Climate Change and Getting to Know the DC Council Vol 4: Jack Evans and the Finance Committee
Dear Runners,
This week I am continuing my ongoing series on DC’s Councilmembers with Councilmember Jack Evans of Ward 2. You can read my profiles on Charles Allen of Ward 6, at-large Councilmember Anita Bonds, and Mary Cheh of Ward 3 on the blog. In case you haven’t been reading regularly lately or you’re a new subscriber, I thought I’d reiterate why I’m doing this series, and in the process maybe a little bit about why I’m doing this whole newsletter.
I have been focusing more and more on local DC activism in my resistance efforts over the last few months. And the reasons why are very simple: it’s more fulfilling, you can have more of a direct impact, and it’s easier. Now, more fulfilling is pretty subjective. What you find fulfilling is up to you. But the fact is we are at a national disadvantage here in DC by not having voting representatives in Congress (we also have many advantages, which I’ve written about before, like being in the city where most major protests and marches are held, but the disadvantage point still stands). We do not, however, have no representation: we have a city government. And the decisions that city government makes affect the lives of a lot of people. When we decide to spend money on the street car instead of affordable housing, that has real consequences. And here in DC we are unique even from other city and state governments, because we are a single city operating like a county or state. We don’t have to travel to the state capitol to talk to a Governor: Mayor Bowser is, for all intents and purposes, our Governor. And she is right here in the city. We are closer in geography and in terms of levels of bureaucracy between us and them to the DC Council than almost any other resident of any other part of the US is to their major elected officials. And I write to random Councilmembers all the time, and they write back. So I have had a lot of success jumping in — even when I knew nothing, and I really thank the people who have been doing this much longer, who knew much more than me, who laid the ground work and who helped me — and making a real difference by having a smaller, more local focus. I don’t ignore the national level politics by any means, but I really believe people can make a bigger difference most often on a smaller scale. We need people to do things at all levels though, so, pick your poison.
That all being said, I think most of us (like me, but I’m learning) haven’t been that involved in DC politics or issues until recently (or maybe not even now, but there’s still room for you!). We don’t know what the issues are or who to go to. I could not have pointed out to you a single Councilmember other than my own until six months ago when I started lobbying at the Wilson Building (which is DC’s City Hall, by the way). And now, if we’re going to do this, it’s important to not only know who our elected officials are, but to know what issues they have the power to change. As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, at a training I was told it’s important to ask for what you want, and to ask the person who can give it to you.
Also, what, is there, like….a different version of this photo I could have used from another movie?
Huh. Never heard of it.
That’s why I’m doing these profiles on the Council and which committees on the Council they chair. If your relevant issue falls under their committee’s purview, then that is who you call. And maybe, hopefully, after this series you’ll know what to do.
Small Immediate Acts of Resistance
That are never calling your Senator or Representative
- Make your weekly calls for Paid Family Leave and the DC Budget. Last week (and the week before that and the week before that…I am going to keep doing it!) I asked you guys to sign up to make calls alongside Jews United for Justice every Friday in April and May for Paid Family Leave, and every Thursday in April and May for other budget priorities like fair housing. Don’t forget to make your calls this week! They only take a minute and if you look at those JUFJ pages, they provide the script for you. This week we are calling Councilmember Bonds and asking her to find the money to support the Local Rent Supplement Program, which provides rent subsidies and vouchers for low income District residents. The Mayor’s budget does nothing to take families off the DC Housing Authority wait list (which has over 40,000 families on it) and JUFJ — along with the Fair Budget Coalition and other advocacy groups — are asking for the funds to help 466 families get affordable housing. The script and phone number are included in the every Thursday in April link above. Call Councilmember Bonds and ask her to help DC’s poorest families.
- Keep putting pressure on corporate sponsors to drop Trump’s golf courses. I’ve written about this one before, but guess what, you can keep doing it/do it for the first time still! It was advertising pressure that ultimately got Bill O’Reilly’s contract with Fox News canceled. Too many advertisers pulled their support from his show. And we can be part of the campaign to get corporations to stop advertising at Trump’s golf courses too. if you recall, the US Women’s Open in July is being held at a Trump gold property. You can call or tweet (or both!) at some of the major corporate sponsors of this event. Some of the targets include American Express, Deloitte, Lexus, and Rolex. Wall-of-Us has scripts ans other resources for your use. Don’t let the President of the Unites States continue to get rich off of his private gold resorts.
