Washington, D.C
Do Something: The week of February 19, 2024
Photo by Dan Malouff and edited by Dan Reed.
Weekly, Regional Policy Director Dan Reed and DC Policy Director Alex Baca will share with you an action you can take in the immediate future that has the potential, sometimes great and sometimes small, to increase the number of homes in our region, decrease the trips people take by car, make all of it safer, and not screw people over in the process. This week: get hyped for the new Comp Plan; Moore Housing and a silly bill in Maryland; and the ongoing saga of accessory apartments in Virginia.
If you have any questions, email dreed@ggwash.org about Maryland and Virginia Do Somethings, and abaca@ggwash.org about Washington, DC, Do Somethings—or, about whatever you want to talk about.
DC
The Office of Planning (OP)’s performance oversight hearing is this week and, while I don’t think you need to testify, I think it’s worth watching. It starts at 9:30 am on Thursday, February 22, and I’m looking forward to any additional details that OP might provide on its newly released “Outlook for the District’s Next Comprehensive Plan,” which it’s calling “DC 2050.” That’s right: We’re rewriting it! It should be done by the end of 2027. I, personally, am thrilled. —AB
Maryland
Tuesday was the House hearing for Governor Moore’s Moore Housing bills. I was expecting a production, which it was—it’s not every day the Governor testifies for one of his own bills, and the hearing room was so crowded I sat on the floor. What I didn’t expect was to hear so much support from elected officials for the Housing Expansion and Affordability Act, which would require them to allow larger, denser housing developments with more dedicated affordable homes and a streamlined approval process. Officials representing all of Maryland’s major cities and big counties spoke in favor, or with some amendments. A representative from the city of Havre de Grace, north of Baltimore, was one of the few opponents.
The other day, I watched electeds in Rockville–which controls its own planning and zoning, unlike other communities in Montgomery County–discuss what the city’s position on Moore Housing should be. They’ll likely support it: councilmembers including our five endorsees agreed on the need for more homes, but not about having fewer public hearings. Councilmember Kate Fulton would like the approval process to go faster, while Councilmember Izola Shaw said disadvantaged communities need time to give feedback. Mayor Monique Ashton pointed out that public input has made some projects better, but councilmember Marissa Valeri noted that the people who speak at public hearings don’t speak for everyone.
“It’s easy to get people out [to public hearings] when they oppose something. It’s really really hard to get people out when they support something,” Valeri said.
That’s the argument behind the Governor’s bills: the residents who show up to these meetings usually don’t reflect the whole community and use this process to block or delay things they dislike, leading to our current housing shortage. With that in mind, Maryland legislators are working on some other bills (that only apply to Montgomery County) that take away chances for a vocal minority to block things–and one that would give them much more power.
HB 424 (formerly MC 3-24) would overturn a 1950s law that requires extra hearings for public housing proposals, which residents have used for decades to block affordable housing near them. And HB 1300 (formerly MC 8-24) would overturn decades-old property covenants that block homes that zoning already allows, like apartments–another tool neighbors have used to fight development. We support both of these bills, and you can find more info and our testimony here.
Then there’s HB 1364, sponsored by Senator Ben Kramer, who you may remember from a now-dead bill that would have stripped the Planning Department’s ability to talk about sidewalks or bike lanes. Now he’s back with a bill that would force Montgomery County to resurrect the People’s Counsel, a lawyer whose job is to represent “the public interest” in planning matters. The bill’s loudest supporters are organizations like the Montgomery County Civic Federation and the people who don’t like cell phone towers, you know, the type of folks who already show up to public hearings a lot.
There hasn’t been a People’s Counsel since 2008 in part because as we discussed above, the public is pretty diverse, and has lots of different and sometimes contradictory interests. Last year, following some other unsuccessful bills, Kramer did help create a workgroup that made good recommendations for how to make Montgomery County’s planning process more accessible to the public. The People’s Counsel wasn’t one of them. We hope that, like Brokencyde, it remains stuck in 2008.
If you have a few minutes and live in Montgomery County:
- Find your delegates and email them to say you support HB 424 and HB 1300, but oppose HB 1364 and the People’s Counsel.
If you have a few minutes and live anywhere else in Maryland:
If you have a few more minutes and live in Maryland, show your support for Moore Housing:
Virginia
It’s go time: After the Virginia Senate revived a bill that would legalize accessory apartments across the state, the House–which attempted to push this to next year–gets to take it up again. Thursday morning, a House committee will again review that bill, HB 900, which we’re supporting alongside our friends in the Commonwealth Housing Coalition. Meanwhile, Democrats in the House are caucusing all day Wednesday, meaning they’ll be talking about this a lot.
If you have a few minutes today (Wednesday):
- Cheat sheet–three of those committee members represent Northern Virginia: Delegates Atoosa Reaser (Loudoun), Laura Jane Cohen (Fairfax), and Candi Mundon King (Prince William and Stafford).
Your support of GGWash enables us, Dan and Alex, to do our jobs. Our jobs are knowing how development and planning works in DC, Maryland, and Virginia. If it’s appropriate to take action to advance our goals, which we hope you share, we can let you know what will have the most impact, and how to do it well. You can make a financial contribution to GGWash here.
Among the liquor store, barber shop and dry cleaners at the Watergate Complex’s retail plaza, there is a new pop-up museum dedicated to the scene of the crime that toppled Richard Nixon’s presidency.
