Wilson Building Bulletin: 911 hearing, ending child marriage, DCHA check-in

It’s been a busy week of oversight at the Wilson Building, the seat of local government in our great city. Since you probably don’t have time to sit through dozens and dozens of hours of testimony, in this new series we’ll round up some of the top-line issues facing the powers that be and the public they (allegedly) answer to. 

OUC Oversight

On Wednesday, the director of D.C.’s 911 agency — one of the most crucial yet most dysfunctional departments in the city — appeared before the Judiciary and Public Safety Committee to testify about two new bills. Ward 2 Councilmember Brooke Pinto, who chairs the committee, introduced legislation to require the Office of Unified Communications, which handles 911 calls and dispatches emergency responders, to create public reports when mistakes and errors occur. The other bill would provide OUC employees with free on-site childcare.

OUC director Heather McGaffin and Clint Osborn, the head of D.C. Homeland Security and Emergency Management Agency, pushed back on the transparency bill. Osborn said the audit requirements of HSEMA are out of step with national practices, claiming no other city “is performing reviews of this sort or at this volume nor scope.”

D.C.’s OUC dispatchers have made a number of grave mistakes in recent years, including sending people to wrong addresses and making other mistakes in cases where people eventually died. As a result, trust in the agency from both the public and city leaders has eroded. McGaffin maintains that educating residents on the agency’s operations and following up with individuals one-on-one is a solution, but councilmembers seemed less convinced.

“I have constituents reach out all of the time, they hear about an issue and they’re terrified that when the moment comes for them [to call 911] that they’re going to have this issue,” Ward 3 Councilmember Matthew Frumin said. “I don’t doubt that you’re totally diligent and reach out to people individually, but anecdotal isn’t going to do it. There is an issue of confidence in the agency, you may not feel that that’s fair, but there is an issue of confidence.”

The bill is part of a broader push from Pinto to steer the agency in the right direction after several high-profile mistakes. This past August, a five-month-old died after technical issues at OUC’s dispatch center led to delays in providing care (it’s not clear if a faster response time would have saved the infant). In 2023, a dispatching failure during a flood at a doggy daycare resulted in the death of 10 dogs. Over the years, both residents and councilmembers have expressed frustration with what they see as OUC leadership’s failure to address the mistakes, and in some cases admit to them at all. Earlier this year, local media outlets boycotted a press conference with McGaffin, fed up with the agency’s unwillingness to provide on-the-record answers or take questions from reporters. 

Under the legislation, the city’s Homeland Security and Emergency Management Agency would be required to conference with the involved agencies (like OUC, MPD, or the fire department) when an error occurs and then produce a public report within 45 days. The bill would also require the public release of 911 calls, transcripts, and other documentation — a move OUC has been historically reluctant to make. 

McGaffin and Osborn said that publishing raw documents from a call gone awry (like 911 transcripts) will lead to misinformation, arguing that edited narratives about an incident are clearer for the public to understand and add additional context that the average citizen won’t pick up from a technical dispatch report. 

“The audits called for will not improve public safety,” Osborn said.

In contrast, the theme of the public testimony on Wednesday was that the bill did not go far enough in increasing scrutiny of the agency; a contradiction that Pinto took to mean the bill was getting somewhere.

“Always an interesting thing when we hear from public witnesses that the bill is not nearly strong enough, and then we hear from government witnesses that the bill is way too strong,” Pinto said. “Usually, to me, that's a little bit of a marker that maybe we're headed in some sort of direction.” 

Pinto also pressed for staffing updates, most of which McGaffin was going to clarify post-hearing, as she did not have the numbers in front of her and some positions are in the midst of moving, getting promoted, or hiring.

Also this week... 

Bill ending child marriage

On Monday, the Judiciary and Public Safety Committee heard public testimony on two bills; one to end child marriage in D.C. — which yes, is still legal. Under the current law, clerks can issue marriage licenses to 16 and 17-year-olds if they have written or in-person consent from a parent or guardian. The Child Marriage Prohibition Amendment Act would raise the age to 18, bringing D.C. in line with most of its northeast counterparts, like Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, and Delaware. Several survivors of abuse, some of whom had been forced to marry their abusers, testified in support of the bill, as did spokespeople from the Tahirih Justice Center, the D.C. Rape Crisis Center, the Washington Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs, and more. 

Legislation guaranteeing rights to expectant mothers in D.C. Jail

Also on Monday, the Judiciary and Public Safety Committee received public testimony on new legislation to expand the rights of new and expectant mothers at the D.C. Jail. Introduced by At-large Councilmember Christina Henderson, the bill would guarantee specialized healthcare during and after pregnancy and allow an individual to request the presence of another person to support them during labor. As the Washington Post reported, the legislation was spurred on by two mothers who arrived at the D.C. Jail while pregnant. The women testified that the Department of Corrections originally denied them a support person for labor, failed to provide supplemental pregnancy food servings until they were nearly to term, and shackled them during and after their pregnancies. The women, London Teeter and Miah Robinson, worked with legal advocates to lobby the council for legislative change.

"They asked how many weeks I was and still proceeded to shackle me. They would sometimes not believe I was even pregnant," wrote Teeter in her testimony. "This experience has been one of the worst traumatic times in my life."

Per the Post, the Corrections Department did not allow the women to testify live on Monday, citing staffing issues and “technological bandwidth,” but you can read written testimony here.

DCHA check-in

On Tuesday, At-large Councilmember and Housing Committee Chair Robert White led a public oversight roundtable on the performance of the D.C. Housing Authority — named the worst-performing major housing authority in the country by HUD in 2023. Last November, the agency began a three-year “recovery” plan, seeking to reshape DCHA into “a competent” provider of low-income and affordable housing (yes, apparently competency requires a three-year recovery plan). The goals are all-encompassing and range in scope, from updating poor IT services to making major changes in operating housing subsidies. Testimony on Tuesday revealed that while there have been some improvements since the last hearing in February, housing advocates and residents continue to report bureaucratic back-and-forths that leave them in the lurch. They also outlined dysfunction in the application process for vouchers and assistance, and confusion about how portions of the three-year plan will impact the housing and financial situation of current recipients.