John B. Catoe, Jr. finally realized he’s not the right person to serve as general manager of the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA). He announced last week he intends to step down in April. He said he is a distraction.

Actually, he’s a first-rate wrecking ball.

THE Rental Housing Commission, which hears appeals dealing with the District rent control law, could expire by Sunday, Jan. 17th unless the D.C. Council takes emergency action. Meanwhile, the District may be going broke fast. Several agencies are overspending their budgets, complicating an already bleak financial outlook captured by recent revenues estimates by Chief Financial Officer Natwar Gandhi.

“HOPE springs eternal in the human breast, ” poet Alexander Pope wrote. Despite recent columns decrying 2009 and dreading 2010, I continue to believe responsible, accountable, efficient and cost-effective government can be a reality in the District.
My mother would accuse me of hitting my head against a brick wall and not having enough sense to walk away before I’m either unconscious or dead. Her wisdom comes from a life of Louisiana politics. I won’t taint the entire state. But, what you may have heard doesn’t sufficiently capture the full story. (With apologies to now-deceased Sen. Lloyd Bentsen), I know Louisiana, and the District of Columbia is no Louisiana. Changing politics in the Pelican State would take a powerful mojo. In the District, it just takes an engaged and vigilant public.

SO, there I was, ranting like everyone else about the recent news that Sen. Harry Reid predicted in 2008 then-presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama would win because he’s light skinned and possessed “no Negro dialect.” The Senate majority leader made the comment to two reporters who quoted him in their book, which is expected to be released this week.

Oddly Republicans have jumped to Obama’s defense, as if they feel his pain. Michael Steele, et al used Sunday talk shows to mount their campaign to kick Reid out of the leadership seat. Are Republicans trolling for black votes?

A D.C. mayoral race between real estate developer R. Donahue Peebles and incumbent Adrian M. Fenty would be far more interesting than a Fenty/Gray match. But who is Peebles and what does he believe in? TBR has some early answers.

Meanwhile, D.C. Councilman Kwame Brown wants someone held accountable for the parks and recreation-contracting debacle. Opponents of same-sex marriage believe they have been getting a raw deal in the media because some reporters are gay and haven’t disclosed the conflict of interest.

Whew! The DC Council last week held its nose and approved a multimillion-dollar, multi-year lottery contract with Intralot, a Greek-based company. But even what was expected to be the final act of the saga was filled with intrigue.

MEANWHILE, District political observers and others, who might be called the “anybody-but-Fenty” crowd, have been fed a feast of surveys and polls, providing assessments of the 2010 mayoral race through the numbers. Do the numbers matter?

D.C. Councilmember Jack Evans told The Barras Report Wednesday that the recent killing of nine year-old Oscar Fuentes on Columbia Road has pushed him to try yet again to encourage his colleagues to pass aggressive anti-gang legislation.

“I intend to introduce it as stand alone legislation,” Evans said, adding that he also is working with the Office of the U.S. Attorney on another bill. He declined to provide details, however.

Evans said the spate of murders in the city demand the council take strong and immediate action.

“The pain was intense and unrelenting,” Bruce Johnson wrote in his recently released book Heart to Heart: 12 People Discover Better Lives After Their Heart Attacks.”My hands moved to my chest to put pressure on a hemorrhage that wasn’t there. No blood. No hole in my starched, white dress shirt. The pain was somewhere deep in my chest where I couldn’t get to it.

Johnson, a television reporter with local CBS affiliate WUSA9, was having a heart attack. He was on assignment at East Capitol Dwellings in far Northeast, when it struck. His cameraman rushed to the nearest fire station. Johnson was taken to Greater Southeast Community Hospital and later flown to Washington Hospital Center.

A fight appears to be developing in Ward 2 over the future of public schools in that wealthy part of town. Some parents want to end the practice of out-of-boundary enrollment. Their position is better summed up by the slogan “Ward 2 schools for Ward 2 kids.” But other parents, many of whom are black or Hispanic, assert their children would be adversely affected by such a policy.

Ground zero appears to be Hardy Middle School, located at 34th and Wisconsin Ave. The building is brand new—although it took years and the involvement of Allen Lew, the city’s school facilities czar, before the renovations were completed.

“I think it’s the new building,” one source, who requested anonymity, said, explaining that the renovations have given Hardy the feel of a private school. “And then there is the recession. People who once sent their children to private schools can’t afford that any more.”

UPDATED!

Was the D.C. Council totally ignorant of the contracts to Friends of Mayor Adrian M. Fenty issued by the D.C. Housing Authority? Maybe not, according to one reporter and sources familiar with internal workings of the Department of Parks and Recreation.

Meanwhile the mayor flipped the legislature the bird–metaphorically speaking—with the reappointment of Ximena Hartsock as interim director of the DPR; Elaine McConnell, co-founder of Accotink, a Springfield, Va. therapeutic day school attended by more than 150 District students courtesy of city taxpayers, confirmed, through her attorney, that her two sons are on the payroll; at least one John A. Wilson source compares the appointment of Councilman Michael Brown to head the subcommittee overseeing the taxicab commission to Bernie Madoff leading the SEC; and a co-chairman of the campaign committee for Clark E. Ray tries to slap around TBR.