Opinion

“Do not get trapped in an optimism bias. Do not assume what was true last decade will be true in the next,” former DC Mayor Anthony Williams advised the DC Council earlier this month during a marathon roundtable focused on risky…

“I don’t need to hold sessions to hear what the community wants,” declared independent mayoral candidate Rhonda Hamilton during a Sept. 22 debate sponsored by the DC Office of Campaign Finance’s Fair Elections Program. “I’ve been on the…

Congress has proposed funding cuts to the DC Courts that threaten more than just the court’s budget. They threaten the professionals and infrastructure that make justice possible in the District — as well as the residents who rely on the…

When MedStar Washington Hospital Center in DC announced the closure of one of its two postpartum maternal units over the summer, alarms understandably went off throughout the government and advocacy community. In the District and in many…

DC residents who want an honest and ethical government should aggressively advocate for U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro to retry Ward 8 DC Councilmember Trayon White Sr. on federal bribery charges. Earlier this week, U.S. District Judge…

The DC Council is expected to meet next month, just weeks before the general election, to hear testimony on a bevy of taxes and other revenue-raising mechanisms, including a wealth tax, a business activity tax, a pied-à-terre tax, and…

Technically, as chair of the DC Statehood Green Party, Darryl Moch is the leader of the city’s oldest progressive political organization. That should give him a leg up in the race for an at-large DC Council seat in the November general…

An open letter to Democratic mayoral candidate Janeese Lewis George from the Coalition for DC Public Schools and Communities (C4DC): Selecting the next chancellor of DC Public Schools will be one of the new mayoral administration’s most…

The promise ranked choice voting (RCV) proponents made nearly two years ago was that new people would get elected to more offices with more votes. If the June primary is any indication, that was all talk. For the most part, the winners…

People care. That's what our social worker said after sharing her case notes on Ms. Rose, a new client referred to us by a local bank teller. Ms. Rose (a pseudonym) had returned to the bank multiple times over a week’s time,…

“The council is bringing this on itself,” Jack Evans, a former Ward 2 legislator and expert on District finances, said earlier this week during an interview with me about yet another congressional encroachment into the local government’s…

It could be, as some people have suggested, that Elissa Silverman's arrival back to the John A. Wilson Building as an at-large councilmember is karma's work. She might claim otherwise, saying that hard work and determination are what…

Summer concert season is here, but the usual enthusiasm among District residents is not. Across the country, reports have emerged of softer ticket sales. After years of rising ticket prices — concert ticket prices having surged 105%…

Since 2020, when Mayor Muriel Bowser and her deputy mayor for health and human services, Wayne Turnage, decided to reorganize the city’s multibillion-dollar Medicaid managed care program in the middle of an unprecedented global pandemic,…

The DC Council created an expert advisory panel in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. This year the mayor and council have agreed to kill the District’s Homeland Security Commission despite solid successes during its 20-year…

Between the DC Council’s first budget vote on June 9 and its second earlier this week, its proposed spending jumped by $50 million — ultimately exceeding by nearly $500 million Mayor Muriel Bowser’s initial proposal. That add-on…

This month, the DC Council voted to reverse most of the mayor's proposed cuts to early childhood programs, adding roughly $60 million to the Early Childhood Educator Pay Equity Fund and nearly $50 million to the childcare subsidy program…

DC Council Chair Phil Mendelson may not seem a Yoda doppelganger: He lacks pointy ears; he is also considerably taller and much younger than the Star Wars Jedi Master. What’s more, compared to the Galactic Republic, DC’s government is…

As we approach DC’s first mayoral transition in over a decade, it is worth taking stock of how the city is performing on public safety, and how the next mayor can continue to move us further toward being one of America’s safest cities. …

On Sunday, just two days before the DC Council voted unanimously to give initial approval to the city’s nearly $22 billion Fiscal Year 2027 Budget and Financial Plan, I asked Chair Phil Mendelson whether it would be fair to say that he and…