This week in D.C. news features Kwame Brown’s fraud charges, Capital Pride back in action, Corcoran Museum’s plans to sell the Beaux-Arts building and Councilmember Jack Evans getting a little feisty on Twitter.

Kwame, Fully loaded

Kwame “Fully Loaded” Brown pleaded guilty to one count of bank fraud, a federal felony, after resigning his City Council seat on Wednesday. Back in 2007 Brown submitted falsified loan applications, one of which was to finance his ironically-named boat, “Bullet Proof.” He exaggerated his income, forged a signature and changed a 3 to an 8 (on two occasions).

Yesterday, prosecutors charged Brown with violating the District’s campaign finance laws during his 2008 reelection campaign. Prosecutors alleged that Brown authorized a family member to establish a “side account” for campaign contributions, which he used to make under-the-table expenditures in excess of $50. Failing to report expenditures of that size is a misdemeanor. Today, Brown gave a less-than-contrite acknowledgment of his campaign finance transgressions.

As reported by Washington City Paper, Brown gave a statement to reporters as he left the federal courthouse after pleading guilty to the felony bank charge. “I am guilty to knowing that poll workers and others received more than $50 in cash payments for doing campaign work, which is and has been done in this city for years,” he said. “I believe I’m the…only candidate who has ever been charged—with a misdemeanor.”

Here’s a handy summary of the “Fully Loaded” saga.

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Fiona Greig, D.C. Council candidate for Ward 2, has announced that she is dropping out of the race. Greig cited the alleged intimidation campaign run by opposition Jack Evans (D-Ward 2) and his supporters as her reason for dropping out.

“At home, I received muffled phone calls telling me about the ‘dirt’ my opponent had on me,” Greig wrote in her statement. “Someone wanting to hold a ‘Meet and Greet’ for me received nasty emails from the opposing campaign. And I learned from a city agency that a well-known private investigator whose firm does ‘surveillance’ and ‘domestic investigations’ had requested my records. Maybe that explains the man who repeatedly walked past my house one night, looking in the windows.”

Whether these actions constitute an intimidation campaign or are just normal tactics (or whether they were even instituted by Evans) is unclear. But this does show that Greig, who received a Ph.D. in Public Policy from Harvard and works at consulting firm McKinsey & Co., was not ready for the D.C. political scene.

From the start, Greig faced an uphill battle against Evans. She emphasized smart growth and retaining young families in Ward 2 as much instituting Council ethics reform, but she was seen by many as the  ”Not Jack Evans” candidate (which is, in this blogger’s mind, a legitimate platform).

Although she may not have had much of a chance against Evans’s fundraising and political prowess (especially when she has her own fundraising issues), Greig’s candidacy can hopefully serve as a stepping stone for others who are fed up with the Council.

Greig, who may have been recruited by David Alpert and Ken Archer, was willing to challenge the the norm of D.C. politics. She was also enthusiastic about including students in her campaign, which she demonstrated by working with DC Students Speak and appointing campus captains.

Last night, the Burleith Citizens Association held their annual meeting. Although the meeting was lightly attended, all the notable Burleithers, including outgoing president Lenore Rubino and new president Christopher Clements, were there.

And no meeting of the BCA would be complete without a guest appearance by Ward 2 Councilmember Jack Evans. Evans started by thanking Rubino for her service, then moved on to an indirect campaign plug about everything the council has done over the past decade. Although the city has improved its bond rating more than a letter grade in ten years, Evans said the city is still in financial trouble. Currently, because of budget difficulties, the city is at its minimum number of police officers, but CMs Evans and Phil Mendelson have found the funding to increase the police presence.

For public safety, Evans commented that, if it weren’t for last month, this year could have had the lowest homicide rate in 42 years. In addition to Halloween, three weeks ago saw nine homicides.

And of course he touched on redistricting. Evans appointed Lenore Rubino, Ron Lewis, and Jennifer Altemus as co-chairs of the redistricting working-group for ANC2E. They worked out a plan, which Evans called “somewhat controversial because of the student input.” Their proposal will be submitted to the council, and a hearing will happen sometime in the future.

On the Campus Plan, Evans said that he supports the residents 100%; although the council does not have a role in the process other than to advocate for the neighbors. Additionally, he said that one of the most pressing issues of the community is to limit the number of students in each house. Evans said he has tried to institute a zoning overlay or to limit the number of unrelated renters that can occupy a house (currently 6), but these plans have received pushback from other parts of the city.

“But they don’t have the problems we have,” Evans said. “It’s not students.”

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This belated edition of District Digest (courtesy of crashed computer) includes a new kind of flash mob, foul play, more Council member corruptions, a bad birthday, and a terrible restaurant experience.

