FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: MARCH 17, 2021
‘Zoning Head Crosses Ethical Bounds’
Grassroots Ask IG, Auditor, BEGA, AG to Intervene
The DC Grassroots Planning Coalition (DCGPC), the main citywide group advocating for responsible and equitable development, is asking the District’s top four accountability offices to examine a letter DC Zoning Commission Chair Anthony Hood sent to Council Chairman Phil Mendelson urging passage of Mayor Bowser’s thoroughgoing changes to the DC Comprehensive Plan – a communication that the Coalition says crosses “ethical boundaries and violates DC law and regulations” by in effect lobbying the Council for the Mayor’s redevelopment agenda.
The letter (below) sent by e-mail on March 15, asks Inspector General Daniel W Lucas, Rochelle Ford, Director, Office of Governmental Ethics (part of the Board of Ethics and Government Accountability, BEGA), Auditor Kathy Patterson and Attorney General Karl Racine to “examine, and render an opinion on” Mr. Hood’s letter.
In communication on behalf of the DC Grassroots Planning Coalition, Parisa Norouzi, Director of Empower DC, alleges Hood goes beyond making a disinterested request for information about the Council’s consideration of the Comprehensive Plan and urges rapid passage of the Plan so that the Commission, according to Hood, can clear “a backlog of cases . . . [and] counteract adverse decisions by the DC Court of Appeals.” The Hood letter of August 5, 2020, implies that his Zoning Commission is declining to consider cases in anticipation of Council approval of the Mayor’s redevelopment-friendly changes to the Comprehensive Plan. DCGPC charges this is “unlawful and unethical” inasmuch as a Comprehensive Plan exists to guide the Commission’s timely consideration of projects that come before it.
Adds Norouzi, “Mr. Hood’s lobbying the Council on behalf of the Mayor and to reverse ‘adverse’ court decisions is particularly galling. It recalls the effort at the federal level under the last president to subordinate our three branches of government to the executive, and shows that Mr. Hood and the Commission are hardly ‘independent’ of the Mayor, the Council and the developer class. We noticed that the Zoning Commission dismissed objections raised to the Hood letter by the Committee of 100 last October (https://committeeof100.net/download/planning/comprehensive_plan/2020-10-13-C100-Letter-Zoning-Commission-Chair-Anthony-Hood.pdf), and we think that when an agency fails to recognize its ethical and legal lapses, greater authority must be brought to bear.”
Anthony J. Hood has served on the District of Columbia Zoning Commission since 1998. He first served as Chairman of the Zoning Commission in 2000 and has currently served as Chairman since 2007.
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Complaint-re-ZC-Chair-Anthony-Hood-3.15.21.pdf