Questionnaire for At-Large Council Candidates in Special Election,
December 1997
NOTE: Before you complete and return your questionnaire, you should call us to request a Briefing on the issues we have raised. These briefings typically last about an hour. Call us on (202) 667-5139 to schedule your briefing. Also be sure to read through GLAA’s Agenda: 1997 — especially the Introduction.
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1. Congress has recently stripped the Council of many of its basic home rule duties and responsibilities. In light of the Council’s greatly diminished role, why are you running for the Council?
2. Do you agree with GLAA (as we explain in the Introduction to Agenda: 1997) that our own elected officials bear much of the blame for our diminished home rule powers?
3. The Council has seldom aggressively exercised its oversight powers over the District government and has been too passive and reactive in addressing the mismanagement problems that routinely plague our city’s administration. What will you do to improve the Council’s performance of its oversight responsibilities?
4. Which programs of the District government will you want to cut back or eliminate so that higher-priority programs can be adequately funded rather than be victimized by indiscriminate across-the-board budget reductions?
5. In 1995, the Council summarily abolished the Civilian Complaint Review Board, thereby allowing the Metropolitan Police Department to handle all public complaints about excessive use of force, harassment, or abusive language by the police without any kind of independent external review or supervision. Councilmember Evans and the MPD favor a plan suggested by Booz-Allen & Hamilton to establish a citizen complaint procedure wherein senior or retired Superior Court judges would be in charge of handling such complaints. Others fear these judges are too familiar with our police force and may not usually be able to ensure objective and unbiased investigations of complaints against the police. Will you oppose putting the judges in charge of this process?
6. The MPD, the ABC Board, the Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs, and the Fire Department have been neglecting their proper duties and instead have been coordinating a relentless and deliberate campaign of harassment singling out gay businesses. As a member of the Committee on Consumer and Regulatory Affairs, what will you do to help stop this systematic and discriminatory abuse of regulatory powers?
7. Do you favor Initiative 57, to legalize the use of medical marijuana when a patient’s doctor recommends it as a means to combat some of the effects of AIDS, cancer, and other diseases?
8. The District failed to spend $1 million of its own appropriated funds to combat AIDS in FY 1996 and had a similar problem in FY 1997. Such underspending, which jeopardizes the District’s ability to receive federal funding under the Ryan White Care Act, reflected the city’s long delay in awarding a contract for an effective needle exchange program and in implementing new programs targeted at underserved at-risk populations. As a member of the Committee on Human Services, what will you do to safeguard us against such fumbling by our health agencies?
9. Do you support legal recognition of marriages between persons of the same sex?
10. Will you oppose efforts by Congress or other parties to stop the District of Columbia from recognizing same-sex marriages performed in Hawaii or other places?
11. Do you oppose efforts by Congress or other parties to outlaw or restrict adoptions by unmarried couples in the District of Columbia?
12. If Congress ever repeals the D.C. Health Care Benefits Expansion Act of 1992 that established the registration of domestic partnerships, will you vote to reenact the same law?
13. Do you agree that the Boy Scouts of America is violating the D.C. Human Rights Law’s ban on discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation by excluding gays from participating either as scouts or as leaders?
14. As a member of the Committee on Government Operations, will you support the reestablishment of the Office of Human Rights as an independent, adequately-staffed, Cabinet-level agency whose Director has direct access to the Mayor?
15. Will you support legislation to authorize and regulate the issuance of liquor licenses to establishments (in designated nonresidential commercial districts) that want to offer nude dancing as entertainment?
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Please feel free to send us any copies of speeches, documents, campaign literature, or anything else that might illustrate your record on gay and lesbian issues.
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Your answers should be written on separate sheets of paper rather than on this form. You must sign your name on each sheet to indicate your personal commitment to your answers. Please return this questionnaire by Friday, November 7, to: GLAA, P. O. Box 75265, Washington, D.C. 20013-5265. You may FAX your replies; please call Rick Rosendall on 328-6278 to make arrangements. In addition to your signed responses, you can also submit your replies on disk so they can appear on our GLAA website. We can not accept e-mail transmissions.
