Martin Austermuhle

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.

Anyhow, both are emergency bills, so they will remain in effect for 90 days. Permanent versions will have to be passed, and will be reviewed and can be repealed by Congress.

Ultimately they split the difference, somewhat: Pinto's bill dealt with body camera footage, and White's the documentation of federal agents.

As something of an aside, there was clear politics on display. Pinto and White, who are both running to be D.C. delegate, had introduced somewhat similar yet competing bills, setting off some bickering around which bill would do what and how.

There was some concern that with these two bills the council would essentially poke the bear that is the federal government and Congress.

"The issue here is one of principle. The principle is what is best for public safety, and that’s accountability," said @chmnmendelson.bsky.social.

For her part, @mayorbowser.dc.gov opposed the bills, arguing that it should be up to Congress to require federal agents to wear body cameras. And Interim MPD Chief Jeffery Carroll said collecting names from federal agents would be too logistically challenging.

"The federal administration is keeping the council and the government in the dark… but that doesn’t mean we should be part of the obfuscation," said @cmlewisgeorgew4.bsky.social.

"There's nothing radical about transparency," said @cmcharlesallen.bsky.social.

The second bill (from @robertwhitedc.bsky.social) requires that MPD collect names, badge numbers, and agency name of federal agents who make arrests while patrolling with MPD officers.

The first bill (from Ward 2 Councilmember Brooke Pinto) requires that whenever a federal agent uses deadly force, body-camera footage from any MPD officers patrolling with them be made public within five days.

The bills attempt to bridge the gap between transparency laws that apply to MPD officers, but not federal agents patrolling alongside them. And they respond to incidents where federal agents fired their guns at D.C. residents, but fe details were made public.

NEWS: The D.C. Council unanimously passed two bills aimed at shedding more light on federal agents patrolling in D.C.

One would release more body-camera footage from local police when federal agents use deadly force. Another would collect names of federal agents.

The bills attempt to bridge the gap between transparency laws that apply to MPD officers, but not federal agents patrolling alongside them. And they respond to incidents where federal agents fired their guns at D.C. residents, but fe details were made public.

NEWS: The D.C. Council unanimously passed two bills aimed at shedding more light on federal agents patrolling in D.C.

One would release more body-camera footage from local police when federal agents use deadly force. Another would collect names of federal agents.

Some councilmembers are frustrated that there hasn't been a meeting between them, the mayor, the attorney general, and the CFO to hash out what to do about decoupling. All the while there's no legal or political clarity, and residents and businesses continue filing their returns.