jonetta rose barras: Ward 3 DC Council member Mary Cheh’s legislative ride comes to an end, Part 2
A movie scene keeps coming to mind: Someone is operating a metal detector, hoping to get rich quick by discovering gold. The device makes a sound and just beneath the surface is a coin that looks like the real thing — but is it? Unsure, the treasure hunter tosses it in a bag.
That could be a metaphor for seeking to make sense of Mary Cheh’s career and legislative contributions. Some people I spoke with during the summer recalled, with laughter or derision, what they called quirky or whacky proposals, including some legislation that won approval. The Pesticide Education and Control Amendment Act of 2012, which affected how pests like roaches and rats are killed, seemed the most memorable. “People just want them dead,” said one longtime DC civic leader who closely tracked the council.
Others have praised Cheh as a thoughtful, visionary and responsible leader. “When the council had to grapple with one of the most difficult scandals it ever had to deal with, [Chair] Phil Mendelson handed it to Mary to handle,” said longtime political consultant Chuck Thies, referring to the controversy around former Ward 2 Council member Jack Evans’ violation of the legislature’s ethics rules. Cheh chaired the council’s ad hoc committee charged with recommending a suitable punishment; Evans resigned prior to a vote of expulsion.
During her council tenure, which began in 2007, Cheh has conducted or been involved in a total of seven investigations, including those involving CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield’s hoarding of its revenue surpluses; electronic voting failures in DC; procurement practices at the Office of the Chief Technology Officer; personnel management and contracting practices at the Department of General Services; and the financial activities of then-Ward 8 Council member Marion Barry.
“Mary has, more often than not, been the adult in the room,” Thies added during an interview with me in July.
“Mary has a credible and rich legacy,“ said Kathy Patterson, who preceded Cheh in representing Ward 3. She added that the two once thought they might have the opportunity to work together at the John A. Wilson Building. Alas, Patterson lost her 2006 bid for council chair. (Years later, she became DC’s auditor, a position appointed by the DC Council but with offices in a building several blocks away.)
Interestingly, the lead staffer on the Clean and Affordable Energy Emergency Act of 2008 — Cheh’s first major environmental accomplishment — was Patterson’s son. “He worked for her for a year and a half before going to law school. It was fun to have him walk into the building when I walked out of it.”
Patterson also cited Cheh’s Death With Dignity legislation as a hugely important achievement.
“I think people should have the opportunity at the end of life, within six months of their impending death, to be able to have medical aid in dying,” Cheh told me during our interviews in May and June.
Not everyone will make that choice. “But they want to have it as an option. I think people are entitled to have that,” she added.
When I requested a list of Cheh’s top legislative achievements, I received a 55-page portfolio. She initially declined to narrow it. That’s “too much like asking a mother which of her children she prefers,” she replied.
Her policy interests and inspirations have come from a variety of places. “My staff would sometimes be amused because I would come in on Monday morning after reading things in the [New York] Times or whatever and [I’d say] I want to do something about this.
“It has been a fabulous opportunity,” continued Cheh. “I can’t even tell you how grateful I am to people having put me in this position to be able to do something about things that I [thought] were wrong.”
During a tour one day in Ward 8, for example, she glimpsed a grandmother sitting at a kitchen table. The kids under her care were watching television rather than playing outside, and the midmorning snacks they were eating weren’t necessarily nutritious; that scene prompted her to push through the Healthy Schools Act.
“I did Healthy Schools, Healthy Tots, Healthy Parks . … The idea is to focus on nutrition,” said Cheh. The legislation ensured a free breakfast for any public school student. It also helped establish school gardens and nutrition education.
She has helped expand worker and consumer protections, including restrictions on payday lending. When firefighters go into buildings and encounter certain chemicals and later develop cancers, the burden is on the government to prove that cancer wasn’t caused by the chemicals that they encountered.
Cheh has scores and scores of proposals that have become law — on issues ranging from evictions to public education, health care, LGBTQ rights, animals, seniors, tenants and affordable housing, ethics, elections, campaign finance, transportation and public safety.
Along the way, she sparked criticism from now deceased talk show host Rush Limbaugh. More recently she made Russian President Valdimir Putin’s “enemy list.”
Gold-plated or gold
While reporting on her work through the years, I sometimes have felt like that person with the metal detector: Is it gold or gold-plated?
More than a few times, I dubbed her antagonistic and nanny-in-chief for her continued efforts to prevent DC residents from consuming sugary drinks.
In defense of an effort that began in 2010, she cited an independent poll that found 70% of District residents who participated in the survey supported curbing such consumption. She said that “Big Soda, like Big Pharma and Big Tobacco” pulled out all the stops to defeat her legislation.
Once, “It looked like we had six votes, but I needed a seventh,” Cheh recounted. At-large Council member Kwame Brown seemed poised to join the group, “but he said, ‘What about kids? They’re out on the playing fields and they want to have Gatorade or whatever.’”
Undeterred, she circled back to that policy proposal multiple times during her career. In at least one case, she made allegations that carried racial tones against a colleague who didn’t get behind her soda tax.
I have blasted her when she has allowed her favoritism and loyalties, like those for DC Central Kitchen and certain individuals at the Office of Contracting and Procurement, to infringe on objective oversight. In 2017, for example, I chided Cheh when, as chair of the Committee on Transportation and the Environment, she released an investigative report involving the contracting practices at the Department of General Services. She made the document public despite the fact that her committee voted not to release it.
