Washington Informer

The Washington Informer's annual African-American Heritage Tour, which provides residents a first-time opportunity to visit places of interest in their hometown, takes place Saturday, Feb. 16 with an historic tour of townships in Prince George's County.

The schedule of events also includes the famed one-woman "Harriet Tubman" show at The ARC in Southeast D.C., lunch and networking.

Currently in its third year, the tour coincides with the traditional celebration of Black History Month. Sponsors include Pepco, Industrial Bank and the D.C. Lottery.

Tickets, which can be purchased at the Washington Informer, 3117 Martin Luther King Jr. Ave. SE, are $10 for adults; $5 for children.

The tour will depart at 10 a.m. from THEARC, 1901 Mississippi Avenue, SE.  Continental breakfast will be served starting at 8:30 a.m.

For more information, please call 202-561-4100.

Chief Financial Officer Praised for Turning Around District's Finances

Mayor Vincent C. Gray has accepted the resignation of the city's Chief Financial Officer Natwar M. Gandhi, thanking him for a dramatic turnaround in the District's finances over the past 15 years.

Gandhi, who assumed his post under former Mayor Anthony Williams, was re-appointed last year by Gray for a third 5-year term. He told the mayor in a letter on Friday of his decision to step down, effective June 1.

"I want to express my profound gratitude to Dr. Gandhi for being an exemplary steward of the District's finances for over a decade, and I am sorry to see him go," Gray said. "In the time that he has served as our Chief Financial Officer, he has helped take us from the days of the Control Board to our just-announced $417 million Fiscal Year 2012 surplus."

While Gandhi did not go into detail regarding his decision, a spokesman said it was "for purely personal reasons."

Meanwhile, "Though I look forward to the next chapter in my life, this was not an easy decision," Gandhi wrote. "The past 15 years have been the most challenging and rewarding of my professional career. . . I am comfortable retiring at this time because the city is in excellent financial condition, perhaps the best in its history. The Fund Balance is as high as it ever has been, revenues are rising and, at this time it appears they will continue to do so."

According to a statement from Gray's office, under Gandhi's guidance, the District has obtained a "clean" audit opinion from independent auditors in the District's Comprehensive Annual Financial Report (CAFR) every year since Fiscal Year 2000, which ended the city's Control Period and facilitated the return of Home Rule.

In addition, because of Gandhi's leadership, the District has secured several rating upgrades for its general-obligation bonds from the major rating agencies, including an "A+" from Standard and Poor's, a "AA-" from Fitch Ratings and an "Aa2" rating from Moody's Investors Service. The District's Income Tax Secured bond ratings are "AAA" from S&P, "AA" from Fitch and "Aa1" from Moody's.

"I especially want to thank Dr. Gandhi for being a strong partner in helping me restore our crucial Fund Balance to $1.5 billion," Gray added. "Without his leadership, the District would not have experienced the extraordinary fiscal turnaround that we have seen in the last dozen years. Our city owes him a great debt of gratitude."

Mayor Vincent C. Gray is set to deliver his State of the District address at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 5 at the Sixth and I Historic Synagogue in Northwest.

However, Gray, 70, said in a Jan. 29 statement that he was pleased to announce beforehand, that the District ended Fiscal Year 2012 with a healthy budget surplus of $417 million.

"This news is compelling evidence that the District's finances are among the strongest of any jurisdiction in the nation," Gray said. "The District's increasingly strong financial outlook, coupled with impressive job growth and a falling unemployment rate, is affirmation that our economic development strategies are working. With 55 construction cranes dotting our skyline, I can truly say that the amount of development in the District right now is unprecedented."

As Gray begins his third year at the helm, he noted a list of "tremendous" accomplishments made since 2011. They include that:

• The District's economy is booming, with more than 28,000 private sector jobs created over the past two years and the unemployment rate falling by nearly three percentage points;

• The District has hit a 50-year low in homicides – with the numbers dropping dramatically each of the last two years and nearly twenty times faster than the national average;

• The District is growing rapidly – adding more than 1,100 people a month – and is now more populous than both Vermont and Wyoming. The District has not had this mean residents since the 1970s;

• Public education enrollment is now at nearly 81,000 students and is growing at a rate not seen in 45 years as families return to the city and to public education; and

• Fiscal responsibility has been restored – the District now spends only what it takes in and the practice of raiding the District's reserves to balance the budget has been eliminated. In addition, the city's long-term fiscal health has again been protected by growing our critical rainy-day fund back to $1.5 billion.

