Councilmember Jack Evans, center, is seen at Nationals Park in 2013.

Pablo Martinez Monsivais / AP Photo

A blockbuster report in the Washington Post found that Ward 2 Councilmember Jack Evans’ consulting firm received stock in an electric sign company right before he introduced legislation that would have directly benefited that company.

This is just the latest in the ongoing saga of Evans and Digi Media, which journalists have revealed in drips and dribbles for more than two years. Here’s a handy explainer to make sense of what’s going on. (After all, Wikipedia might not be very helpful.)

Who are the players?

Evans, the longest-serving member of the D.C. Council and the chair of the WMATA Board, represents the ward that includes most of downtown, as well as the National Mall, the White House, the Central Business District, Dupont Circle, Georgetown, and Foggy Bottom.

He’s currently one of the council’s most business-friendly members (and worst parkers), and, until this year, long held a side gig at a law firm. While councilmembers are allowed to maintain other jobs (Ward 3’s Mary Cheh, for instance, is also a law professor at George Washington University), Evans’ work with law firms like Patton Boggs and Manatt, Phelps, & Phillips has led to questions about potential conflicts of interest.

In 2016, Evans also formed a consulting firm called NSE Consulting LLC with local lobbyist N. William Jarvis, who then lobbied him on multiple occasions, as first reported by Jeffrey Anderson of District Dig, who has been cataloguing the relationship between Evans and Digi for years. Remember this firm.

We’ve reached out to Evans’ office for comment on this story and have not received a response.

Digi Media Communications is a company, led by Don MacCord, that sought to install brightly-lit electronic signs in D.C. commercial centers that would display advertisements. MacCord, who is now facing allegations of securities fraud, previously started a “fabric sign” business in the late 1990s, and Evans introduced Council legislation that allowed these signs in D.C., per the Post. MacCord also has a decades-long history of shady practices like going into debt collection, incurring a tax lien, passing a bad check, breaching contract, and more, as Anderson reported.

So what did Evans (try to) do for Digi?

Digi had big plans for its electronic signs, and started installing them in the summer of 2016 in the District.

The only problem? According to a lawsuit filed by D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine in late August of 2016, Digi Media put up signs “despite having no sign permits to do so and in clear violation of the District’s subsequent orders to stop.” (The D.C. Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs had issued stop-work orders earlier that month.)

Digi denied the allegations in Racine’s suit, but the D.C. Superior Court issued a preliminary injunction in November, writing that “the District is substantially likely to succeed on the merits of its claim that Digi has engaged in illegal construction.”

Less than a month later, Evans introduced emergency legislation at the Council that would have rendered Racine’s lawsuit moot by making the practice explicitly legal. “This purely impacts Digi Media,” At-large Councilmember Elissa Silverman told DCist at the time. “I think that’s a dangerous precedent to set—that the council will just come in and help a company when the courts and our regulations prohibit what you’re doing.”

Evans withdrew the legislation when it became clear he didn’t have the votes.

What did Digi do for Evans?

It appears that Evans’ dealings with Digi came with some major perks. The company offered his son a paid internship, as District Dig reported, and MacCord provided Evans with dinner, special event invitations, and contributions to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign so Evans could attend a Nantucket fundraiser.

But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Digi sent NSE Consulting (Evans’ firm) two checks for $25,000 apiece in August 2016, after the D.C. Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs said it would revoke permits for Digi’s construction. Evans returned the checks at the end of August, but the exchange still triggered an investigation from the D.C. Board of Ethics and Government Accountability.

In the latest revelation from the Post, emails and other documents reveal that NSE Consulting also received 200,000 shares of stock in Digi in late October of 2016, shortly before Evans introduced that emergency legislation following Racine’s lawsuit. The Post estimates that the stock was worth about $100,000. Evans told the Post he returned the shares.

The Post also outlines a slew of donations from Digi to Evans’ constituent services fund, much of which has since been refunded.

Sounds sketchy! How’s that ethics inquiry going? 

The Post reports that the D.C. Board of Ethics and Government Accountability suspended its investigation into Evans a few months back, while suggesting that a legal investigation could potentially be in the works. “Board officials declined to give a reason, but in other cases they have stepped aside in deference to law enforcement investigations,” writes Steve Thompson.

In another wrinkle, on Thursday, Council Chairman Phil Mendelson announced the committee assignments for the coming term. Evans was newly placed on the Judiciary and Public Safety Committee, which oversees the Board of Ethics and Government Accountability.

How are people responding?

On the Kojo Politics Hour on Friday, At-large Councilmember David Grosso came out in favor of an ad-hoc committee to investigate these goings-on, which could include an outside lawyer.

“I think the Council still has an obligation to look closely into this,” he said.

Grosso said that, when news first broke about Evans’ potential pay-to-play with Digi last spring, he approached Mendelson about an ad-hoc committee to understand the potential ethics implication for the Council. In Grosso’s account, Mendelson said at the time that they should wait until the ethics investigation from BEGA wrapped.

At least one Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner in Ward 2 is already calling for Evans to step down.

https://twitter.com/jarharnett/status/1075908969615437825

And here are some other responses from people and organizations that follow politics in the District:

https://twitter.com/byaaroncdavis/status/1075913913399689217

https://twitter.com/jasonshevrin/status/1075910432219693056

 

Filed Under: Councilmember Jack Evans, dc council, ethics,