Those cases revealed a politician with a stubborn streak, wedded to an agenda, especially when she believed in the righteousness of her position. The support she has garnered over the years — not just within Ward 3, but around the city — provided sufficient Teflon.
Gail Sonneman, a spokesperson for the Housing Justice Committee in Ward 3, praised Cheh, for example, for negotiating a settlement between the government and neighbors around the construction of The Brooks, a short-term family shelter in Cathedral Heights, ensuring in the process that its residents had the dignity of private bathrooms. Cheh was not as animated around the group’s recent efforts to get the city to purchase the Wardman Hotel for redevelopment as a mixed-income affordable housing and retail complex.
Meanwhile, she pushed through modernization or reconstruction of fire stations, libraries and recreation centers. “We’re still working over there in Chevy Chase,” Cheh said of efforts to modernize the community center and library in a mixed-use project with affordable housing.
“We were the only ward that didn’t have an outdoor pool.” That deficiency was remedied when Hearst Pool opened this summer after a contentious, prolonged community debate over its planned construction.
Soon after her election, Cheh worked on getting the Wilson Aquatic Center renovated. Responsibility for the indoor pool’s maintenance was unclear, and the facility had fallen into disrepair. Its modernization “was mired in all of this confusion among agencies,” she said.
“And I got [then-Mayor Adrian] Fenty to go over there with me. We went into the old pool. It was like Dresden after the war,” continued Cheh. “And I said, ‘We have to fix this.’” So he said, “Yeah, we’ll get it fixed.”
It was renovated. But issues around the pool continued long after that.
The schools in Ward 3 have been modernized; two new ones are slated for Foxhall Road and MacArthur Boulevard to address overcrowding in many of the area’s facilities, a long-standing concern for Cheh and many of her constituents.
Cheh also has been involved in bringing support to Ward 3 businesses through the city’s DC Main Streets program. “I’ve gotten Main Streets galore and I’ve often linked them to Main Streets in other wards, so people didn’t think I was just funding my own,” she said.
Lighting the fire
Cheh may not be inclined to reveal her preferences as to particular laws she’s shepherded, but her passions have been on full display. “I always wanted to be able to do some work in the area of the environment and climate change, just because I was fully aware of the precarious situation that we are in as a nation, as a world. Even though we’re just a small geographic jurisdiction, I thought we could accomplish more than what we’ve been doing.”
That belief led her to author or co-author more than 17 environment-related bills. Among the most notable are the Brownfield Revitalization Amendment Act of 2010, which gives the DC government the authority to force “polluters rather than taxpayers” to cover cleanup costs for hazardous waste removal; the Water Quality Assurance Amendment Act of 2012; the CleanEnergy DC Omnibus Amendment Act of 2018; the Electric Vehicle Readiness Amendment Act of 2020; and the Urban Forestry Preservation Authority Amendment Act of 2022. Then, there is the Leaf Blower Regulation Amendment Act of 2018, which, as of the start of this year, “prohibits the sale, offer for sale or use of gasoline-powered leaf blowers in DC.”
That silence you hear has been brought to you by Cheh.
It’s no exaggeration to say she has helped the District gain a reputation as a national leader in the environmental and climate change movements. “When she puts her stamp of approval on things, that counts for something,” said Thies.
In particular, Cheh is “pleased” with the Wildlife Protection Act of 2010 and the Animal Protection Amendment Act of 2008. There is a section in the latter that requires cross-reporting with agencies that deal with domestic violence and harm to children. “There’s a really strong link between people who hurt animals and people who hurt people.”
She has made enemies of more than a few motorists for her efforts “to help the Department of Transportation move the District into the 21st century with modern urban transit” — rapid bus systems, bike lanes.
“One part of unfinished business is to deal more aggressively with our waste problem,” continued Cheh, boasting that she got money placed in the upcoming budget for curbside composting for 10,000 households.
“She went about her work quietly and ingloriously,” said Thies. “I think her presence on the council will be missed.”
Leaving an institution
The legislature today certainly isn’t the one Cheh joined. “When I came on, there were a lot of like old-time folks — [Ward 8 Council member] Marion Barry, [Ward 1 Council member] Jim Graham and others.
“What I liked about the council at that time — they seemed, to me, to be non-ideological. In other words, they didn’t come with a left-leaning attitude. They didn’t come where they wanted to get something done and it was because they felt that this is part of their ideology. They were much more down to earth and practical and problem-solvers than I see with the current council.”
Calling herself a liberal but also a fiscal conservative, Cheh said, “Governing is a practical affair. It’s an attitude perhaps, or an approach to problems. Take crime, for example. This is not a binary problem. This is not a problem, ‘Are we going to do more to prevent crime and to deal with issues that lead to crime, or are we going to have police and security?’ It’s both for heaven’s sake.
“We have to stop getting into those corners where one person is coming from this perspective and the other is coming from that perspective.
“I would often say to my staff on an issue that came up — maybe it wasn’t even in my committee — I would say, let’s figure out what the best answer is. And then I don’t care what the politics are. I don’t care what the activists say. I don’t care what these special interests press me on.
“I want to try to find out what’s best for the public to do in any given situation,” continued Cheh. “I just hope that we have that attitude when we go forward.”
jonetta rose barras is an author and freelance journalist, covering national and local issues including politics, childhood trauma, public education, economic development and urban public policies. She can be reached at thebarrasreport@gmail.com.
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