A copy of the Gray administration's report on his second year in office can be read online at: http://mayor.dc.gov/publication/gray-administration-year-two-report.

In anticipation of the dusting of snow storm that would have covered parts of the D.C. area Friday morning as commuters made their way to work, bike riders in D.C. decided to take advantage of the warmer weather that took hold of the city earlier in the week.

While temperatures in the District hovered around 30 degrees on late morning on Friday morning, the cold weather that will include sunny skies, is expected to linger over the weekend with the potential for a few flurries or snow showers.

In his seventh State of the State address on Wednesday in Annapolis, Gov. Martin O’Malley urged lawmakers to continue pushing forward on gun control, job creation and death penalty repeal --  issues that some say he's using to position himself for higher office.

In the 30-minute speech themed, "Better Choices,Better Results," O'Malley, 50, allso congratulated lawmakers for past accomplishments aligned with education and employment initiatives, urging their continued support of his policy choices.

“When the national recession hit, wiping out jobs and revenues all across our country, other states tried to cut their way to prosperity,” O’Malley said. “But in Maryland, we made better choices.”

Those “better choices” include instituting new performance standards to make government more efficient, constraining spending and investing in education and innovation, O’Malley said.

Having recently proposed some of the strictest gun control laws in the country that are similar to legislation in New York, O'Malley renewed his call for a ban on assault rifles and tighter background check requirements for firearm purchasers.

While violent crime in Maryland is down 25 percent since 2006, “we lose far too many American lives to gun violence,” O’Malley said.

O’Malley wants to use the current legislative session to take on another controversial issue: repealing the death penalty.

“The death penalty is expensive and it does not work,” O’Malley said, adding that “it cannot be administered without racial bias.”

Maryland, which currently has five inmates on death row, has not executed a prisoner since 2005. In 2009, state lawmakers passed a bill restricting the use of the death penalty to cases where DNA evidence, a confession or video evidence of the crime is available.

If O’Malley can push his proposals through the General Assembly, Maryland will become the 18th state to completely abolish the death penalty.

Climate change and alternative energy, namely wind power, are also high on O’Malley’s list of priorities for 2013. He has proposed multi-billion dollar taxpayer subsidies for the construction of a new wind power farm off the coast of Ocean City.

“Climate disruption is real,” O’Malley said. “It is physics, pure and simple.”

O’Malley, who went on to describe Maryland’s traffic as the worst in the country, vowed to help bring the state’s transportation network into the 21st century, and in applauding Maryland’s students, educators and school support staff, he noted the state’s fifth consecutive annual ranking by Education Week as the top public school system in the country.

“This jobs budget invests to improve public education and to build new schools,” O’Malley said. “It accelerates the transition from chalk and textbooks in our classrooms, to iPads, laptops, smart-boards, and 21st century digital learning tools.”

As O’Malley, a former Baltiomore mayor, enters the back half of his second term as governor, major speeches like the State of the State address take on added significance. O’Malley, who chairs the Democratic Governors Association and was prominently featured at the 2012 Democratic National Convention, is widely believed to have national political aspirations.

His name has been mentioned along with New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, Vice President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as possible 2016 candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination.

"I thought it was the best State of the State speech he's given," said Todd Eberly, assistant professor of political science and public policy at St. Mary's College of Maryland. 

He added that the address "well-crafted and well-delivered," saying he believes O'Malley will finish the legislative session with "some pretty significant" accomplishments. "Today wasn’t just a State of the State speech, it was an ‘I want your [presidential] nomination’ speech,” Eberly said.

Sen. E. J. Pipkin (R-Upper Shore) said that rather than focusing on the specific needs of Marylanders, policies O'Malley spelled out in his speech had more to do with Democrats' national agenda of taxes and gun control.

"He's coming for your money...he's coming for your guns," Pipkin said.

Following the speech, Republicans took the opportunity to point out the half-dozen foreign diplomats in attendance, citing their presence as proof of O'Malley's intent to attract a national audience.

(Source: Capital News Service)