On Dec. 6 at 11 am, the city council will be
having a hearing on a bill first created way back in January: the "
Taxation Without Representation Federal Tax Pay-Out Message Board Installation Act of 2007" (
Bill 17-0028), co-introduced by council members Barry, Brown, and Schwartz. This bill would "provide for the installation of LED Message Boards on the outside front wall of [t]he John A. Wilson Building and the
new baseball stadium to display the dollar amount of federal taxes paid by District of Columbia residents." At both locations, the bill says, the sign "shall be large enough for the public to easily read, and should be designed and placed in a location so as not to deter from the architectural beauty of the exterior." I can't wait to hear the debate over this one, though perhaps the lengthy delay in getting it before the committee of the whole is telling.
This appears to be a different Taxation Without Representation sign than the one that local politics commentator Mark Plotkin is agitating for; he wants one similar to the license-plate-design sign that is hung at RFK placed on the scoreboard at the new ballpark. In his
Nov. 9 and
Nov. 27 online chats at washingtonpost.com, he discusses the somewhat-less-than-enthusiastic response he received from Mayor Fenty, DC Sports and Entertainment Commission chairman Matthew Cutts, and Nationals president Stan Kasten. Apparently the team has final approval on all signage.
The
Examiner today has a piece on the planned cleanup of contaminants at
23 I Street--and we can take a moment to ponder where the story idea might have come from (I say as I point you to my "
Environmental Cleanup at 23 I Street" post from a few days ago--someday newspapers will stop treating blogs as freebie no-credit tip lines). The story headline is "Ballpark May Be Contaminated", which doesn't actually have anything to do with the story because even the story itself says that the ballpark already had its environmental cleanup, to the tune of $14 million. And the photo accompanying the story is of
70/100 I, not the 23 I Street site (which still has a Wendy's and a towing company on it).
UPDATE: The Examiner's reporter has quickly written me to say that he didn't get the story from here.
UPDATE II: And now the headline is changed to a not-altogether-better "Ballpark Area Contaminated," which still sounds like the article is talking about the ballpark and its surroundings being contaminated. "Area Near Ballpark Contaminated" would have worked just splendidly.
