Nick Baumann

The problem with arguing on the internet, by Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal’s Zach Weiner.

David McAuley has the story from last night’s ANC 2F meeting. Here’s ANC 2F chair Matt Raymond’s resolution opposing the moratorium. The next ANC to vote is 1B, which includes most of the moratorium zone. The vote’s tonight, Thursday, at the Reeves Center at 14th and U. I expect the moratorium to be opposed by a majority of the 1B commissioners.

The Times says that the conservatives on the Supreme Court, not the liberals, made the choice to hear the Proposition 8 case.

At least half of Five of ANC 1B’s 12 commissioners oppose the proposed liquor license moratorium, according to the whip count I’m maintaining. The latest to oppose the plan is ANC 1B09’s James Turner, who wrote this in an email to constituent BrookeLynn Locke:

Thank you for the email.  The input I have received from the town hall and the ANC-1B ABC Committee meeting shows residents oppose the proposed moratorium.  There are valid concerns raised by the proponents of the moratorium regarding trash, noise, and such which we can effectively address in other more efficient ways.

CORRECTION: BLURGH, I miscounted when I initially said it was half. It’s still 5 out of 12 who oppose, since Reinoso is undecided.

Peter Lallas, the ANC 2F01 commissioner whose district falls partially within the proposed U Street liquor license moratorium zone, opposes the moratorium. Here’s the text of an email he wrote to constituent Mike Forster on Thursday:

Thanks for your email.   I’m with you on the moratorium. I think it would do little, if anything, to address the concern of increased violent crime, it would punish responsible business owners (both of existing establishments and those hopeful of opening a business in the area), unfairly discriminate against prospective business owners, and stifle the development that has made our neighborhood such desirable place to live and do business.

I will be voting to oppose the moratorium and I anticipate that a majority of my colleagues will as well. In fact, I have not heard of any 2F commissioner voicing any support for it. We’ll be considering a resolution opposing the moratorium at our April 3rd meeting if you’re interested in attending.

Jeremy Leffler, who chairs the ANC 1B liquor license committee, opposes the proposed U St. liquor license moratorium, he told ANC 1B04’s John Hagner in an email forwarded to me. But Leffler warned that the moratorium may actually win approval from his committee on Thursday night “because there are even pro and anti voices on the [committee].”

Matt Raymond, the chair of ANC 2F, will introduce a motion at 2F’s April 3 meeting to oppose the proposed U Street liquor license moratorium, Raymond told Josh Dorner, a liquor license moratorium foe, in an email Thursday. “Thanks for your views, and for attending last night,” Raymond wrote in the email, which Dorner forwarded to me. “My motion on April 3 will be one of outright opposition to the moratorium, and I’m optimistic that the majority of my colleagues will join in support.”

Raymond had vowed to wait until Wednesday’s town hall to settle his position on this issue; it looks like he’s made up his mind. My whip sheet has been updated here.

The proposed U Street liquor license moratorium is in trouble. A crowd of over 100 local residents filled the gym at the Thurgood Marshall Center on 12th Street NW on Wednesday night for a joint ANC 1B, 2B, and 2F listening session on the moratorium. Over 85 percent of the (by my count) 58 citizens who spoke at the meeting said they opposed the plan, which would block new liquor licenses from being issued to bars, restaurants, and other establishments within an 1800-foot radius of Ben’s Chili Bowl. Speakers were age-diverse but mostly white, with a few exceptions.

You can read the full text of the moratorium proposal here and my previous post on the moratorium here, but here’s what the moratorium area would look like:

Key ANC1B commissioner a likely no vote

The widespread public opposition to the moratorium plan wasn’t the only bad news for its supporters, who are led by the Shaw-Dupont Citizens Alliance, a neighborhood group that limits its membership to people who live in an eight-square-block area in the southwest quadrant of the proposed moratorium zone. Jeremy Leffler, the ANC 1B02 (map of boundaries here) commissioner who chairs the ANC 1B ABC (liquor license) committee, strongly hinted he opposes the plan. “I think the community has spoken,” he told me after the meeting. “I hope they continue to show up and speak and not just when there’s a controversial issue. The point of having a neighborhood and the community is hearing from the community and not a select few.” Leffler opposing the plan would make sense politically, too: He has said his constituents oppose the moratorium “100 to 1.” We’ll find out for sure what Leffler thinks on Thursday (March 21, a.k.a. this evening), when Leffler’s ANC 1B ABC committee votes on the moratorium idea. 

