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Gray Spends Close to $1 Million on Citizen Outreach Efforts: When he ran against Mayor Adrian Fenty, Vince Gray complained that the incumbent didn’t listen to anyone. Now that he’s mayor, Gray is listening a lot—and it’s costing the city. The Post reports that Gray’s administration has spent $1 million on summits, town halls and other such meetings as part of his plan to be out and about in the community. The expenses have ranged from rental costs to a $14,000 teleprompter, which was purchased to save money on constantly having to rent one. While most political types don’t see anything wrong with Gray’s outreach, they do note a larger problem—the mayor still has trouble identifying and communicating exactly what his administration is about, a problem that Fenty did not have.

Maryland Student Arrested for Threatening Mass Shooting Rampage: A student at the University of Maryland was arrested yesterday for posting comments on various websites threatening to go on a “shooting rampage,” reports WTOP. Alexander Song, 19, was taken into custody and sent to a hospital for an emergency psychiatric evaluation after writing that he planned on “going on a shooting rampage all around campus until the police come and kill me” on Reddit and other websites. He faces a single misdemeanor charge of disorderly conduct, and has been suspended by the university.

D.C. Not Monitoring Registered Sex Offenders: The District isn’t doing a particularly good job checking up on the 989 registered sex offenders in the city, writes the Examiner. Part of the problem seems to be a fight over who’s actually responsible for them—the D.C. police or the Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency. Both Virginia and Maryland do routine compliance checks on registered sex offenders four times a year, making sure that they live where they say they do. D.C. doesn’t seem to be expending the same effort—four D.C. men gave police headquarters as their address, something police didn’t notice and now cannot account for their whereabouts.

Briefly Noted: Maryland continues debating smoking ban for cars with kids in them … Elected officials spend money feeding themselves and constituents … Metro officials travel to Japan to see new rail cars … University of Maryland fraternities try alcohol-free rush … Plans give better idea of where D.C. United stadium might go.

This Day in DCist: On this day in 2011, we discovered that Stephen Strasburg is a very enthusiastic tweeter. In 2010, a woman was chosen to coach the Calvin Coolidge Senior High School football team and Metro encouraged people with smart phones to stay away from the train’s doors. In 2009, proponents of same-sex marriage in the District started their fight for marriage equality.