DC News Roundup

With Council Chairman Vincent Gray moving ever closer to his installation as mayor of DC, news abounds about the structure and content of his new administration.  Here is a brief collection of the important items of the last week:

Gray names chief of staff and city administrator, gives others walking papers

In the largest set of personnel moves since the departure of Michelle Rhee, Vincent Gray chose Gerri Hall to serve as his Chief of Staff and Allen Lew to stay on as City Administrator.

Gerri Hall is a former executive at Amtrak and is currently a vice preseident for human resources at Sodexho, a food services provider.  GW students will be familiar with the corporation as the manager of the J-Street and Mount Vernon dining halls.

Allen Lew currently serves as the director of the District's Office of Public Education Facilities Modernization, an office created in the Fenty administration to oversee school reforms.  In his new role of city administrator he will be responsible for the day-to-day operations of city departments.

Despite a petition drive by some DC residents to keep him on, Department of Transportation  director Gabe Klein submitted his resignation Wednesday.  Klein spearheaded the implementation of smart-growth strategies in the city, and was particularly well-liked by cyclists and public transit advocates.  

DC Council Chairman Vincent Gray to come to GW Campus

Vincent Gray, Chairman of the DC City Council and Democratic nominee for DC mayor will be coming to the School without Walls Thursday, October 14th as part of a series of town hall meetings in  each of the city's wards.

The meeting, one of eight scheduled, is intended to provide a forum for Ward 2 residents to come together and share ideas, according to Gray's campaign website.  The Chairman and presumptive mayor will be joined by each ward's councilmember and neighborhood advisory committee.  

Speaking at the School without Walls holds special significance for Gray; education policy was a central point of contention in his campaign against Adrian Fenty, and the fate of Fenty's prominent Chancellor for Public Schools in a Gray administration remains in doubt.

Ward 2 was not friendly territory for the Democratic nominee during the hotly-contested September primary - Fenty won the area by a 45-point margin, Gray's second worst showing after Ward 3.

Regardless of the possible opposition, Gray plans to speak with members of the community as part of his "One City" campaign mantra.  Gray's spokesman acknowledged in an statement to the Washington Post that the nominee realized he had a lot of work to do to win over his predecessor's supporters.

For anyone who cannot make the 6:30 meeting, WRGW News will be providing wall-to-wall coverage of the event right here at wrgwnews.com, including a liveblog and analysis of the forum.  For those who do wish to attend, the town hall is open to the public and will take place at the School without Walls, which is at 2130 G street across from the GW Delicatessen, and should last from 6:30 to 8:30pm.

DC Mayor, MD Governor Races Heat Up

With primary elections only five months away, races at every level are beginning to heat up, DC and Maryland included.

In DC, Mayor Adrian Fenty's reelection bid appears to dace a formidable challenge in DC Council Chairman Vincent Gray. Gray, who officially announced his candidacy to be the Democratic nominee for Mayor on Tuesday, appears poised to mount a campaign challenging Fenty's sway over African American voters, a group with which Fenty has recently struggled.

Due to DC being an overwhelmingly Democratic city, the Democratic party's primary is widely considered the true competitive race for mayor. Despite this sentiment, Rob Noel, GW college Republicans communications director refused to rule out the possibility of a strong Republican candidate.

"The citizens of DC are beginning to warm to many republican positions, perhaps most notably the school choice program that republicans advocate," Noel said in an email to WRGW, "Parents are tired of sending their children to DCs (sic) failing public schools and would greatly benefit from the ability to send their children to thriving private schools. A Republican mayor would likely work hard to give them that opportunity."

Michael Garber, Noel's counterpart in the College Republicans, denied to throw support behind a particular candidate in the primary, vowing to support whoever wins that election during the general contest.

In a more traditional partisan race, Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley, a Democrat, appears to most likely face Republican Robert Ehrlich in a rematch of the 2006 contest. The Washington Post reported Tuesday that Ehrlich plans to ride a wave of "anti-incumbent, anti-spending" sentiment among voters to the statehouse.

