DCPS has missed multiple deadlines for getting new food service contracts to the D.C. Council for review.

The decision not to award contracts to a local company, and major Bowser donor, triggered significant interest from the administration, according to WAMU.

But DCPS has left the bargaining table.

After what seemed like yet another scandal in-the-making for Mayor Vince Gray, the fight over grass-cutting contracts in the District seemed to largely fizzle late last week after a D.C. Council committee grilled city officials and two contractors that had bid to cut grass and clear snow in the city.

You know, if you polled this editor and as to what the next big D.C. government scandal would be centered on, a landscaping contract wouldn’t have been near the top of the list. But, alas, here we are.

So, you have the means to land a seat for R.J. Cooper’s pricey tasting menu at the newly opened Rogue 24, eh? Better get ready to sign a contract.

UPDATE: Well, that sure was quick — Ben Giles, who reported out the Examiner story cited in this post, tweeted this morning that the mezzanine/platform escalator on the K Street side of the Farragut North station has reopened. Huzzah!

Freeman Klopott has the story that the District’s Office of the Chief Technology Officer was overcharged by a D.C.-based company to the tune of $3.1 million, including $600,000 in profit, between 2006 and 2008. Delivering Business and Technology Solutions Inc. (DBTS), which had received close to a whopping 20 percent of OCTO’s outsourced tech projects and employs at least one former OCTO staffer, had charged D.C. for its employees’ paid time off and also lacked a paper trail for its subcontractors. (Both are pretty big no-nos in the world of procurement.)

Earlier this year, several Cleveland Park homeowners signed up for a free home energy audit offered by the District’s Department of the Environment. Now they have letters from the contractor that DDOE had perform the audits, claiming that liens had being placed on their homes in order to recoup payment for the service. What a deal!

The Post reports that Marion Barry has been cleared on charges that he broke city law by giving his ex-girlfriend Donna Watts-Brighhaupt a sole-source contract in 2009. Barry wasn’t cleared of all wrongdoing — Office of Campaign Finance director Cecily E. Collier-Montgomery’s order stated that “[d]isclosure of the relationship would have resulted in the transparency of the transaction and removed any cloud from the contract process,” and concluded that Barry still broke city guidelines for…