- Comment to the EPA and tell them you want clean air. The EPA is seeking public comment on an Executive Order signed by 45 instructing them to review many of their air pollution and radiation regulations and either repeal or modify them. Between now and May 15, members of the public can submit comments to the EPA, using a process detailed here, letting them know that you think regulations on air pollution and radiation are necessary for public health and safety. You do not have to be an expert to comment, but anyone who has environmental expertise and could share it in their comments would certainly be helpful! Public comments do actually sway agendas, so make your comment to the EPA and urge them not to repeal clean air or radiation emission regulations.
- Call the Department of Education and oppose appointees who oppose Title IX. 45 has named two problematic appointees to be General Counsel and Acting Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights, respectively, in the Department of Education. Both of these candidates, Carlos Muñiz and Candice Jackson, have troubling records when it comes to defending sexual assault. You can call the Department of Education at 1–800–872–5327, press 3 to speak to someone, and use the script provided by Know Your IX, or just say what you think, to oppose Muñiz and Jackson and tell the Department of Education to protect sexual assault survivors and defend Title IX.
Topic 1: Jack Evans, Ward 2, and the Committee on Finance and Revenue
This week we are taking a trip over to lovely DC Ward 2. Ward 2 contains a very interesting diversity of neighborhoods. On the one hand, it has wealthy areas of DC such as Georgetown and Dupont Circle, but is also stretches across downtown — sweeping over Farragut Square and Penn Quarter — to include parts of Mt. Vernon Square and even Shaw. It also includes the National Mall.
According to 2010 Census demographic data, Ward 2 was 71.7% White and only 12.6% Black in 2010. For comparison, the DC’s overall percentages were 38.5% White and 50.7% Black. The median household income for Ward 2 was $76,592 a year in 2010, which was actually well below DC’s overall median annual household income of 2010, which was around $85,000 a year. I’m sure if you broke those down by neighborhood — for example Georgetown versus Shaw — you’d see drastic differences. And for those of you who are statistics nerds, medians are used to compensate somewhat for the way that outliers can have strong effects on the mean. The mean annual household income for Ward 2 in 2010 was $114,962. If there were not a lot of outliers, you’d expect the mean and median to be much closer together. Since the mean is so much higher, it’s an indicator that there were quite a few high-end outliers. Another interesting fact is that there were more households making over $200,000 a year, the top bracket measured for in the data I’m using, in 2010 in Ward 2 than in almost any other household income bracket. The short version is that though the median income was below DC’s median income overall, there is obviously a lot of wealth in Ward 2.
Ward 2’s Councilmember, Jack Evans, has been on the DC Council since a 1991 special election, and has been reelected seven times since then, making him currently the longest serving DC Councilmember by far. Evans is — like pretty much every successful DC politician — a Democrat, but he’s also, in my mind, a fiscal conservative of sorts. He has an economics degree from the University of Pennsylvania, and he’s the guy that is going to put fiscal policy and financial security before funding social programs. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, mind you, and perhaps the Council as a whole, which is very progressive at the moment, does need a tempering voice in the realm of spending. But don’t expect Jack Evans to jump on the social issues band wagon. For example, he is one of the staunchest opponents of the Paid Family Leave bill. If you live in Ward 2, or know someone who does, you’re going to want to approach Evans from a business or spending angle in order to get what you want. One might even say that the best way to win over Evans is….with logic!
That being said, Evans is a huge supporter of LGBTQ rights, He cosponsored the 2009 bill that brought marriage equality to DC and has, according to The Washington Blade, “been the lead sponsor or co-sponsor of virtually every LGBT-supportive bill that has come before the legislative body.” So he clearly has his progressive causes.
Evans has also been the subject of criticism for spending money from his constituent services fund — funds which are normally used to help needy constituents pay for unexpected expenses — for tickets to sporting events. According to a Washington Post piece from 2013, Evans had spent, at that time, nearly $136,000 on tickets for sporting events in the preceding ten years. Evans has defended the purchases, saying he gives most of the tickets away to Ward 2 constituents and that he does it to support DC’s local sports teams.
Councilmember Evans is currently the chair of the Committee on Finance and Revenue. The other four members of the committee include Kenyan McDuffie of Ward 5, at-large member Elissa Silverman, at-large member Roberrt White, and Ward 7 Rep Vince Gray. The Finance Committee handles, in the Council’s own words, the following issues:
…matters relating to taxation and revenue for the operation of the government of the District of Columbia; general obligation bond acts, revenue anticipation notes, and industrial revenue bonds; tourism and cultural affairs; the establishment of business-improvement districts; and matters relating to the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority.