Next steps

ANC 2F, the very northern bits of which (single member districts 2F01 and 2F04, map here) fall in the moratorium zone, will be the first ANC commission to officially weigh in on the proposal, on Wednesday, April 3. ANC 1B’s commissioners, who represent the vast majority of the moratorium zone, are scheduled to vote the following day, Thursday April 4 at the Reeves Center at 14th and U. The March 21 vote of Leffler’s committee will surely affect that decision. Only a tiny finger of ANC 2B (map), mostly Noah Smith’s 2B09, between 14th and 15th and S and U, and a sliver of Kishan Putta’s 2B04, fall in the moratorium zone, but that ANC will weigh in as well—on May 8.

DC’s Alcoholic Beverage Regulatory Agency (ABRA) gets the final call on the moratorium, but it has to give “great weight” to the ANCs opinions on the issue. That means if the affected ANCs oppose the moratorium, it’s unlikely to become law. And that means how your ANC commissioner votes will matter.

My initial whip count and further observations follow. (Here’s a spreadsheet version of the whip count, complete with ANC commissioners’ emails.) If you live in ANCs 1B, 2B, or 2F, you should email your commissioners, explicitly ask them their positions on the moratorium, and let me know what they say: nickbaumann [at] gmail.

ANC2F whip count: Fanning (2F04) opposed, Raymond (2F07) likely no, rest of 2F seems to be leaning against

ANC2F votes first, so we’ll talk about it first. John Fanning, who represents 2F04, is a definite no. He told me Wendesday that his fellow 2F commissioners were “mostly all leaning against” the moratorium, “especially” after the massive public opposition evident Wednesday night. “It was very convincing, no?” he added. This Borderstan report on 2F’s March 14 meeting backs up Fanning’s claim. “I have a lot of problems with this,” 2F07’s Matt Raymond, who chairs 2F, said that night—but he promised to reserve judgment until after the town hall. (Presumably the town hall did not change his mind.) As the only 2F commissioners to represent part of the moratorium zone, Fanning and 2F01’s Peter Lallas will presumably be key players in that ANC’s vote. (Fanning also chairs 2F’s ABC committee.) I’ve reached out to Lallas to ask his position on the proposal. But it’s hard to imagine 2F going against its chair and its ABC committee chair on this, so this ANC may already be a done deal.

ANC1B whip count: Jilani (1B12) and Lefler (1B02) likely nos; Reinoso (1B05) undecided, nine question marks

ANC 1B’s commissioners represent the bulk of the moratorium zone, so how they vote will have a huge impact on the process. A neighbor I trust told me that 1B12’s Zahra Jilani, who’s my commissioner, opposes the moratorium; based on my conversations with her I think that’s probably accurate. Leffler, as I mentioned above, is a likely no vote; we’ll know more on Thursday night. Ricardo Reinoso (1B05) seemed undecided at last month’s ABC meeting; I’ve emailed him to see if anything’s changed. The rest of the ANC 1B commissioners haven’t been making themselves known at the meetings on this issue. 1B07-1B10 aren’t in the zone, but all the rest of 1B’s SMDs are. I’d love to know where all those commissioners stand. Email them and tell me what you find out.

ANC2B whip count: Smith (2B09) undecided, eight question marks including Putta (2B04)

Kishan Putta (2B04) and Noah Smith (2B09), the only two of the nine 2B commissioners whose districts fall within the moratorium zone, will be key in that ANC’s vote. But 2B is not very far along in considering the issue and is planning several more listening sessions. “It’s still early for us but I have heard from a lot of my constituents on both sides,” Smith told me Wednesday night. “I think as of right now I’ve probably heard more negative than positive.” You can mark him as undecided. Former 2B09 commissioner Ramon Estrada praised the Dupont moratoriums at last month’s ABC meeting, so there’s a decent chance he may have supported the moratorium if he were still in office. I’ve emailed Putta for comment; his campaign website doesn’t appear to make mention of the issue. The real question mark are 2B’s other seven commissioners, whose districts do not fall in the moratorium zone at all. Email these people! One of them, Abigail Nichols, who just won a special election for 2B05, founded the Alcohol Sanity Coalition DC, but her public statements on moratoriums have been vague, so I’m going to rate her as “undecided.”

