DC Tax Scandal: DC's Corrupt History

The recent tax scandal here in DC has many of us questioning exactly who in our city government we can trust. The Washington Post recently reported that an esimated $31 million dollars has been embezzled by Office of Tax and Revenue (OTR) employees. Most believe that this is a conservative estimate, and some have stated that we will never truly know how much money has been stolen. D.C.'s Chief Financial Officer Natwar M. Gandhi was criticized yesterday in a public hearing as being "dismissive and adversarial" when an OTR employee reported concerns to him about possible fraud. But is this really news?

D.C. has a long history of corruption. Never really a full-flegged government and riddled with crime and poverty rates far above the national average, D.C.'s problems are multi-faceted. Part of the problem has always been D.C.'s small size - with such a small population, it is easy for everyone to know just about everyone in this town and have hands that reach a little too far. However, it was during the Barry administration that things really took a turn for the worse. In the book Dream City, the authors take a long, hard look at what happened in D.C. during Barry's reign, particularly how he helped those people who supported him. Barry's was notorious for giving highly unskilled people jobs that they really shouldn't have had, all for supporting Barry during his campaigns. In addition, nepotism became rampant and a lot of people simply would clock into some District building, receive a paycheck, and leave without ever having done any work. Some of these people still exist in agencies today, including DCRA and MRDDA to name a few.

However, this has been changing ever since Williams came to office. It is slow change, but we've been consistently moving in a positive direction for the past 10 years. Fenty has furthered this momentum by appointing people like Cathy Lanier to the MPD. The level of corruption in the MPD is probably the worst. There are some good officers, but there are also some who participate in crime. For example, some officers participate in drug dealing either directly, by buying and selling drugs themselves, or indirectly, by helping the dealers for a small fee. One HUGE problem is that too many officers are from DC neighborhoods. The people they should be arresting are cousins, friends, nephews, etc. The officers themselves are generally too young and inexperienced to know bettern. The officers who are good are not paid enough and have to deal with such bull shit from crappy commanders like Burton that they usually get out of the MPD as soon as they have the chance.

Chief Lanier has her work cut out for her, especially here in 4D, but she is taking the right steps. Getting rid of Burton was the important step. Now she must ensure that the captains and lieutenants are on the straight and narrow and can effectively manage the officers beneath them. In addition, she MUST improve the quality of life for the officers. This means better pay, better work schedules, fair compensation for court time, and eliminating the ability for criminals to make false and petty complaints against officers. In addition, Lanier needs to ensure that the bad neighborhoods get the experienced officers. Too often, officers with seniority opt to go to easier sections of town, leaving the younger and less experienced officers in the bad neighborhoods. There needs to be serious rentention efforts to keep the good officers while eliminating the ineffective ones and I really believe in a pay-for-performance system within the MPD - for every arrest that an officer makes which goes to trial and results in a conviction, that officer should receive a bonus of some sort. Currently, officers are disincentivized to make arrests. That needs to change.