So taxes, WMATA, tourism, business development, these all fall to this committee. Offices under this committee also include the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, the DC Sports Authority, the DC Lottery, and DC’s Office of the Chief Financial Officer (an appointed official who has to determine the projected cost of any proposed DC law). One issue currently being debated for the Fiscal Year 2018 budget is a raise in the estate tax. The Mayor’s budget raises the amount of an inheritance that is taxed from $3 million to $5 million, meaning people who inherit $4 million estates (obviously the neediest among us) will not longer have to pay any taxes to the District of Columbia under this proposal. Oppose tax cuts for the wealthy? You might want to call Councilmember Evans. Another issue the Finance Committee is being pressured on by local activists is divestment from Wells Fargo. Several cities have already divested from the bank over its role in funding the Dakota Access Pipeline, and local groups want DC to do the same. There is, in fact, a resolution that has been introduced in the Councilmember David Grosso, to start the divestment process, but Councilmember Evans has refused to have any hearings on it. The DC Reinvest Coalition is trying to fill up the room at the Finance Committee meeting on May 4th to demand hearings. If you aren’t available during the day on May 4th, but you care about this issue, CM Evans is the guy to call.
I asked Councilmember Evans to respond to my questions on activism in DC, but as of the time of this writing I had not received an answer.
Topic 2: Climate Change
Whoo boy, guys, I picked a big topic today. I am not, by any means, going to go over the history of climate change, political or scientific. Suffice it to say, carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere are at historic highs; the current head of the Environmental Protection Agency is a climate change denier; and the EPA’s budget under 45’s proposal would be cut by over 30%. The EPA handles issues like tap water (Flint, Michigan anyone?), cleaning up waterways such as the Chesapeake Bay and the Great Lakes, providing funding for the cleanup of environmental catastrophes like oil and chemical spills and leaks, and of course climate change initiatives like the EnergyStar appliance program, not to mention vehicle emission standards. That last article I linked to above, from the New York Times, has a comprehensive list of all the EPA programs in danger from the cuts and a couple of paragraphs on what each one means. Highly recommend it.
The point is, we are in some trouble. And we were in some trouble before 45 became president, but there is no doubt his actions wills likely make things worse, and may have far reaching consequences that we can’t yet identify. I urge all of you to do the small actions you can — like attending the People’s Climate March (see Events below) or commenting whenever the EPA has open comment periods (see Acts of Resistance above) — to try to prevent the devastation of the agenda to rollback climate change. Be vocal about your support for clean energy programs, the Paris agreement, and local initiatives. I have mentioned previously that DC is a member city of the Compact of Mayors, and has a detailed plan for tackling climate change in DC, including cutting our greenhouse gas emissions by 50% by 2032. We have already cut emissions in DC by 24% since 2006, making us just under halfway there. Local efforts to combat climate change will become even more important if Federal efforts are halted.
But we have to keep an eye on the Federal level as well. I went to a panel on climate change this weekend and they singled out two Executive Orders they are currently very worried about, which include the EO on offshore drilling and one on the antiquities act, which is declaring national monuments. President Obama set aside more land under than antiquities act than any other President, at more than 3.9 million acres. His set asides include Bear’s Ears in Utah, one of his most controversial land set asides, and almost certainly among the first to go under President Trump should he decide to start rolling back declared national monuments.
Time has an excellent piece on the history of the Antiquities Act and what its likely intended original purposes were — in short, everyone knew Teddy Roosevelt, who was president at the time, was a huge conservationist, and it’s likely they knew what he would do with the power in the Act — but 45’s EO has tasked Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke to
reassess the size of national monuments designated under the Antiquities Act of 1906, to determine whether the acreage covered by that designation “conforms” with the “requirements and original objectives of the Act,” while balancing “the protection of landmarks, structures, and objects against the appropriate use of Federal lands and the effects on surrounding lands and communities.”
It’s clear they are looking for justification to rollback President Obama’s monument declarations. According to the Time piece. “presidents have usually only rolled back national-monument designations for national monuments that they have personally designated”. Well that looks like it’s about to change.
The offshore drilling EO, expected to come out this Friday, would open up Atlantic and Arctic waters protected under President Obama for drilling. President Obama invoked an obscure 1953 law in order to ban drilling in these waters, and 45 wants to undo that. Legal experts are saying its unlikely he can do that through an EO alone without further legal challenge, but we’ll see how it goes.
