In the wake of George Floyd’s murder, lawmakers across the D.C. region have passed bills they say reform policing practices. Many activists say they aren’t enough.

Activists and advocates say the D.C. Council should quickly implement recommendations from the Police Reform Commission, but Mayor Muriel Bowser is urging a slower approach.

A Virginia state Senate bill would have ended a six-month mandatory minimum sentence for assaulting police officers. But Democrats and Republican members of a House committee voted to pass it by.

Kaya Henderson has gone about the job of reforming D.C.’s schools quietly, much to the difference of her predecessor, Michelle Rhee. But over the weekend she seemed to outline her philosophy on education reform—and how Rhee went about it.

Would eliminating the need to monitor people over the age of 18 improve the performance of the city’s chronically troubled Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services? Councilmember Jim Graham (D-Ward 1) thinks so.

Ramping up from the previous efforts of…a poster, Mayor Vince Gray’s office announced this afternoon that all Gray cabinet members would sign an “ethics pledge,” confirming their “commitment to the highest ethical standards by avoiding conflicts of interest, use of public resources for personal benefit and other violations of the public trust.”

After what has been a rocky year for Mayor Vince Gray and various members of the D.C. Council, city legislators are sitting down today to start the work of sorting out how to improve the District’s ethics-related laws and enforcement mechanisms.

D.C. Council Chair Kwame Brown has been buffeted by scandal since earlier this year. In recent days, though, Brown has taken to flying the flag of ethics reform, proposing strict new internal disclosure rules for the D.C. Council and telling the Washington Times this week that he’d also like to see changes to how Constituent Service Funds are used.

Photo by dbking. Following his media appearance on NewsTalk with Bruce DePuyt, among others, this weekend’s Washington Post features an op-ed by Ward 8 Councilmember Marion Barry, calling for welfare reform. The op-ed builds off the legislation he has introduced, along with Ward 7 Councilmember Yvette Alexander, to limit the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) to 5 years of assistance. “At present, the District is one of only a few jurisdictions in the…

The D.C. Council went ahead and formally approved Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee’s new powers to fire non-union employees with a 2nd and final vote on the matter yesterday. The measure passed, as expected, by the same 10-3 margin as the preliminary vote in December. “Are you going to see a mass exodus of 488 people? No,” Rhee told the Washington Post yesterday. “Will you quickly see people ineffective at their jobs move out? Yes.” Just…