Flash mobs of crime

On Saturday, Mayor Vincent Gray announced that the District would crack down on flash mob robberies.  Thursday morning, about ten girls invaded a Benning Road convenience store and stole about $70 of snacks and other items.

To combat similar instances, Montgomery County Council proposed a new curfew requiring children under 18 to be home by 11 p.m. on weeknights and 12 a.m. on weekends.

Foul play in the village

Last Tuesday, police arrested Albrecht Gero Muth, 47, for murdering his wife Viola Drath, 91, a former journalist and Georgetown socialite.

Drath was found unconscious in her Q Street home after purportedly falling down the stairs. The medical examiner ruled the death a homicide. Drath had taken out several protective orders against Muth before the incident.

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Yesterday, Georgetown’s Councilmember Jack Evans (D-Ward 2) held a meeting at the John A. Wilson Building to kick off the Advisory Neighborhood Commission redistricting process.

Mayor Vincent Gray signed the bill redrawing the city’s eight electoral wards last week. Ward 2 will lose Shaw and gain the area containing the Convention Center.

Now the effort turns to redrawing the single-member districts and boundaries of the ANC’s, local councils that provide official community input on everything from liquor licenses to campus plans.

ANC single-member districts are supposed to represent about 2,000 people. The ANC containing most of Georgetown University has over 3,000 people, and the rest of the dorms are split into two three different single-member districts.

Evans has appointed Georgetown ANC 2E Commissioner Tom Birch to chair the effort in Ward 2. Anyone that expresses interest in serving on the redistricting task force will be allowed to join the task force.

Unlike most wards, the task force will not decide the ANC and single-member district boundaries in plenary, but will divide up into subcommittees based on ANC. Chairs of the respective ANC’s will lead each subcommittee, and the citizen association leaders will serve as co-chairs.

In Georgetown, Commissioner Ron Lewis of ANC 2E will chair the subcommittee, and Jennifer Altemus of the Citizen’s Association of Georgetown and Lenore Rubino of the Burleith Citizen’s Association will co-chair. All three have serious misgivings about the University’s 2010 Campus Plan.

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Mayor Vincent Gray and other colleagues joined D.C. Councilman Jack Evans (D-Ward 2) at an event last Friday celebrating his twenty years representing Ward Two, which includes Georgetown University and its environs, on the D.C. Council.

Evans was first elected to the Council on April 30, 1991. Nowadays, he is best known as a pro-business councilman - supporting a $22 million tax loophole for large corporations – and a consistent critic of Georgetown University.

“Even if students who live off-campus in our neighborhood are well behaved, it is too much of a strain on residents,” Evans wrote in his regular column in the Georgetowner newspaper.

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Yesterday, two Advisory Neighborhood Commissions and a neighborhood group requested that D.C. Zoning Commission Chairman Anthony Hood postpone community members’ campus plan testimony scheduled for Thursday.

According to the Georgetown Dish, the Citizens’ Association of Georgetown and ANC commissioners from Georgetown, Burleith, Foxhall, and other neighborhoods farther from campus filed the request in light of changes the University made to its plan earlier this month. The letter argues that community testimony should be delayed until the D.C. Office of Planning revises its report about Georgetown’s 10-year campus plan.

“Georgetown University filed voluminous new material only recently, and the parties need time to digest, analyze and respond to it,” the letter, which was supported by D.C. Councilmembers Jack Evans and Mary Cheh, reads. “We need to have the [Office of Planning] and the [District Department of Transportation] reports in hand as the foundation for our presentation.”

Evans, who unlike Cheh does not plan to testify at the hearing, supported the request “to ensure that the community has ample opportunity to express their views on this very important issue.”

Representatives from the Office of Planning and DDOT are scheduled to testify on May 12, according to the Dish. While both ANC commissioners and community leaders have been openly critical of the plan, which they claim does not provide enough on-campus housing to students, the details of the community testimony are largely unknown.

“If the Office of Planning needs more time to present its findings, the community representatives should be able to see what those findings are,” Cheh told the Dish.

[Editor's Note: We'll have more about the community's delay request later today, and in tomorrow's issue of the Voice.]

Unsurprising to anyone who has followed Georgetown University’s 2010 Campus Plan—which the University officially filed last week—the Citizens Association of Georgetown and D.C. Councilman Jack Evans have come out against the proposal.

In a press release, Evans said he was “disappointed to learn that the University’s proposed campus plan does not include any significant action to move more undergraduate students onto the main campus.”

He did, however, praise the University for dropping the proposed 1789 block and the chimney extension from the plan.

Jennifer Altemus (COL ’88), president of the CAG, released a much more critical statement regarding the plan.

“The plan is disappointing in that it proposes no new student housing,” Altemus wrote. The University dropped the 1789 block plan, a proposal that would have created student housing, but was opposed by the CAG because it fell outside of the defined campus area of the University.

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