Other areas of concern for future action noted by the panel were budget cuts to the EPA, as mentioned above, and to NASA, whose satellites provide us with much of our data on climate change phenomena; the rollback of clean power plants; the cutting of miles per gallon standards on newly produced vehicles; and the slashing of methane regulations. These are just a few issues that 45 could affect pretty drastically.
The last thing I want to discuss is the Paris Climate Agreement. For those who don’t know, the Paris Climate Agreement is an historic pledge withint the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, signed by nearly 200 countries agreeing to curb carbon emissions and try to curtail global climate change. 45 promised during the campaign to pull the US out of the agreement, and there are many people in his inner circle urging him to do so, Steve Bannon perhaps chief among them. Surprisingly, one of the people in 45’s cabinet who wants the US to remain in the agreement is Rex Tillerson, the current Secretary of State and former Exxon mobile CEO. Also surprisingly, large businesses such as General Mills, Walmart, Unilever, and Shell and BP are also urging 45 not to abandon the agreement. At the panel I attended on climate change, one of the panelists noted that politicians, at this moment, seem to be more conservative on climate change even than the lobbyists and businesses they are supposedly fighting for, so that seems to be true in this case.
If the US decided to pull out of the Paris Agreement, it will take four years to do so. There are provisions in the agreement that prevent withdrawal for at least three years, and then there is a one year delay after that, making the withdrawal complete in late 2020 if we do it now. (We could actually get out sooner by completely withdrawing from the UN Framework on Climate Change, which has been brought up as a possibility by 45’s officials). Additionally, the United States is one of the world’s largest polluters, it’s true, but our withdrawal will not crumple the agreement. CNN notes that Russia and China are both publicly committed to reducing emissions, and according to Jennifer Morgan, executive director of Greenpeace:
US officials “stand completely alone on being climate deniers…If you look at the speeches from Paris, all the heads of state who came — all — and even fossil fuel providers, identified this as a real, science-based issue that they’re working to solve together.”
So the Agreement will live on with or without US participation, but obviously it would become more difficult to meet the Agreement’s goals without the US, and would likely hurt our diplomatic credibility worldwide (Tillerson’s argument for staying in). 45 and his goons are meeting tomorrow to discuss the issue, and there are still wide internal disagreements, but many believe the White House will ultimately choose to remain in the Paris Agreement. The Washington Post quotes Al Gore, who met with Trump and Ivanka on climate change, as saying he blieves there is a “better than 50/50 chance” we will remain in the agreement.”
However, the Post also notes that if we do remain it may be largely a symbolic gesture to the international community. There are no fines or sanctions for not meeting the climate and emission reduction goals laid out in the Paris Agreement, and 45 has spent the first hundred days in office rolling back most of the Obama-era rules that would have made the US meeting its Paris goals possible. So remaining in the Agreement is only one piece of the puzzle. Without a drastic policy change, the US will be unable to meet the goals it agreed to in signing it, which is, of course, the whole point.
I hope Trump and his Band of Merry Men
are really pleased with themselves either way.
You can reply to this newsletter or email me at theforerunnerletter@gmail.com with your thoughts, criticisms, or ideas. Let me know if you did any of the things I recommended or found anything useful or informative. I ❤ feedback! Check out my Medium page if you’d prefer a blogged version of this newsletter or would like to read any of my previous issues. Last week’s letter was on Ward 3 Councilmember Mary Cheh and efforts to bring an intersectional bookstore to DC.
Follow me on Twitter at @speaknojessica. And definitely get your friends to subscribe to The ForeRunner at http://tinyletter.com/theforerunner because where else will you get someone randomly assigning the personalities of Star Trek characters to DC’s elected officials? Who will your Councilmember be? The suspense is killing you I’m sure. As always, I end with a dog pic to cheer you up and DC Events for this week all the way at the bottom.
In solidarity,
JM
Event link round up (local to DC unless otherwise noted):
April 28: Digital Organizing Workshop hosted by Positive Force DC, RSVP required
April 29 (many locations): People’s Climate March, hosted by The World
April 30: Action Basics, hosted by Good Guys DC, RSVP Required; I really enjoyed the training of theirs that I went to in December
April 30: Ward 3 Brunch for Paid Family Leave, hoted by Jews United for Justice, RSVP required
May 1: May Day Workers Strike, hosted by various organizations, includes a Rally and March during the day, and a Rally in Lafayette Square in the evening
May 2: DC Abortion Fund Fundraising Happy Hour, hosted by WIN (the Women’s Information Network), RSVP required
