D.C. council president Phil Mendelson yesterday abruptly delayed the release of a planned city report on the proposed D.C. United soccer stadium until a week from Wednesday. That’s the day after election day, which means that none of the people running for office will need to take a position on it before the vote.
The move puts the stadium plan on life support, according to one councilmember:
Council member Jim Graham (D-Ward 1), who has forcefully opposed a key element of the plan — swapping the city’s Reeves Center at 14th and U streets NW for land for the stadium near Nationals Park— said he reads the delay as probably meaning one thing: The stadium project is “dead.”
“There is no question that the political environment will be different. No question, the pressure will be off when everyone is reelected for four more years,” Graham said.
Also, it increases the chances that it will be approved, according to some human beings (I’m assuming they’re human beings, the article doesn’t say) that the Washington Post talked to:
But others said the controversial decision to dispose of the Reeves Center might be easier for lawmakers to make after the election. Several council staffers also speculated that it could simply be a first step toward mothballing serious consideration until January so that the next mayor could take credit for completing the deal.
If I’m allowed to do my own tea-leaf reading, it seems likely that everyone realized that there was no upside to holding stadium hearings before finding out who will be mayor and who will be on the council next year; this way, everyone can settle into the lame-duck period between election day and inauguration day and decide whether to rush through approval of a plan before the new folks take over, or just punt and let it be someone else’s problem. The only reason December is a deadline at all is because current mayor Vincent Gray (who didn’t make it through the primary process) has been the plan’s main proponent, so the assumption has been it needs to get done on his watch or not at all, but in D.C. time and electoral success has a funny way of turning opponents into proponents, so we’ll see.