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Deborah Simmons

dsimmons@washingtontimes.com

Deborah Simmons was a senior correspondent who reported on City Hall and wrote about education, culture, sports and family-related topics.

Articles by Deborah Simmons

Nudity at the beach. Quelle horreur!

The trusty Old Farmers Almanac says June 20 is the day those of us in the Northern Hemisphere can officially celebrate the arrival of summer.

June 15, 2017

D.C. Whole Foods fights rodents and landlord

Since March, the Whole Foods store on Wisconsin Ave. NW has been closed while battling rodents and other vermin, trying to comply with multiple D.C. health code violations and inspections.

June 13, 2017

Capitol Hill neighbors: No Hispanic PAC house

Want a "party house" in your neighborhood? Some Capitol Hill residents already have answered with a resounding "No," and are considering a lawsuit if the D.C. Board of Zoning Adjustment (BZA) grants an exemption to a Hispanic political action committee that wants to set up shop in their beloved neighborhood.

June 8, 2017
D.C. residents are asking for D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine to investigate charges against the mayor. (Associated Press)

Paging D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine

People acting on behalf of Muriel Bowser during her successful run for mayor in 2014 broke the law. Within months, in 2015, people working on behalf of Brandon Todd, her successor to fill her Ward 4 seat on the D.C. Council, did the same.

June 7, 2017
At-large D.C. Council member David Grosso said "public financing of campaigns would give greater voice to all voters and reduce the disproportionate influence of big city donors in D.C. politics" under a bill he has crafted. (The Washington Times) **FILE**

Beware the Age of Donald Trump

We are in the midst of the age of distraction, when Americans of all stripes have seemingly fallen into one of three camps: 1) Resist by any means necessary; 2) Spend more money; 3) Blame Donald Trump. Some politicians, even those not registered as a Republican or Democrat, fall into all three.

June 5, 2017
On Tuesday, Mayor Muriel Bowser pledged keep in place automatic tax cuts triggered by the city’s recent financial success. “What we did was, we looked at what we needed and what we could invest in this year and in the whole financial plan and what those investments would turn into. And this is where we landed,” she said. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

Protect D.C. tax cuts

Tuesday is the day — the first day for D.C. Council members to either support taxpayers or to pretend that reneging on proposed tax cuts is needed to "improve" housing, social services and public schooling.

May 29, 2017
FILE - In this Oct. 26, 2016, file photo, one of the remaining cows on Alabama farmer David Bailey's farm, walks towards a pile of hay to be fed, surrounded by dirt where ankle deep green grass use to be, acceding to Bailey, in Dawson, Ala. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson, File)

What’s the cattlemen’s beef? Washington

David Cook is a cattleman, a rancher and a member of the Arizona State House. He's no Beltway insider. Mr. Cook came to Washington this week to spell out his beef. In short, he wants Congress to stop trying to lasso other ranchers and rural Americans with regulations.

May 25, 2017
Candles and tributes were left after a vigil in Albert Square, Manchester, England, on Tuesday, the day after a suicide attack at an Ariana Grande concert attended by many young people. (Associated Press)

Don’t ‘retraumatize’ children after Manchester attacks

"Death and loss are the kind of issues that defy sound bites," psychologist Renee Garfinkel told me Tuesday afternoon, less than 24 hours after singer Ariana Grande, 23, learned of the Manchester suicide bombing and referred to herself as "broken."

May 23, 2017

The strange case of Seth Rich

This is the unfortunate story of the killing of a young man named Seth Conrad Rich, a Nebraska-born and -reared young man whose death by two gunshots has resulted in conspiracy theories of the worst kind.

May 22, 2017
"Vincent Gray... needs to slow the roll of this new hospital train. The only reason to build a new hospital from scratch or to renovate a former acute facility is because acute-care demand is not meeting health-care supply — and that is not the case in the District," says columnist Deborah Simmons. (Associated Press)

New hospital in D.C.?; Metro surges forward

Plans to build a new comprehensive hospital in Ward 7 or 8 moved forward Monday, when the D.C. Department of Health Care Finance executed a contract with one of the nation's largest consulting firms to help guide the city's hands.

May 15, 2017