Jonetta Rose Barras archive page
Jonetta Rose Barras: Economic reality comes to D.C.
Hallelujah! D.C. Council members finally landed in the real world, acknowledging that the city...
Wasting millions in the District
The District faces a $600 million revenue shortfall. Every dime should count. So, why is Mayor...
Education reform continues in D.C.
After a week of smut, lowlife dramas, allegations of contract and grant fraud, and other...
Public money, public image
The D.C. Council should be applauded for starting an investigation into Marion Barry’s...
Public money, public image
The D.C. Council should be applauded for starting an investigation into Marion Barry's awarding...
Constituent services, Barry style
People may think there’s always some drama attached to Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. But they...
Worker relief in D.C.
Relief may be on the way for “at will” District government senior and midlevel...
Political doublespeak
If I don’t get a lot of political demand, I’m probably not going to have a hearing....
Gardasil war continues in D.C.
“This drug is safe; it is effective,” says D.C. Councilman David Catania about Merck...
No-show politics in the District
Mayor Adrian M. Fenty and D.C. Attorney General Peter Nickles cited a letter from the U.S....
The big picture on education
Where is all this going? That’s the question D.C. Council Chairman Vincent C. Gray...
Procurement reform in D.C.? Not quite yet
More than 40 percent of the requests for proposals or invitations for bids issued last year by...
District residents want to understand budget cuts
District residents want a lean, efficient, effective government. Budget cuts don’t really...
Taxes: Still a public matter
This week, Ward 8 D.C. Councilman Marion Barry finally submitted his 2007 tax return. Responding to...
Fathers and daughters: the Greg Jones model
Greg Jones and I are sharing a few laughs. I’m reminding him of those e-mails he and others...
Craziness in D.C.
What’s up with D.C. Council member Jim Graham? The Examiner’s Scott McCabe reported...
DCPS Needs tools to compete
When education choice first gained credibility and popularity, the notion was that traditional...
Republican slugfest in DC
Ten minutes after the six o'clock start time of the Fair Budget Coalition's At-large D.C. Council...
Jonetta Rose Barras: Safety, sanity: Slip sliding away
Save us from handwringers, panderers, preservers of ineffective public policy and the American Civil Liberties Union. They all want to play dodgeball and hopscotch with criminals. They haven’t seen a thug they didn’t want to "give some love" — never mind that thug may have just robbed an old lady or shot a kid.Even after District leaders’ declaration of a crime emergency, people continue to be killed or physically harmed. Youth under 16, facing a 10 p.m. curfew, still haunt the streets at ungodly hours looking for their next thrill...
Jonetta Rose Barras: Governing begins
Jim Gibson, the former head of the D.C. Agenda, and others predicted in 1994 that Marion Barry could be elected mayor but would be unable to govern. Barry’s tainted past, the city’s fiscal woes, and a Congress with no patience for the executive’s infamous shenanigans collaborated to deny him a full political resurrection.D.C. Council Member Adrian Fenty, who defeated Council Chairman LindaCropp to win the Democratic mayoral nomination, doesn’t carry Barry’s burdens. Still, there are questions about whether he will be able to govern.He faces forces similar to those Anthony...
Jonetta Rose Barras: Changing of the guard in Washington
D.C. Democratic mayoral nominee Adrian Fenty has some employees scrambling for cover. Others, including Chief Financial Officer Natwar Gandhi, are feeling the love. Former managers, such as Dan Tangherlini, are being zealously courted.In Ward 4, the line of council wannabes is forming. Willie Flowers, Charles Gaither, Doug Sloan, Muriel Bowser and Michael "I’m-gonna-be-mayor" Brown are hoping for Fenty’s blessing. But Bowser’s the one. Fenty says she’d be a good legislator, but he won’t make any endorsement until after the general election.Meanwhile, Mayor Anthony Williams is creating his own storm. With...
Jonetta Rose Barras: Bobb announces his candidacy for D.C. school board president
Right at the top of the agenda for the majority of residents — even those without children — is the transformation of public education in the District. That’s been an unrealized goal for more than a decade.In the mid-1990s, the financial control board stripped the school board of its power and installed as Superintendent Julius Becton, a retired army general. Arlene Ackerman came next, followed by Paul Vance and Elfreda Massie. Remember her and that huge bonus she received — for nothing? Two years ago, without the congressionally appointed panel,...
