{"id":308274,"date":"2010-02-11T20:09:52","date_gmt":"2010-02-12T01:09:52","guid":{"rendered":"tag:blogs.rj.org,2010:\/rac\/\/2.2445"},"modified":"2010-02-11T10:09:28","modified_gmt":"2010-02-11T15:09:28","slug":"surviving-the-storm-can-dc-do-better","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/308274","title":{"rendered":"Surviving the Storm: Can DC Do Better?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"JeffMandel.jpg\"<\/span>Jeff Mandell, a Chicago attorney, is a former Legislative Director of the Religious Action Center.<\/i><\/p>\n

I was a first-hand witness to
\nDC’s snow emergency this week. Trudging along Capitol Hill’s snow-clogged streets
\nand seeing the entire city – and the federal government it hosts – at a
\nstandstill was an amazing and deeply distressing experience. I could not help
\nbut feel that the havoc wreaked by the snow was, more than anything else, a
\nsymptom of how impotent our government has become. In the 24 hours I spent in
\nDC this week, I saw numerous unplowed streets, snowed-in cars, and
\nfender-benders. But I didn’t see a single snow plow. The city was a complete
\nmess, more than 48 hours after last weekend’s snow had stopped falling. Tuesday
\nmorning, with the federal government closed again in reaction to the snow
\nalready on the ground and in fear of the snow predicted to arrive that
\nafternoon, I fled back home to Chicago. That is, I left Washington, where no
\nsnow was falling, to fly back into an ongoing blizzard. And the only question
\nwas whether my flight would leave DC; landing in Chicago was never in doubt. <\/p>\n

Chicago knows how to handle
\nits snow, as well it should, being famous for harsh winters of prodigious
\nsnows and ferocious winds. While it makes sense that Chicago would be more
\nprepared for winter than Washington would, that might not be true: according to
\nthe newspaper coverage, Chicago has a fleet of 275
\nsnowplows<\/a>, while DC has a fleet of 250<\/a>. Chicago
\nhas only 10 percent more plows than DC, though Chicago, at 234 square miles<\/a> (with more than
\n50,000 miles of streets and highways<\/a>) more than triple the size of
\nWashington, at 68
\nsquare miles<\/a> (of which area 10 percent is water). By the time the snow
\nstopped last night in Chicago (about 24 hours after it had started falling), we
\nhad more than a foot in my city neighborhood, and the storm had set a
\nnew record<\/a> for one-day snowfall in Chicago in February<\/span>
\n. Rush hour was a bit sticky Tuesday
\nnight, but neither the roads nor public transit ground to a halt. Our small
\nresidential street in the city was plowed by morning, and I could walk to the bus or the
\ntrain for my daily commute. Yet in Washington, a couple of inches causes paralysis; truth be told, even the prediction of a couple of inches often paralyzes DC. <\/p>\n

This isn’t just a laughing
\nmatter or a point of regional snobbery (though President
\nObama chided<\/a> Washington’s feeble response to snow last winter, when he had
\nrecently moved into the White House). The cost of Washington’s inability to
\nclear the streets is staggering: The Office of
\nPersonnel Management<\/a> estimates the each day the federal government closes
\nbecause of weather costs taxpayers approximately $100
\nmillion<\/a>.<\/p>\n

After reading that estimate – $100 million per day! – I looked upon the snow piled in D.C.’s streets with
\nmore than just personal frustration. The snow became an affront to the efficacy
\nof our government – simultaneously reinforcing the skepticism of those who
\ninsist our government can’t confront the challenges we face and blocking the
\nwork that needs to be done for us to confront those challenges. For the total
\ncost of a few days worth of snow closures, I thought, the federal government
\ncould give D.C., Virginia, and Maryland the funds to upgrade public transit, buy
\nmore equipment, and train more people so that snow would no longer regularly
\ncause protracted disruptions in our nation’s capital. The whole nation would
\nkick in to prevent the waste and lost productivity our government suffers when
\nit has to shut down because its employees cannot get to work and their children
\ncannot get to school. <\/p>\n

Yesterday’s Washington Post<\/i>
\ncontains a better
\nidea<\/a>: D.C., Maryland, and Virginia could collaborate to prepare and to commit
\nthat snow – even in large quantities – would not lead to prolonged regional
\nparalysis. As columnist Steven Pearlstein sets the goal: “There is no reason less than a
\nfoot of snow should be allowed to disrupt work and school, and no reason
\nanything more than a foot shouldn’t be cleaned up within 36 hours.” That
\nseems more than reasonable. “There are lots of problems that cannot be solved just by
\nthrowing money at them,” Pearlstein continues, “but snow removal is not one of
\nthem.<\/p>\n

This is a perfect example of how a relatively small
\nexpenditure could protect against major disruptions, to residents of the DC
\narea and to the entire federal government. And yet, as Pearlstein notes, the
\ncontemporary political climate is so reflexively hostile to the idea of taxation
\nthat it is difficult to imagine his proposal gaining traction. Instead, he’ll
\nbe pilloried for suggesting the government raise taxes and spend people’s
\nmoney, rather than letting them spend it themselves – even though snow removal
\nis a perfect example of the kind of problem that can’t be solved through
\nindividual expenditures. <\/p>\n

Representative Barney
\nFrank likes to say that “government
\nis the name we give to things we choose to do together.” And we often choose
\nthose projects we undertake together because they are the kind of projects that
\nwe cannot accomplish individually – slowing climate change, improving
\ninfrastructure, reforming health care. As I said, this is one of those projects.
\nI know because it’s time to walk the dog, and some of my neighbors have not
\nshoveled their sidewalks. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jeff Mandell, a Chicago attorney, is a former Legislative Director of the Religious Action Center. I was a first-hand witness to DC’s snow emergency this week. Trudging along Capitol Hill’s snow-clogged streets and seeing the entire city – and the federal government it hosts – at a standstill was an amazing and deeply distressing experience. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4316,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-308274","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308274","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4316"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=308274"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308274\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=308274"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=308274"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=308274"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}