Impeccably dressed, Washington Mayor Marion Barry stood on a sunlit terrace and, mustering all his folksy charm, announced the premier of a new cable television show.
Not surprisingly, “City Talk,” which airs on a city-run cable channel, stars none other than the mayor himself. Twice a month, he will interview local bureaucrats about their departments and agencies.
The big question is how long the show will run with its host still mayor, with suggestions late Wednesday that it won’t be for long.
Despite a Washington Post opinion poll indicating Barry is holding a wide lead over three other announced Democratic candidates, word trickled out during the evening that he might announce Thursday that he will not seek a fifth term. Such a move would end a tumultuous tenure marked by imprisonment on drug charges and the loss of most of his power to Congress.
For weeks the durable Barry, tagged by cynics as “mayor for life,” has embroiled the nation’s capital in a guessing game over his political future. Will the man who once did time for cocaine possession seek re-election?
He has been zealously plugging new programs and appears eager to speak, press flesh or be seen, whether the backdrop is the White House, a gathering of diplomats, a senior citizens center or a neighborhood church.
At 62, Barry has seemed in recent weeks to be the very available man, and his schedule has hardly been that of somebody ready to quit the political fray after 30 years, with a weekend departure for China on the agenda.
Wherever he goes in his Lincoln Town Car, questions have followed. In a brief encounter recently at a hot dog stand, Barry delayed his lunch to answer a curious bystander who had asked about his plans.
“I just don’t know,” he said coyly, “but I’m not worried.”
The next day the mayor did more public soul-searching at another news conference, a performance repeated again Wednesday at his weekly chat with reporters.
“I’m getting closer and closer to a decision, closer and closer to an announcement,” he insisted, “Again I resent those who think I am just playing with the public. I am not. . . . This is a very, very difficult decision.”
Just for the record, the mayor added that winning was not really the issue: He could defeat the announced candidates.
His performance lagged, however, when the subject turned to city business and a controversial recycling contract, which he had approved but the City Council snubbed.
At first he defended the contract as “the best we can get” but promised to “check it out.” When reminded of four lower bids, including a proposal from one of the nation’s largest recycling companies, the mayor hastily retreated.
“What I do, frankly, is more ceremonial,” he said. “I just review them (contracts) to make sure the papers are all in order and that they are ready for the council members. I don’t get involved in the selection. . . .”
It is this casual attitude about city financial matters that has fatally wounded the mayor’s standing on Capitol Hill.
In Congress, which oversees the city’s budget and spending, Barry is either loathed or held at a distance as if radioactive. For his part, the mayor seldom misses a chance to complain that the Republican Congress wants to extinguish the city’s 23-year experiment with self-government.
Congress, mindful of Barry’s record as mayor and his 1990 arrest at a downtown hotel on drug charges, has bypassed the mayor’s office in its push to overhaul Washington’s government. In fact, Sen. Lauch Faircloth (R-N.C.), a nemesis of Barry, has indicated he will push ahead with more changes, regardless of the mayor’s re-election plans.
Since 1995, an emergency Control Board, created by Congress with five presidential appointees, has taken charge of the city’s overall finances in an effort to eliminate debt estimated as high as $3 billion. The board also oversees the police.
Barry still plays a major role in initiating the city’s budget, but he has day-to-day authority over only one department, Parks and Recreation. Early this year the Control Board hired a Texan, Camille Barnett, to run nine other departments at an annual salary of $155,000.
Day-to-day operations of city finances are in the hands of Anthony Williams, the chief financial officer who has produced a $108 million surplus in city revenues in fiscal 1997 and a projected $348 million surplus this year.
Although Congress last year agreed to shoulder the burden of the city’s local prison, courts and Medicaid expenses, Williams pointed out that Washington suffers from a distinct disadvantage: 60 percent of its property cannot be taxed because it is owned by the federal government, non-profit organizations or foreign governments.
He conceded, however, that for years the city had lived woefully beyond its means:
“It promised everything to everybody in terms of programs, in terms of who it would hire, regardless of qualifications. As the government began trying to do too much with too little, it deferred maintenance on its roads, its bridges, its infrastructure in terms of employees, its buildings and its overall equipment.”
When he came to the job, Williams recalled recently, “It was like climbing aboard a 747 plummeting toward Lake Michigan with three engines on fire, smoke in the cabin and the crew sitting there adjusting the air-conditioning and stereo system.”
The plane’s captain was clearly the controversial and irrepressible Barry. If he bails out Thursday, or sometime soon, even his supporters may feel relieved.