Other key community members announce opposition

Former ANC 1B05 commissioner Brianne Nadeau announced her opposition to the moratorium proposal on Wednesday night. So did JBG, the developer behind several local projects. The owner of DC9 also showed up to register his opposition—despite, as he noted, the fact that the moratorium would instantly increase the value of his liquor license by tens of thousands of dollars. John Carlos Green, who narrowly lost the 1B12 race to Jilani in November, reiterated his opposition (announced during the campaign) to the moratorium. Representatives from the Urban Neighborhood Alliance and the DC Nightlife Association announced their opposition to the plan. Brian Card, the president of the U Street Neighborhood Association, announced his personal opposition to the moratorium, but I don’t think he was speaking for the group. Scott Pomeroy, of the Downtown DC Business Improvement District, also announced his personal opposition to the plan. (I’ve corrected this paragraph to note that Pomeroy’s opposition was personal, not on behalf of his organization, and that it was the owner of DC9, not a 9:30 Club owner, who spoke up. Sorry—this was written late at night.)

Perhaps the best new spokesman for moratorium foes was a gentleman who said he doesn’t drink at all but still opposes the plan because he likes hanging out at the local restaurants and taverns sober. Another opponent of the moratorium expressed annoyance that such a small group of area residents was even allowed to propose a moratorium and suggested changing the process to raise the filing threshold.

Moratorium proponent’s “jihad” rhetoric draws laughs

One moratorium proponent spoke of a “smear campaign” on “blogs” and a “pro-business, anti-resident jihad” against the moratorium. That got a lot of laughs. Otherwise, moratorium proponents’ rhetoric remained largely the same: They say it will help alleviate parking and traffic problems; reduce noise, trash, and crime; and bring more non-alcohol restaurants (read: retail) to the area. Moratorium supporters also reiterated their misleading talking point that DC government defines “overconcentration” of liquor licenses as 18 or more licenses in an area the size of the moratorium zone. That’s not true. The moratorium proponents’ strongest new talking point is a quote from Cathy Lanier, the chief of police, arguing that blocks that have 10 or more licensed establishments require “four times” as much police manpower as blocks with nine or fewer. It doesn’t seem logical that 10 bars or restaurants would be a magical tipping point like this, but the Lanier quote may have the power to change some minds. (One counterargument might be that added revenue from licensing more establishments can pay for more cops as needed. DC has money.)

Support for moratorium not limited to SDCA

Opponents of the moratorium should not fall into the trap of believing that its supporters are limited to the members of the Shaw-Dupont Citizens Alliance, the group that filed the petition. Proponents of the idea may have been discouraged by the flood of support at the listening session; I heard much more clapping for moratorium opponents than you might expect given that only six or so people spoke in favor of it. I personally counted two or three moratorium supporters near my side of the room. The ANCs have not even voted yet. And remember: ABRA, which is unelected, ultimately doesn’t have to listen to the ANCs if it has a good reason. This fight is far from over.

Conclusion: The SDCA’s strategic error

The people behind the moratorium petition see it as a last-ditch, desperation maneuver to save their neighborhood. But from a longer-term perspective, it seems to have been a strategic overreach. The moratorium issue has galvanized what I’ll euphemistically call “pro-development” residents, even leading to the creation of a new group, Michael Hamilton’s In My Back Yard DC. Although some of the people activated by this controversy will undoubtedly become less involved as time goes on, others won’t (several area residents and moratorium foes promised as much at Wednesday’s meeting)—and SDCA’s agenda will be harder to enact because of that. If their moratorium gamble fails, SDCA’s members may regret making such an aggressive move when they could have instead tried to use ANC 1B’s ABC committee to delay and deter the granting of new alcoholic beverage licenses. And if Wednesday’s town hall was any indication, SDCA’s members drastically overestimated the support their idea might garner.

I went to the ANC 1B ABC (liquor licenses) committee meeting on Wednesday night to hear about the proposed U Street liquor license moratorium. (I live in ANC 1B12.) About 25 people were there, including three ANC commissioners and at least four members of the Shaw-Dupont Citizens’ Alliance, one of the groups pushing for the moratorium.

For those unfamiliar with the moratorium idea, it would ban the issuance of new liquor licenses in an area defined by a circle with a radius of 1800 feet (about a third of a mile) centered on Ben’s Chili Bowl on the north side of the 1200 block of U Street. Here’s a map:

You can read the full text of the moratorium proposal here.

