If you are reading this as an email, you signed a petition at the beginning of 2020 decrying the Mayor’s lack of transparency, and calling for a new facility, sufficient operational funding, and managerial independence for the DC Archives. Thirteen Advisory Neighborhood Councils (ANCs) joined you, adding the particular concerns of their communities. And so did a number of elected officials and candidates.
With your help, we have gotten the Council’s attention, discovered that the Department of General Services had done some design work on a new facility, and secured one small action that will exert more pressure on the District of Columbia government to fulfill the promises it made to protect DC’s single largest historical resource.
Our campaign, like everything else, was derailed by the COVID-19 pandemic, however, YOU helped make progress by showing your broad interest in the documents that tell the story of the real DC.
Improvements made immediately following February oversight hearings
The Department of General Services performed inspections and completed maintenance that had been deferred for years, including electrical and security.
Archives staff converted a room used to store land records into a reading room. Researchers no longer have to sit in an area that should have been a secure record storage area, and the DC Archives can now physically accommodate more researchers.
Continuing to seek answers from an administration lacking transparency
At the oversight hearings, the Secretary of the District of Columbia reiterated that the Mayor remains committed to opening a new archives facility at the University of the District of Columbia, a location with many advantages.
Following up on this, we spoke to senior administrators at UDC, who confirmed that they were eager to have the archive facility on campus. This past summer, UDC vacated Building 41, the only structure remaining on site of the proposed facility. Now that the building is empty, the next move is the mayor’s… and UDC is still waiting for direction from her office.
In that same conversation, we learned that DGS had produced a detailed feasibility study for the site in May 2019, but never released it publicly. This fits a pattern where DGS commissions reports but leaves them as “drafts,” so they are not required to be published. We have no idea what other studies they have done.
Together, these actions form a gratuitous lack of transparency from the Bowser Administration toward its constituents. We turned to the Council for assistance.
An official platform
As part of the 2021 budget, the DC Council established a volunteer DC Archives Advisory Group (AAG) to assist the Council to ensure a new archives facility gets built. The structure of the group is different than an earlier effort, the DHRAB. That board, created in 2018, answered to the Mayor, had broader duties, and, critically, required operational funding. However, the DHRAB was never funded, and therefore never staffed, and therefore nothing more than legislation.
Structuring the AAG as a volunteer group answering to the Council allows it to operate without funding and exercise more independence. The key power included in the bill is the AAG’s ability to access to all documents and studies related to the construction of the new archival facility.
The AAG will consist of between 5 and 11 members, appointed by DC Council Chairman Phil Mendelson. We anticipate that his office will be announcing appointments in the coming weeks. We were asked for recommendations, and we made sure to submit a list of qualified, outspoken, and diverse residents from across the District.
More to do—and that’s where you can help
Unfortunately, due to revenue shortfalls stemming from COVID, capital funding for the new archives facility was moved back two years, pushing completion to 2025: 10 years after planning was supposed to begin.
Meanwhile, conditions at the current facility continue to deteriorate. In August, a recently and improperly installed pump for the A/C failed, flooding a mechanical space. Operations are more strained than ever; in July, an employee hired in 2018 to work through the backlog of uncatalogued work quit abruptly in protest. DGS could not answer questions posed to them by Councilmember Robert White at their budget hearing. And the Mayor has made no efforts to improve transparency.
In the coming year, we will need your help to keep the Council focused on long-term protection of the documents that capture the lives lived in the District. Here is what you can do.
Give us feedback. Do you have ideas? Do you know someone we should contact? Please let us know how to better connect with the residents of DC.
This week, we sent out a candidate questionnaire to all Council candidates, as well as SBOE candidates. We will make it available publicly for ANC candidates to answer. We invite you to reach out to your ANC commissioner this week (find them here!) and send them the questionnaire (We will follow up to confirm their identity);
Talk to your friends and neighbors; invite them to subscribe to this list. The Archives Advisory Group will uncover more about the status and problems with the archives replacement project. We want to get that information out;
Get ready to send an email to the Council before the next oversight and budget hearings. Council staff has indicated that they may be able to move the project timeline forward. But as we have seen, they won’t do it without a push, and for that we need to be on their minds from the beginning.