Photo by M.V. Jantzen

The D.C. Council will meet tomorrow for the first legislative session of the year, and D.C. Council Chair Kwame Brown held the first of a series of monthly press conferences today to preview legislation that would be introduced and considered. The highlights:

• Brown said that he would be introducing legislation that would make it a graduation requirement for all D.C. public high school students to take the SAT or ACT and apply to at least one college or university. (Ten states have similar requirements.) He said that with the increasing number of jobs that require at least a college degree, students should be pushed towards higher education. Member of the D.C. press corps peppered Brown with questions regarding the feasibility of such a law, the cost for students and families that may not be able to afford the tests or application fees and whether the District should make it a policy to funnel all students towards a four-year college, when vocational or other options have been floated as workable alternatives.
• If you owe the District any money in fines or fees, get paying soon or the city may come after you. Councilmember Mary Cheh (D-Ward 3) said that legislation that would centralize the District’s debt collection responsibilities under a single office run by the D.C. CFO would come up for a second and final vote tomorrow. Under the measure, a nine-person office would be responsible for collecting everything from unpaid parking tickets to more substantial fees — some $395 million is owed to the city — doing the job that some agencies do and others don’t do at all. According to Cheh, for example, the D.C. Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs collects only one-third of what it is owed on an annual basis. All told, the District expects to take in $22 million over four years once the new debt collection agency is functional. Cheh also indicated that the District would seek to negotiate reciprocity agreements with Maryland and Virginia so that outstanding fees and fines in the city could be held against residents of those states. Currently, no such mechanism exists.
• The District’s age-old snow shoveling law, which we told you about last month, is coming up on tomorrow’s agenda. Under the law, residents and businesses would have to shovel their walks within eight daylight hours after the end of a storm or face fines. The legislation seeks to improve the existing enforcement mechanism, which requires the District to clear the walk of a scofflaw and then sue them to get the money back. Such a mechanism has been used only once since the city’s existing law has been on the books — and that’s been since 1922.
• Comprehensive ethics legislation passed late last month will be voted on as an emergency so that Mayor Vince Gray can go about establishing the D.C. Board of Ethics and Government Accountability, which will be charged with overseeing ethics enforcement.
• Brown will also be introducing legislation to create a commission to prepare for the 40th anniversary celebration of Home Rule, scheduled for December 24, 2013.