Despite these sentiments, polls show Ehrlich behind O'Malley by 6.5 points, a margin similar to his loss in the 2006 election.

The College Republicans described Ehrlich as "a strong candidate...[with] a strong platform to run on," specifically noting his previous stint as governor of Maryland. They demurred when asked to explicitly support him, however, electing to await the result of the state's Republican primary.

The College Democrats expressed support for O'Malleys candidacy, and are "looking forward to the challenge" posed by his reelection campaign.

D.C. Council proposes legalization of medical marijuana

D.C. City Council member David Catania proposed a bill to legalize medical marijuana in D.C. on Tuesday January 19^th. The bill was co-sponsored by nine out of the thirteen other council members.

The drug will be given only to chronically ill patients or registered caregivers in order to ease the symptoms of serious illness. The proposal allows the Department of Health to regulate how the policy would be implemented; including the conditions for which the drug can be prescribed.

The legislation also declares that medical cannabis would only be available from five dispensaries in Washington, each located at least 1,000 feet away from schools.

Medical cannabis is currently legal in fourteen states. One of the biggest challenges for D.C. is where to grow the drug because it is illegal to ship across Virginia or Maryland’s borders.

Free Condoms Campaign Seeks to Increase Access

Condoms are one of the best ways to protect against unwanted pregnancies and the spread of HIV and STD’s.  Yet many CVS’s around the country, including in DC, are making it difficult to obtain these contraceptives.

Mike DeAngelis, spokesperson for CVS, told WashingtonCityPaper.com that many CVS’s in DC and across the nation have placed condoms in lock-boxes to prevent potential shoplifters from “grabbing a whole bunch of condoms and running out of the store.  The stores that had to keep condoms locked experienced shoplifting to such a degree that our entire inventory was being wiped out.  There were no longer condoms available for customers to purchase.”

But Caroline Sparks, an Associate Professor of Prevention and Community Health at the George Washington University, does not believe that theft prevention is a justifiable reason to put condoms in lock-boxes.

“It takes 10 cents to produce a condom,” says Sparks.  “A three pack sells in CVS for $5.99.  We think that CVS can absorb losses from theft.  We have asked that they just make condoms a loss leader and be good citizens by helping reduce HIV rates.”

Sparks was involved in the launch of the “Save Lives: Free the Condoms” campaign in 2006, which advocates for the elimination of lock-boxes in favor of open shelves to display condoms for purchase.

“The purpose of the campaign is to get CVS to stop locking and/or restricting access to condoms in low income, primarily minority communities which have high HIV/AIDS rates,” says Sparks.  “The company does not lock condoms in primarily white neighborhoods in Washington DC.  We have also asked CVS to adopt a national policy that they will not lock condoms or restrict access to them anywhere.”

Cure CVS, a national campaign also working on this issue, has done studies that show that CVS’s are more likely to put condoms in lock-boxes in urban areas that are predominantly black, which Sparks calls “discriminatory.”

According to CureCVSNow.org, “The proportion of CVS stores that lock up condoms increases with the percentage of residents of color in the stores’ zip codes.”  You can see Cure CVS’s study here.

In response to calls for freed condoms, many CVS’s have switched to clear, plastic, vending-machine like “click-boxes,” which many stores had already been using to dispense razor blades.  Sparks, however, does not see this as a reasonable solution.

“It is difficult to get condoms from a [click-box],” said Sparks.  “Sometimes rows of [click-boxes] have a bar that locks the whole row so people still have to request a key.  If the boxes are not fully stocked, then people cannot reach into them to grasp the next box.  They also make a lot of noise and anyone near the aisle can hear customers trying to open them.”

The campaign is now a project of the Metropolitan Washington Public Health Association (MWPHA), and several graduate students in public health at GWU are now working with MWPHA on the campaign and with the DC City Council on increasing access to condoms.

-Alex Laska