By Jonetta Rose Barras Examiner Columnist “Keeping up with the [D.C.] Council is one of the best ways to learn how government works,” said the voice on Cable Channel 13 just after the public roundtable on the city’s plan to take control of United Medical Center in Ward 8 ended.
If that Committee on Health meeting this week was any example of the government at work, there are good reasons to be alarmed and appalled.
With hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars at stake, as the council and Mayor Adrian Fenty moved forward with their decision to create a nonprofit organization that would assume responsibility for the ailing Southeast hospital, most legislators didn’t even bother to attend the session.
Further, there was disturbing acrimony among those who were there, particularly committee Chairman David Catania and Ward 8 Councilman Marion Barry. The two repeatedly interrupted each other and bickered over everything from how many visits Barry had made to the hospital to how many minutes each had used to question witnesses.
A parent was desperately needed.
The ultimate display of unprofessional and disrespectful behavior occurred when Catania adjourned the roundtable as Barry was still questioning witnesses.
“If there were a woodshed, he should be taken to it,” one government official who attended the meeting told me.
Politics is a contact sport. We all get that. But there are rules of engagement. If council members cannot follow them — without supervision — then a parliamentarian should be hired.
Legislators’ pettiness was the sideshow for the real madness: Three months after Catania, Attorney General Peter Nickles and others began planning their takeover of UMC, they couldn’t agree on what the financial burden would be to taxpayers. Catania had one set of numbers, as did UMC’s chief executive officer, which didn’t quite match those of Chief Financial Officer Natwar Gandhi, whose fiscal analysis is the only one by law that really matters.
“The city doesn’t have extra money to pay for [this],” said Council Chairman Pro tempore Jack Evans, who pleaded for one set of figures.
Truth told, no one really knows the cost. Government sources said the CFO has sent his own investigators to UMC. Last week, Gandhi dispatched independent auditors to conduct a thorough review of the hospital’s finances. That action came after — not before — the city, urged on by Catania and Nickles, foreclosed on UMC and took over its operation through a nebulous nonprofit whose board is appointed by the mayor.
Last month, the council decried Fenty’s use of the District’s savings account, also called “reserves”. This week, everyone seemed happy to pull tens of millions of dollars from the city’s emergency/contingency account. They will have to restore half of that money over the next two years. Obviously, District officials haven’t received the memo about a possible double-dip recession.
This might be a good time to start talking about term limits. Who needs a bunch of misbehaving spendthrifts, anyway?
Jonetta Rose Barras’s column appears on Monday and Wednesday. She can be reached at mailto:[email protected] “>[email protected]
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