hypothermia season. “”Based on the current pace we are housing families and the capacity issue we are facing at DC General tonight, we need to step up the pace considerably to ensure we have enough capacity as we do not want to leave any priority one families out in the cold,” wrote one administrator on December 7. Some emails talk of having one space for the night — for the entire city.
Briefly Noted: How will the Ward 5 Walmart handle day laborers?…Man fatally shot on 1300 block of Bryant Street NE…Committee of 100 responds to this Lydia DePillis post: “we also like to have fun”…Park View: home to one of the larger school redevelopment sites in town, but not that many kids…So Radiohead put out a newspaperish, uh thing; it’ll be distributed at Jefferson and 7th Streets NW or to Union Station for those interested.
This Day in DCist: Last year, reports broke that Vince Gray would run for mayor, President Obama announced that he’d throw out the first pitch on Opening Day at Nationals Park and y’all were squabbling about the effectiveness of the bag tax.
