Free Republic

As scores of young people crowded into a hearing room in the Wilson Building on Wednesday, D.C. Council members saw the future of D.C. politics. “There are multiple future council members and a future mayor in this room,” said D.C. Council member Charles Allen (D-Ward 6). But before they run for office, Allen wants to make them voters. A bill he introduced in April would do just that, lowering the voting age to 16. If passed, the bill would enfranchise up to 10,600 16- and 17-year-olds, according to Census Bureau data. It would also be historic. The nation’s capital would...

Former District of Columbia Mayor Vincent Gray, whose sole term in office was dogged by a federal investigation that ended with no charges filed against him, began his political comeback on Thursday, announcing that he will run for the D.C. Council. Gray, a 73-year-old Democrat, lost his re-election bid in the 2014 Democratic primary to current Mayor Muriel Bowser. Three weeks before the primary, a federal prosecutor said in court that Gray knew about an illegal, $660,000 slush fund that helped him get elected in 2010. Last December, prosecutors said they decided not to charge him. Gray has maintained he...

The D.C. Council is poised to lower the cost of speed camera tickets from a maximum of $250 to just $50. The plan unveiled on Tuesday is meant to create the impression that the District has seen the light and has finally decided to go easier on motorists. Considering the source of the latest plan, that’s hardly likely. The District and the for-profit vendor in charge of the robotic cameras dish out more tickets in a year than the city has residents. This has created a pile of loot so lofty that it’s only a matter of time before it...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The chairman of the District of Columbia Council resigned Wednesday effective immediately after being charged in federal court with lying about his income on bank loan applications. The bank fraud charge against Kwame R. Brown, one of the most influential power brokers in the D.C. government, is the latest allegation of criminal wrongdoing to roil local politics in the nation's capital. It means further shakeup on the council. Councilmember Phil Mendelson confirmed to The Associated Press that Brown had resigned. He had submitted a resignation letter by the end of the day. "I have made some very...

Mayor calls on Thomas to resignFederal prosecutors on Thursday charged council member Harry Thomas Jr. with stealing more than $350,000 from the District and failing to report income on his tax returns, bringing closure to a drawn-out saga that reached unprecedented heights in the halls of D.C. government. Documents filed in U.S. District Court accuse Mr. Thomas, Ward 5 Democrat, is of intentionally redirecting $353,000 from youth baseball programs to his personal use from April 2007 to at least February 2009 and failing to report additional income on three successive tax returns. The pair of counts were outlined in a...

D.C. Council member Harry Thomas Jr. arranged to have more than $300,000 in public funds diverted to groups he controlled, and used the money as a lavish personal account, purchasing an Audi SUV and taking trips to Las Vegas and Pebble Beach, the city’s attorney general said Monday. In releasing a highly anticipated report, Attorney General Irvin B. Nathan alleges that Thomas’s inappropriate “conversion” of the money for personal use was “willful, intentional and knowing.” Nathan has filed a civil lawsuit aimed at forcing Thomas (D-Ward 5) to repay the money and intends to refer his findings to the U.S....

Some D.C. Council members are planning to propose legislation that would prevent police from joining a federal program designed to catch illegal immigrants by matching fingerprints of arrestees against a database, officials said. The District announced it was joining Secure Communities in November, but as the Washington Examiner reported earlier this month, the program has yet to get under way because police say they have run into technical difficulties. Now, Councilmen Jim Graham and Phil Mendelson say they are sponsoring legislation that will prevent the program from ever being implemented. They plan to introduce it May 4. Police Chief Cathy...

D.C. Council Member Marion Barry personally benefited from the contract he obtained for his former girlfriend and directed earmarks that "provided substantial financial benefits to some of his close friends and supports," according to a report by attorney Robert S. Bennett. In the report, Bennett stated Barry violated "D.C. law, council rules and policies and procedures" and recommends his findings be referred to the U.S. Attorney for possible criminal charges. Barry responded that he did nothing wrong because the council had no written procedures outlining whom a council member could give a contract to. In July, after news surfaced that...

Harry Thomas Jr. is the Ward 5 Council member who is meeting neighborhood opposition to his proposal to plant a day-laborer center near the Home Depot on Rhode Island Avenue Northeast. The otherwise good residents of the Brentwood neighborhood take exception to the day laborers sleeping under their porches, drinking firewater on street corners and irrigating the trees, bushes and walls in their midst. It is a cultural thing, and the fine folks of Brentwood just do not understand. The need to understand those from a foreign land is important, especially if they have come all this way to sleep...

D.C. Council members yesterday gave final approval to pay raises for themselves and for the city's next mayor, authorizing the increases just days before the current council period expires. The salary measure was one of a number of bills passed during the council's final legislative session before it recesses Saturday. Three new council members and a new council chairman will be sworn in on Jan. 2.

He's the District's "other" Tony Williams. The one without the bow tie. The one who is not the mayor. The one who is a, um, Republican. Antonio "Tony" Williams has heard the jokes: the cracks about being a D.C. Republican and the observations that he shares a surname with the mayor. "I get tons of jokes," says Mr. Williams, who is running for the Ward 6 seat on the D.C. Council. "Like 'Oh, you're the other Tony Williams,' or 'Oh, what's up, Mr. Mayor?' "

D.C. Council members have long distributed to family and friends special license plates that have accrued more than $20,000 in city parking fines, which the plate owners likely will not have to pay. Since the early 1970s, council members and the mayor have bestowed the license plates -- which feature low numbers -- as political prizes. The 13 council members have exempted themselves from parking restrictions and fines since 2001. When lawmakers leave office, the plates they have distributed are supposed to be returned to the city to be reassigned to new officials. However, the tickets owed on those plates...

The D.C. Council Committee on Public Works and the Environment is scheduled today to hold a hearing on three bills that would broaden smoking bans in city workplaces. Two bills would extend the definition of workplaces to include bars and restaurants. One of those bills would provide an exemption for cigar bars that earn at least 10 percent of their revenue from tobacco sales. The third bill, written by committee Chairman Carol Schwartz, would punish smoker-friendly restaurants by quadrupling the business licensing fee [snip] A more sweeping bill awaits consideration in September in the Health Committee, which is headed by...