jonetta rose barras: A lobbying campaign captures DC officials’ attention

Unspool the controversy surrounding the efforts of one-time Digi Outdoor Media president Donald MacCord Jr. to corner the market in DC on digital advertising and what you will find is an absolute mess. It’s easy to see how greed and politics have ensnared both branches of the District government in a federal Securities and Exchange Commission lawsuit against the advertising executive and his chief financial officer.

All eyes may be on the relationship between MacCord and DC Council member Jack Evans, but actions by the city administrator and other legislators also raise some ethical questions. Several lawmakers met with lobbyists for Digi Media, despite the fact the company was being sued by the government for violating local signage laws.

To recap: Over the past several months, the public has learned that MacCord lobbied Evans, offering his son a summer internship and the Ward 2 legislator stock certificates in Digi Outdoor Media; Evans said he declined or returned those gifts. The company also lubricated the political campaigns of several local politicians and constituent services funds. In 2016, Evans sought to persuade his colleagues to amend, on an emergency basis, existing DC signage laws. To be fair, the proposed amendment came after the city administrator had created emergency regulations deliberately intended to prevent Digi Media from implementing its plan. Evans pulled the legislation, which had been a countermove; he lacked the nine votes necessary to declare an emergency.

While investigating those details, The Washington Post stumbled on an unrelated matter: two emails from 2015 and 2018 that Evans had sent out seeking outside employment. By using government personnel and other resources for non-official business, he had violated DC Council rules and its Code of Conduct.

Evans is expected to be formally reprimanded by the council next week, Chairman Phil Mendelson told me during a telephone interview. The legislature held an administrative meeting on Tuesday during which members discussed general issues like the budget process; however, they went into a closed-door session to speak about the Digi Media affair, Evans’ actions, and a federal subpoena served on the council last week.

Some people have urged Evans to resign. Others have argued he should be removed as chair of the Committee on Finance and Revenue. I do not share their zeal.

Undoubtedly officials should be held accountable. Stripping any member of a chairmanship should not be some knee-jerk exercise, however. It should not be predicated principally on press reports. It should be the result of a thorough independent investigation. The SEC and the DC Board of Ethics and Government Accountability are conducting just such probes. The council should wait for those to be completed.

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There may be other reasons to delay any steps other than a reprimand. In my view, Evans wasn’t the only legislator engaged in questionable actions. The entire council wasn’t served with that federal subpoena for nothing — although Mendelson attempted during our conversation earlier this week to downplay that fact.

“A subpoena is a very serious thing. However, it is a request for evidence,” Mendelson continued. “The evidence may or may not be there that there was a criminal act.”

Residents should be just as concerned, however, about non-criminal behavior that could jeopardize the integrity of the institution. Consider that multiple council members met with lobbyists from Digi Media. J.R. Meyers, a former campaign manager for then-Ward 7 Council member Yvette Alexander and well-known political facilitator and operative David Wilmot, spent days inside the John A. Wilson Building between November and December 2016, according to the District Dig and confirmations I received earlier this week from various lawmakers. Further, Evans wasn’t the only legislator to entertain the possibility of passing emergency legislation that would benefit the signage company.

All of that was being done despite the fact that on Aug. 31, 2016, DC Attorney General Karl Racine had filed a lawsuit accusing Digi Media and several other corporations of failing to comply with stop-work orders issued by the Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs. In other words, Digi Media was flagrantly violating local laws, rules and regulations.

Were those meetings with Digi Media lobbyists scheduled because the company and MacCord had made campaign contributions or because Meyers and Wilmot were also frequent political contributors? Interestingly, several of the council members who agreed to the meetings had been engaged in discussions about the need for campaign finance reform to curb the so-called pay-to-play culture in DC politics.

The AG’s lawsuit is ongoing, an agency spokesperson told me earlier this week. It is in the discovery or information-gathering stage, which is expect to end this month. Racine’s office next plans to file a motion for summary judgment. A spokesperson declined to respond to my question about whether the office had been served with a subpoena; it may be the only major government entity whose ethics have not been called into question thus far.

Ward 1 Council member Brianne Nadeau failed to reply to my email request for confirmation of her participation in a meeting with Meyers and/or Wilmot. A spokesperson for Ward 5’s Kenyan McDuffie said he talked with Wilmot in the fifth-floor hall after a legislative session; Ward 3’s Mary Cheh disputed published reports that she had met with either Meyers or Wilmot.

However, Ward 4’s Brandon Todd and at-large Council member Robert White confirmed they had engaged in conversations with the lobbyists in their offices.

At-large member Elissa Silverman told me in an email earlier this week that “At the time, there was discussion of emergency legislation. Mr. Wilmot requested the meeting, I wanted to understand the issue, so I met with them.”

What didn’t she understand by then? There had been a public hearing earlier about allowing LED signs to be installed on the exterior of Nationals Park. Silverman said she was “heavily involved” in that matter. She voted against the Nats’ proposal. MacCord and others wanted a more robust system of signs, permitting them outside of designated entertainment districts.

Mendelson defended his meeting with Digi Media lobbyists. “The line between pay-to-play can’t be drawn at the point of a conversation. An elected representative should have an open door.”

He said the council knew about the AG’s litigation and that the proposed emergency “legislation was a way around the litigation.” He said it isn’t unusual for the legislature to take up a measure even if there is a pending court case. He cited as an example the lawsuit filed against the government two years ago by charter school advocates, who had asserted they had not received their fair share of the public education budget. Council members met with charter advocates and later increased funds for the sector.

In my view, those are quite distinct. In the former, the city’s own top lawyer had filed the lawsuit. Council members seemed eager to entertain how to assuage Digi Media, a documented scofflaw subject to multiple stop-work orders.

Legislators seem to have taken the all’s-well-that-ends-well approach. Silverman and Mendelson made clear they did not support the Digi Media emergency legislation; since there were not the required nine votes needed to declare an emergency, Evans pulled the measure and the council never acted on the bill.

What will happen the next time lobbyists representing someone who is accused of knowingly violating the law come knocking at city hall? If there is an existing AG lawsuit, will council members support that effort? Or, will they entertain the scofflaw, creating yet another possible end run around local laws?

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jonetta rose barras is a DC-based freelance writer and host of The Barras Report television show. She can be reached at thebarrasreport@gmail.com.