IN OTHER WORDS: Carwash workers have a friend in Evans

Workin’ at the carwash blues

D.C. Council member Jack Evans wants to scrub a section of city law that prohibits carwash employees from earning overtime wages in the District of Columbia.

The Ward 2 Democrat said he introduced the Car Wash Employee Overtime Act of 2011 on Monday to correct an inexplicable clause that bars those employees, and nobody else, from getting time-and-a-half after 40 hours of work.

The bill, he said, “would wipe out that unfair exception.”

Mr. Evans said employees of a carwash he uses on 13th Street kept bugging him about the issue after they recognized him as a council member, or at least spotted the license plate on his car that spells it out.

Still waiting

A ceremony held Tuesday in Prince George’s County to celebrate the state’s acquisition of land for the Intercounty Connector was delayed about 30 minutes because of the late arrival of County Executive Rushern L. Baker.

While Mr. Baker later explained he was in Upper Marlboro attending the confirmation of two of his Cabinet members, there was one guest at the Laurel ceremony he might not have wanted to keep waiting — Democratic Gov. Martin O’Malley.

The governor and other officials waited patiently before starting without Mr. Baker. The ceremony was held along Interstate 95 under a future ICC overpass on a windy, occasionally rainy day.

Mr. Baker, a Democrat, did arrive in time to make a speech.

Spirits remained high during the delay, with Mr. O’Malley even providing some levity. About 15 minutes into the wait, he strode to the lectern and appeared ready to begin proceedings.

“I am here to announce,” Mr. O’Malley said, followed by a dramatic pause, “that we are still waiting on the county executive.”

Remembering Schaefer

With the death last week of William Donald Schaefer, a former Baltimore mayor and two-term Maryland governor, we revisit in tribute the apt characterization contained in an anecdote by David Simon in his 1991 “Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets”:

“In 1987, two parking attendants were murdered at 4 a.m. in the garage of the Hyatt Hotel at the Inner Harbor — the glittering waterfront development on which Baltimore has pinned its future — and by early afternoon the governor of Maryland was barking loudly at the police commissioner.

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