Among the liquor store, barber shop and dry cleaners at the Watergate Complex’s retail plaza, there is a new pop-up museum dedicated to the scene of the crime that toppled Richard Nixon’s presidency.
The temporary exhibit features the work of artist Laurie Munn — portraits of members of the Nixon administration and those connected to the Watergate break-in. The exhibit features members of Congress, the media and some who were on Nixon’s enemies list.
Keith Krom, chair of the Board of Directors of the Watergate Museum, told WTOP the exhibit was first featured in the gallery in 2012 for the 40th anniversary of the break-in at the Democratic National Committee.
“When she (Munn) learned about our museum effort, she offered to reassemble them as a way for us to expand awareness of the museum,” Krom said.
Krom, who lives in the Watergate, said his favorite portrait is of one of the special prosecutors, whose firing sparked the “Saturday Night Massacre” in 1973.
“I had the pleasure of being a student of Archibald Cox,” Krom said. “He served as my mentor for my third-year writing project.”
Krom said during this time, at the Boston University School of Law, he spent a great deal of time with him.
“I didn’t realize how much he must have gone through. Here he was, this one man, who was challenging the president of the United States over something pretty serious,” Krom said.
The pop-up opened in October and was recently extended to stay open until April 25. Krom said the hope is to find it a permanent location within the Watergate Complex, where they can “present the history of Watergate, but with two perspectives.”
The first would be on the building’s “architectural significance to D.C.,” he said.
“You may not like the design, you actually may hate it,” Krom said. “But you cannot deny that it changed D.C.’s skyline.”
The secondary focus would, of course, be on the mother of all presidential scandals that changed the course of American history.
“That’s where that suffix ‘-gate’ started and continues to be used for almost every scandal that comes out today,” Krom said.
The inspiration for the museum spawned from an interaction from a tourist outside the Watergate.
“He says, ‘This is the Watergate, right?’ And I was like, ‘Yeah, it’s one of the buildings,’” Krom recalled.
The tourist then asked Krom, “So where’s the museum?”
“I was like, ‘Oh, we don’t have a museum.’ And he literally just looked at me and said, ‘That’s so sad.’ And he got on his bike and rode away,” Krom said.
While the self-proclaimed political history nerd said he “still gets goose bumps” when he drives by the Capitol at night, Krom hopes that when people leave the museum, “they’ll walk away with a new appreciation for how our government works, the guardrails that are in place.”
“Maybe an understanding that those guardrails themselves are kind of frail, and they probably need our collective help in making sure they last — that’s what we hope to accomplish,” Krom said.
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According to the National Park Service at the National Mall, famous cherry blossoms around the nation’s capital have hit peak bloom conditions. The National Park Service X account for the National Mall proclaimed this morning, “PEAK BLOOM! PEAK BLOOM! PEAK BLOOM!”
It became apparent yesterday that the bloom would be at peak today. “Despite a sunny afternoon and patches of blue sky, the cherry blossoms remain at Stage 5: Puffy White,” the Park Service wrote on X yesterday. Stage 5, “Puffy White”, is the final stage blossoms go through before being in full bloom. They start at Stage 1 as a “Green Bud”, grow into Stage 2 with “Florets Visible”, and then florets become extended at Stage 3. In Stage 4, there is “Peduncle Elongation” which sets the stage for the puffy blossoms to appear in Stage 5. Puffy White and Peak Bloom are defined as when 70% of the blossoms on the trees reach that stage.
Peak bloom varies annually depending on weather conditions; the most likely time to reach peak bloom is between the last week of March and the first week of April. According to the Park Service, extraordinary warm or cool temperatures have resulted in peak bloom as early as March 15 in 1990 and as late as April 18 in 1958.
The planting of cherry trees in Washington DC originated in 1912 as a gift of friendship to the People of the United States from the People of Japan. In Japan, the flowering cherry tree, or “Sakura,” is an important flowering plant. The beauty of the cherry blossom is a symbol with rich meaning in Japanese culture.
Dr. David Fairchild, plant explorer and U.S. Department of Agriculture official, imported seventy-five flowering cherry trees and twenty-five single-flowered weeping types from the Yokohama Nursery Company in Japan. After experimenting with growing them on his own property in Maryland, he deemed that the cherry tree would be perfect to plant around the Washington DC area. This triggered an interest by a variety of individuals to plant the tree around Washington. In 1909 the Mayor of Tokyo, Yukio Ozaki, donated 2,000 trees to the United States on behalf of his city. When the trees arrived, they were riddled with disease and insects and to protect other agriculture, they were burned. The Tokyo Mayor made a second donation of trees in 1910, this time amounting to 3,020 trees. This started the forest of cherry trees that now line the Potomac basin around Washington DC. In a gesture of gratitude back to Japan, President Taft sent a gift in 1915 of flowering dogwood trees to the people of Japan. Thousands of trees have been added since, including another gift of 3,800 trees from Japan in 1965.
WASHINGTON (7NEWS) — Authorities are searching for an SUV after an officer with the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) was struck by a hit-and-run driver in Southwest D.C. on Wednesday night.
The crash happened just before 10 p.m. at Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue and Forrester Street, SW.
Police confirmed the officer, an adult man, was conscious and breathing when he was rushed to a nearby hospital for treatment of his injuries. There is no word on his condition.
The driver involved fled the scene, and investigators are looking for a white Range Rover with a partial South Carolina tag of “403.”
Anyone with information is urged to call 202-727-9099 or text tips at 50411.
This is a developing story that will be updated as more information becomes available.
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