Martin Austermuhle

The Story Behind Those Expensive Exxon Gas Stations Wolf Blitzer Loves To Tweet About | DCist CNN’s Wolf Blitzer loves to tweet about the expensive Exxon gas stations closest to him, setting off heated debates about the state of the national economy. But in most cases, they’re abnormally expen...

Since gas prices seem to be increasing, a reminder for people who want to make a political point in D.C.: That Exxon station not far from Union Station and the Senate always has way higher gas prices than almost any other station in town. dcist.com/story/21/11/...

Yikes, the D.C. Court of Appeals decision is pretty withering in its assessment of the Public Service Commission's decision not to have a trial-like evidentiary process on Pepco's multi-year rate increase.

Pepco's multi-year rate increase isn't dead yet, it's just getting sent back for another hearing in the Public Service Commission. And the hearing has to be like a full trial.

BIG PEPCO NEWS: If you're angry about high electricity bills, the D.C. Court of Appeals just tossed out the Public Service Commission's last two-year rate increase (for years 2024-2026) for Pepco on procedural grounds.

BUT: I'm told no immediate bill changes for D.C. customers.

DC tax payers can now file, despite Trump tax cut drama No pause or delayed deadlines are now expected.

Go forth and file your tax returns, D.C. residents. The city's CFO says there won't be any interruptions in tax-filing season this year, amidst a confusing fight with Congress over local tax law: 51st.news/time-to-file...

I appreciate that the CFO has brought certainty for District taxpayers. Residents should continue to file their taxes for tax year 2025 as usual.

All of these initiatives, if they get the required signatures, would appear on the November ballot. The rent-freeze one, though, could be pushed into next year because of ongoing delays and challenges. Realtors and developers are going to fight this one tooth and nail.

Finally, the third proposed initiative would increase the minimum wage in D.C. to $25 by 2030, and again phase out the tipped wage. That one was cleared today for access to the ballot. It still has to get through another hoop or two before proponents can collect signatures.

Interestingly, the D.C. attorney general opined that the proposed ballot initiative was legally sound to be on the ballot. But today the elections board asked for additional legal briefing on the constitutional issues raised by opponents. So that's on hold.

Realtors, building owners, and developers are very much opposed to the rent freeze, and say that imposing one via a ballot initiative would amount to an unconstitutional taking. Ballot initiatives can't do anything that violates the U.S. Constitution.

The second proposed initiative, sponsored by @dcaffordability.bsky.social, would impose a two-year rent freeze, and a few other things. That one is earlier in the process; proponents are trying to get the elections board to give it the legal go-ahead. But it's facing stiff opposition.

The proposed ballot initiative to ban the sale of foie gras is furthest along. It has cleared the legal hurdles, and next the elections board will finalize the language. Once that's done, proponents can start collecting the roughly 25,000 signatures to get it on the Nov. ballot.

BALLOT INITIATIVE 🧵: Today the D.C. Board of Elections held a hearing on three different proposed ballot initiatives: One that would ban the sale of foie gras in D.C., another that would impose a two-year rent freeze, and a third to raise the minimum wage to $25.

Whether kids went to school was based on plenty of factors, including how passable roads and sidewalks were. But distance of course matters. At Janney, 88% of students live in-boundary. At Beers, it's 33%.

Take Janney Elementary in Tenleytown. On January 29, the Thursday after the storm, 90% of the school's 720 kids attended. But over at Beers Elementary in Ward 7, attendance was 16% of the school's 364 students.

Remember when D.C. was first to reopen its public schools to students after the January snowstorm? School officials said more than half of DCPS students attended school those first days, which is true. But data I got shows extremely wide variation in attendance rates.

Now, there's still an internal political fight between Lee on one side and Bowser and the council on the other. Lee says he's not going to release the revenue that would be produced by decoupling, which has angered the mayor and council.

It's also quite unprecedented. D.C. has never really defied Congress like this, if defiance is the right word. (You could say D.C. found a legal loophole to ignore Congress.)

All of this has been a highly technical, legal, and political fight involving D.C.'s branches of government, Congress, and the White House. And there may well be political consequences for D.C.; congressional Republicans could try and punish the city, for one.

But it also means that there shouldn't be any delays to the current tax-filing season, which probably would have happened had the move by Congress to repeal D.C.'s decoupling bill actually succeeded.

What does this mean for D.C. taxpayers? It means that some of the Trump tax cuts (no tax on OT or tips, higher standard deduction) passed by Republicans last year won't apply to *local* taxes for tax year 2025, the ones you'll be filing through April 15.

NEWS: D.C. CFO Glen Lee has spoken! In a letter to @mayorbowser.dc.gov and D.C. Council, Lee says that tax-filing season *will continue* and that the council's decoupling bill is the law of the land.

I spotted Henderson walking around the Wilson Building yesterday with a glass jar full of water and a single wipe floating in it, to show how long it can take for the wipes to disintegrate.

Now I'm curious whether the bidet industry (Big Bidet?) has gotten to her.

D.C. has also fought producers of disposable wipes for years over claims that the wipes are flushable. While the producers won the first round, they lost a later class-action lawsuit filed in South Carolina.

Recall that disposable wipes are of very questionable flushability, a reality that had a very real impact last month when wipes clogged a pump at the site where a D.C. Water sewage pipe had collapsed. The clog led to another sewage overflow.

WAR ON WIPES? @chenderson.bsky.social has introduced a bill that would impose a *15% sales tax* on disposable wipes. (The standard sales tax is 6%.) The revenue would go to help @dcwater.bsky.social pay for sewer upgrades. Her bill would also exempt bidets from the city's sales tax.

So 144 potential cases out of more than 328,000 ballots would be a fraud rate of .04%.

Some of the cases of alleged voter fraud have been settled with fines, notably in cases where there was voter confusion or a seemingly honest mistake.

Interesting: The D.C. Board of Elections says it has or is investigating 144 cases of alleged voter fraud from the 2024 general election. That includes people voting with the wrong ballot, or voting in D.C. and somewhere else. There were 328,871 ballots cast in that election.

This might be the first time that D.C.’s CFO has been directly protested. Someone sent me a photo of a @freedcproject.bsky.social flyer posted outside his office in the Wilson Building today.

In the meantime, the body-worn camera footage component of Pinto’s bill is retroactive to last August, which means footage from the shootings involving federal agents (at least two where MPD was present) could be released at some point soon.