AGA Today
Gov.
Williams, If You Please
D.C. Mayor Says Next City
Leader's Title Should Match Duties
By Lori Montgomery
Washington Post Staff
Writer
Thursday, March 2, 2006;
Page B05
Forget that old "mayor of
Washington" schtick. In the future, the chief executive of the District
of Columbia should be known as "governor," according to D.C. Mayor -- er,
Gov. -- Anthony A. Williams.
Williams (D) announced
his preference yesterday at his weekly news conference. Since the
District performs the functions of a state as well as a city, he said,
its leader should be appropriately recognized.
Washington Mayor Anthony
A. Williams, right, talks with John B. Parham III,
"I do believe that for
the next mayor we should consider, and I would support, changing the
title," Williams said. "A number of major capitals have governors. I
think Tokyo, Bangkok, Buenos Aires, and maybe Berlin is a governing
mayor. And we should change the title to reflect the full responsibility
of the office."
A new title is not the
only item on Williams's wish list for his successor. After he retires in
January, Williams said he would work to guarantee the next leader of the
nation's capital "suitable retirement" benefits as well as a house -- or
"mayor's residence," as he put it. Williams, a native of Los Angeles,
has rented an apartment in Foggy Bottom throughout his seven years in
office. A highly contentious plan to build a mayor's mansion in the tony
Foxhall neighborhood fell apart a few years ago.
The subject of the title
and trappings of Williams's office arose after the mayor revealed that
he had yet again been denied admittance to the annual Washington
conference of the National Governors Association, which closed Tuesday.
Williams said he has worked for years to gain access to the meetings and
has sought the support of Maryland Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. (R) and
former Virginia Gov. Mark Warner (D).
"There's no problem with
me at NACO, the National Association of Counties," Williams complained.
"The mayor should be represented at the state level," too.
Williams actually
attended last year's NGA meeting at Warner's invitation, he said. But
this year, Williams was shut out, he said, "partly because I do not have
a title of governor."
NGA executive director
Ray Scheppach said it's not really as simple as all that. Although the
group's bylaws contain no definition of a governor, Scheppach said it
seems clear that certain conditions must be met.
For example, Williams
"has a city council," Scheppach said. "I don't think any of the others
have a city council."
But many of the group's
members do have a lieutenant governor, "certain attorney general-type
functions," a state legislature -- "a whole different form of
government, really," Scheppach said. By those standards, the NGA
welcomes the leaders of Guam, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, the
Northern Mariana Islands and American Samoa but not the mayor of
Washington.
"There have been
discussions in the past. We do invite some of his staff and so on to
some of our working sessions, be it on Medicaid or what have you,"
Sheppach said. "But in terms of actual membership, the answer has been
no, really."
That answer infuriates
WTOP radio political analyst Mark Plotkin, an ardent champion of
statehood for the District, who sees the mayor's exclusion from NGA
meetings as "just a continuation of the nation's insult toward us."
"We had to fight to get
the D.C. flag up at Union Station. We're still not on the back of a
quarter. And one of my major ones is we have no statue in Statuary Hall"
in the U.S. Capitol, Plotkin said. "We need some chutzpah. We need to
start calling ourselves a state. And if tepid, tenuous, timid Tony in
the last few months of his tenure is becoming Tony the Tiger, I think
that's great."
Yesterday, Williams's
would-be colleagues in Maryland and Virginia declined to comment on his
ambitions. Tim Kaine (D), the newly elected governor of Virginia, told
Plotkin this week that he was "a little busy in week six to begin
rewriting the bylaws of the National Governors Association," Kaine
spokesman Kevin Hall said.
Ehrlich spokesman Henry
Fawell said in an e-mail that "the Governor (our governor) will refrain
from wading into a D.C. matter." But Ehrlich "enjoyed working with Mayor
Williams these past four years," Fawell said, "and has a great respect
for him no matter what his title."
