Opinion

The excuses were pitiful. Shameful even. A 911 center's director and staff tried to convince everyone nothing was wrong with dispatchers taking four minutes to process a call for a house fire with people trapped. The director told one…

When DC elected officials passed the 2014 government-contracting law giving preference points to small, disadvantaged businesses and other companies that obtain certification from the Department of Small and Local Business Development…

Our electricity bill is outrageous. It is a financial burden, but it is also a shameful monthly reminder of the damage that one family is blithely doing to the planet. The house is now airtight, over-insulated, shuttered and shaded.…

It is early evening in the midst of a historic time: a pandemic paired with a long-overdue push for racial justice. We are sitting in a beautiful Northwest DC public playground. The swingset, the climbing hill and the nearby benches are…

Some top executives in DC Mayor Muriel Bowser’s administration appear to be suffering from amnesia. Maybe it’s the stress of dealing with the novel coronavirus pandemic and public health emergency. How else to explain why they are…

Mayor Muriel Bowser’s designation of the street in the front of the White House as Black Lives Matter Plaza, accompanied by street art emblazoning the slogan on 16th Street NW, marked an eventful, tumultuous and contentious time in the…

We recently commemorated the 30th anniversary of the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Having spent the past 30 years working to ensure the Smithsonian museums and National Zoo are inclusive and welcoming to all, I am…

In the middle of a deadly global health pandemic, DC Mayor Muriel Bowser’s administration has decided to shake up the city’s system for delivering health care to poor residents who are on Medicaid. Many of them are people of color and are…

The DC Council Committee on Government Operations, chaired by Ward 4’s Brandon Todd, recently gave preliminary approval to the Racial Equity Achieves Real Change Amendment Act of 2020. The legislation, now known as the REACH Act, was the…

When the novel coronavirus pandemic sent the District into a public health emergency, thousands of DC residents (87% of them Black) were at significant risk of contracting or dying of COVID-19 — because they had no homes. This inequity is…

It was billed as the DC Council’s 32nd legislative session of the current two-year term. Far from routine, however, it was a spectacle of reckless budgeting and poor policymaking punctuated by incivility and unprofessional behavior. …

Here in our nation’s capital, we are proud that our local policymakers are leading the fight against climate change, but we must also recognize that our commitments to reduce climate pollution require follow-through. The CleanEnergy DC…

The recent surge in public attention to police violence against Black communities — not to mention the ongoing pandemic that has disproportionately harmed Black and brown people — has prompted a moral call to action in DC and across the…

That question often is asked during certain lawsuits when the parties are trying to determine how much should be paid in a settlement or judgment. Frequently, projections about potential future earnings are used to make the determination.…

The DC Council may shift millions of taxpayer dollars in the fiscal year 2021 local budget to fund or expand violence interruption programs for which there has been no significant or objective evaluation. Neither the Office of the…

Shared adversity can bring a community together, and I’m happy to see that greater Washington is responding in solidarity in the face of both racial inequality and the immense public health challenge of COVID-19. These two…

Learning is about the process of acquiring new skills — and building knowledge around not just what’s in the curriculum, but also about one another. A guiding light of DC Mayor Muriel Bowser’s leadership around the extraordinary…

Yael Smiley and Kimberly Perry wrote a May 21 op-ed in The DC Line titled “Family, medical and caregiving leave are essential for all of us.” Yet they lobbied for, supported and now applaud the scheduled July 1 implementation of the…

After listening last week to DC Board of Elections (BOE) chair Michael Bennett and executive director Alice Miller trying to explain the chaotic mess they made of the June 2 primary, I wondered, Where is Emmett H. Fremaux Jr.? The…

The irony was not lost on me. How about you? DC’s top lawyer and prosecutor, Attorney General Karl Racine, recently filed a lawsuit against the DC Housing Authority for failing to provide “critical security enhancements to properties…