The three ANC commissioners at Wednesday night’s meeting said they’d been getting lots of constituent input about the proposed moratorium. Jeremy Leffler, (briefly profiled here) the ANC 1B02 (map of boundaries here) commissioner and ABC committee chair who ran the meeting, said emails about the moratorium had been running “100 to 1” against. Zahra Jilani, who won a very close, four-way ANC 1B12 (map) race, said her emails had been about 60 percent against. The third ANC commissioner at the meeting, 1B05’s Ricardo Reinoso, said his constituent feedback was about evenly split. I spoke to Jilani after the meeting; she said the ANC wasn’t even close to coming to a decision on whether to support the moratorium.

Leffler opened the meeting with a discussion of two local liquor license applications before moving to a presentation from Guy Podgornik, the treasurer of the Shaw-Dupont Citizens Alliance, one of the groups backing the moratorium. Podgornik and the other SDCA members at the meeting were articulate advocates for their cause. They articulated the following concerns (I’m not endorsing these arguments; I’m simply relaying them; not all advocates of the moratorium made all of these arguments):

1. There are too many bars and restaurants in the moratorium area and we’re “not getting arts or retail” and other businesses.
2. The arts overlay, a zoning policy that restricts eating and drinking establishments from occupying more than half (previously 25 percent) of the frontage of certain blocks on U Street and 14th Street, is not being enforced.
3. There’s too much noise from restaurant, bar and club patrons.
4. There’s not enough parking for local residents.
5. There’s too much traffic (foot and vehicular) in the area.
6. Bar and club patrons are committing crimes.
7. Bar- and club-related problems are driving young families out of the area.
8. A moratorium would raise local property values.

The purpose of the moratorium, Podgornik said, is “to give us a break” from the proliferation of drinking establishments and of local retail establishments being driven out of business by competition with liquor license rents. The best articulation of the moratorium supporters’ best arguments, of course, is in the moratorium petition itself.

At least three of the people who spoke in favor of the moratorium were officers of the SDCA. (SDCA president Joan Sterling was out of town for business and did not attend.) But several people who spoke in favor of the moratorium seemed not to be SDCA members, suggesting that support for the idea extends at least somewhat beyond the group (more on that later.)

Several moratorium proponents said that crime in the area had increased as liquor licenses have proliferated. That doesn’t seem to be true—at least not through 2010, the last year for which I could find statistics. Here’s a pretty chart I made from Metropolitan Police Department data:

Opponents of the moratorium, most of whom spoke towards the end of the two-hour meeting, also put forth a number of arguments, including a few I hadn’t heard before.

A gentleman who gave his name as Daniel Cramer (I’m guessing about the spelling) was a particularly effective advocate of his position, noting that “moratoriums have massive effects on businesses,” “raise barriers to entry” for entrepreneurs, and arguing that the idea that a moratorium would bring in retail and arts establishments was “wishful thinking.”

Another opponent of the moratorium noted that, in DC, once initiated, liquor license moratoriums have always been renewed—making it harder to believe SDCA’s argument that this is a “temporary” step.

A third opponent of the moratorium, Patrick Davies, who lives on the 1300 block of T Street with a married child in the neighborhood, complained that it is already too hard to open a new restaurant in the area, even in an abandoned building. Davies also cited a point raised by Michael Hamilton of In My Backyard DC: The proposed moratorium area has fewer liquor licenses on a licenses-per-square-footage basis than the other moratorium areas in DC:

[T]he [proposed] U Street zone has concentration of 1.05 liquor licenses per 100,000 square feet. Adams Morgan has 1.38 (31% higher concentration), Dupont East has 1.68 (60% higher concentration), and Dupont West has 2.92 (a whopping 178% higher concentration).

This is a useful statistic but not moratorium foes’ best argument, given that moratorium supporters could easily push for two smaller, more carefully drawn moratoriums zones with higher liquor license density.

Moratorium foes’ best point, also raised by Davies, is a democratic one: Dan Wittels, an SDCA board member, ran against Jilani in the four-way race for ANC commissioner last year. He came in fourth, winning just 98 votes (a little less than 11 percent). If the majority of the residents of the proposed moratorium zone oppose the moratorium (as the initial feedback received by ANC commissioners at this meeting suggests), the moratorium should not be approved.

Next up is a meeting of the full ANC at 7:00 p.m. on Thursday, March 7, at the Reeves Center at U and 14th Street. Hamilton, the guy behind In My Backyard DC, has said his group will be out in force at that meeting; I guess we’ll see.

I’ve updated this post to add Patrick Davies’ name.

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