Jonetta Rose Barras: Getting lost in the mayoral race
The D.C. mayor’s race feels like Newark, N.J., in 2002. Then, Sharpe James, the incumbent mayor, faced Corey Booker, a bright, savvy, 30-something councilman. Not to be outdone by someone he believed hadn’t paid his dues, James threw at Booker the entire political establishment — labor unions, the business community and civil rights leaders who had been feeding at the public trough since the death of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. The real mudslinging came in Act 3, when James deliberately distorted Booker’s record and accused him of, among...
Jonetta Rose Barras: Mayoral race pushes city to move forward into the 21st century
This mayoral race provides the first authentic challenge to District voters' decision in 1998 to step away from "old guard, race-based politics" practiced by Marion Barry and his acolytes. The candidates voters faced back then included several D.C. Council members, most notably Ward 7’s Kevin Chavous. He was poised to become mayor after Barry declined to run for reelection. But citizens concluded that electing Chavous would mean more of the same. So, they reached for Anthony Williams–then the city’s chief financial officer. A nerdy guy satisfied with balance sheets,...
Jonetta Rose Barras: The right moves, the right vision
The contentious D.C. mayor’s race is receiving most of the attention, but the council and congressional contests aren’t slouching toward irrelevancy. The campaigns to replace incumbents or retiring members have been pure political feasts. The pickings are finest in the competition for council chairman. Two remarkable people — Ward 7’s Vincent Gray and Ward 3’s Kathy Patterson — are vying to lead the legislature. I wish they weren’t opposing each other; both have been consequential players in constructing a new D.C. Gray is known best for his advocacy on behalf...
Jonetta Rose Barras: Don’t forget: It’s about the best interest of the city
The collateral noise being heard in this final stretch to the District primary election is deafening, distracting and wholly disingenuous. Despite major media endorsements, including from the editorial board of this paper, mayoral front-runner Adrian Fenty continues to be accused by his chief opponent of being inattentive and reckless — ludicrous and laughable charges. In the council chairman’s race, some critics have called contender Kathy Patterson, a shrew, a harridan or far, far worse. The line must be drawn. When a woman displays some of the same...
Jonetta Rose Barras: Here’s to your health care
Proposals to improve District government health care services have been like kudzu. D.C. General Hospital was shuttered by the control board, which advocated the creation of a HealthCare Alliance. This insurance program for the poor and working class, supported by Mayor Anthony Williams, got off to a rocky start, but is faring better.The closure of D.C. General was celebrated and cursed. The whiners, along with Howard University, pushed a proposal to create a National Capital Medical Center. That mushroomed into a $400 million plan to construct a 250-bed monstrosity, operated...
Jonetta Rose Barras: Dan Tangherlini: The wizard’s assistant
Folks who believe Adrian Fenty a wizard, capable of changing the District government into some warm and fuzzy steel bullet, cutting through an unresponsive corporation with a wave of his BlackBerry, don’t understand the contradiction of their desires. They certainly don’t understand the city’s entrenched, bloated and abusive bureaucracy.Fenty, who swept the Democratic primary the way former Mayor Sharon Pratt (then-Dixon) promised to broom the government, may be able to do many things. But the radical changes required in the District will not happen swiftly, or magically — even with...
Jonetta Rose Barras: A pox on all their houses
Some want the private sector in charge of D.C. Public Schools’ multibillion-dollar modernization fund — not Superintendent Clifford Janey. Others want the D.C. Office of Property Management to handle routine maintenance. Security already is under the Metropolitan Police Department.Since his mayoral primary victory, D.C. Council Member Adrian Fenty has been talking education takeover. Next week, he leaves for New York to scope out reforms implemented under Mayor Michael Bloomberg.Outgoing D.C. Board of Education President Peggy Cooper Cafritz sees disaster writ large. During the control board era, the Army Corps...
Jonetta Rose Barras: A school takeover: More than widgets and lazy managers
D.C. Council Member Adrian Fenty can look at today’s report from the State Education Office and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to understand a takeover of D.C. Public Schools means more than ensuring widgets are ordered, the bathrooms are cleaned and textbooks arrive on time. It certainly extends beyond whether the superintendent is supervised by the D.C Board of Education or a deputy mayor. The Bridgespan Group, working at the behest of the SEO and the Gates Foundation, looked at 4,300 ninth-grade students in the 2001-02 school year. Based...
