Mary Cheh’s annual joke budget memo mocks the streetcar, endless transportation studies, and more

Each year, as the DC Council considers the District’s budget, Councilmember Mary Cheh and her staff issue fake recommendations that satirize recent news. This year’s poke even sharper fun than usual at a number of issues around transportation, Eleanor Holmes Norton’s parking, the Vince Gray prosecution, and many others.

On the streetcar, for instance, they “suggest,”

Transfer $500,000 million from the District Department of Transportation to the Commission on Arts and Humanities. This transfer will be used for an innovative, progressive, and transformative production of Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire.

That wasn’t even the harshest cut at DDOT, though. As we prepared to talk to DDOT Director Leif Dormsjo, a lot of you suggested questions about DDOT’s apparent habit of conducting a study, then conducting another one a couple of years later, and so on.

This has been a particular source of ire for Capitol Hill residents who have been waiting years for traffic calming on Maryland Avenue, or supporters of a bus lane who wonder why there has to be another study this year to implement a bus lane that was the subject of at least two earlier studies. Commenter Jimmy, for instance, wrote:

Some of us actually refer to his agency as DDOTS (District Department of Transportation Studies). While some study is necessary to avoid ready-fire-aim debacles like the streetcar, use of “further study” (on bike lanes, bus lanes, bus signal priority, and pretty much everything else that doesn’t move more cars faster or provide more parking for private automobiles) has clearly become a delaying tactic. What can be done about this? How can we move forward on things that have already been studied to death?

Cheh and her staff feel your pain. Their budget “recommendation”:

Transfer $1.5 million from the Department of General Services—what’s another million and a half, anyway—to the District Department of Transportation to conduct a study. It has recently come to the Committee’s attention that DDOT has had issues in implementing previously conducted studies. Despite extensive work being done to study traffic calming measures on Maryland Avenue, the agency is about to initiate another study. Additionally, despite conducting a study in 2013 on a 16th Street Bus Lane, DDOT will shortly begin a new study on the topic.

To assist in reducing redundant redundancies, the Committee recommends that the funds be used for DDOT to study these studies. This endeavor will help keep the agency busy because the Committee has no doubt that two years from now they will scrap the study on studies and conduct a new study that studies the study on studies in a rather studious manner.

Burn.

Eleanor Holmes Norton does not get off lightly. A video surfaced in March showing the Congresswoman trying to park between two other cars and somehow managing to end up diagonally in her space. Cheh and her staff “propose” a new Eleanor Holmes Norton Office of Parking and Driving to provide free taxi service for elected officials.

And speaking of federal activities, remember how US Attorney Ron Machen was looking into alleged campaign finance misdeeds from the 2010 Vincent Gray mayoral campaign? Machen charged a number of Gray staffers, but never seemed to find any evidence linking the mayor himself. Yet Machen, in an unusual step for a prosecutor, publicly said “there’s there there,” saying in essence that he was sure Gray was involved.

Gray lost the primary election, in large part because many people believed Machen, but nothing has happened since. Cheh and her staff caustically “suggest” funding a dictionary and a map for the US Attorney’s Office so it can “determine where exactly is the there.”

Other biting critiques in the memo include:

• A recommendation about the DC Board of Elections printed entirely upside-down, a reference to the upside-down DC flag on the 2014 voter guide which BOE first pretended was intentional, then admitted had been a mistake.
• That upside-down proposal suggests a primary date based on the lunar calendar to “enhance voter turnout and continue to make elections a part of the news cycle.” DC had shifted its primary from September to April due to federal laws about getting absentee ballots to servicemembers overseas. But the turnout in 2014 hit record lows, so the council moved it back.
• A budget allocation to make space for “all of Mayor Bowser’s former staff and campaign aides” on the council. Bowser staffers Brandon Todd and LaRuby May won the two recent special elections, in Wards 4 and 8 respectively. Todd said he would be independent of Bowser and even, while campaigning, opposed her controversial DC Jail healthcare contract which Bowser had been pushing; days after winning, he decided he would support his former boss after all.
• A new job training program for councilmembers forced out of office due to corruption.
• Body cameras for councilmembers whose footage will be televised on a reality show, “Keeping Up with the Kouncilmembers.”
• A staffer to submit “all office supply orders” to Congress, given that Congress is so eager to get involved in DC’s local affairs.

Cheh and her staff conclude with a suggestion that if you don’t find her memo funny, you “participate in some recently-legalized activities” (i.e. smoke marijuana) and then you will “find it to be, like, totally the funniest thing ever.”