Just in. Attorney General Peter Nickles personally delivered baseball tickets for the rest of the season to Council Chairman Vincent C. Gray.

More to come.

UPDATED:

The council received tickets to Suite 61 at the new Nationals Park, ending the standoff with Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D).

The suite has 19 seats. With 13 council members, the chairman will create a "fair rotation," said Dawn Slonneger, Gray's chief of staff.

The chairman would like to have nine more seats in the lower section so that the council has 28 tickets, the number it had to RFK stadium where the Washington Nationals played before the

U.S. District Judge Ellen Huevelle today rejected a proposed agreement between the District and the Department of Justice over care of developmentally disabled people in group homes.

The city had hoped the agreement would forestall continued litigation that has gone on for three decades over health care for the mentally retarded and others in the District.

"I will not sign this order that has no monitoring," the judge said.

Her ruling was a blow to District officials who said that prolonged litigation was hindering their efforts to improve long-troubled care for the residents. Lawyers for the residents themselves had refused to sign on to the agreement and noted that a court monitor just last week had reported that care had actually worsened in recent months. Those findings came despite efforts by the administration of Mayor Adrian M. Fenty to bring in new personnel and improve health care.

Dan LeDuc

Mayor Adrian M. Fenty and health and environmental officials said this afternoon there is no "imminent health crisis" posed by the high levels of arsenic found in Fort Reno Park.

Joined at a news conference by several city health officials, the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Park Service, the mayor tried to assure residents that District and federal officials were aggressively testing the soil at the park.

Fort Reno was closed indefinitely Wednesday after the soil samples detected high levels of arsenic. But officials said today those samples may represent hot spots and not the entire grounds.

"We started testing this morning," Fenty said. "Testing will go all through the night and as soon as we have the results of the test we will give those to the public. It's too early to say what the risk is, if any, to anyone."

It will take 24 or 48 hours to complete the testing and get the information to the public, officials said.

Council member Mary M. Cheh (D-Ward 3) also attended the news conference.

"Hopefully by the show of force here, by the resources we've put into this just in the last 24 hours, we've demonstrated to the entire city that we're taking this seriously," Fenty continued. "And until we have complete clearance, we're going to be making sure the residents of this city and the residents of this region are safe."

Paul Duggan

But shouldn't the apostrophe be next to the 08?

D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee today announced her plans to overhaul 26 schools that have failed to meet academic targets for five straight years.

Rhee said she is seeking dramatic changes in the schools to improve student achievement. Under the federal No Child Left Behind law, Rhee had five options for turning them around: converting the schools into charter schools; replacing all or most staff; hiring an education management company to run them; turning them over to the Office of the State Superintendent of Education; or devising another plan.

Rhee opted to replace either the principal or the instructional staff at 17 of 26 schools on the list. Staff at the schools will be required to reapply for their jobs, with no guarantee that they will get them. One school, Green Elementary in Southeast Washington, was taken off the list because it is closing next month because of low enrollment.

The descendants of Frederick Douglass are having their say about the District Quarter contest.

The DC Wire broke the story about the images being considered for the quarter: Douglass, scientist Benjamin Banneker and composer Duke Ellington. Here is the story.

So guess which one the abolitionist's relatives say is the best choice?

"Frederick Douglass led the Abolitionist Movement to end slavery, he was a key figure in the Underground Railroad and he was one of the most important early supporters of the women's suffrage movement. He truly embodies the motto, Justice For All," says Nettie Washington Douglass, great-great granddaughter of Frederick Douglass and great granddaughter of Booker T. Washington.

The descendants issued a statement noting Douglass's presence all over the District, the Frederick Douglass National Historic Site at Cedar Hill and the Frederick Douglass Memorial Bridge, and the Frederick Douglass Museum, his first home in the District.

"Frederick Douglass made history here with his wartime visits to Abraham Lincoln in the White House," Washington Douglass added. "His service as President of the Freedman's Savings Bank, his time as US Marshall of the District and his years as minister-resident and consul-general to the Republic of Haiti all make Frederick Douglass an excellent choice for the quarter."

So there.

This year celebrating its 50th anniversary, Friends of the National Zoo has grown from four members to 100,000....At Ballou Senior High School students have begun a monthly prayer breakfast before the school day begins.... The Gertrude Stein Democratic Club hands out its candidate endorsements.....The Farmers' Market at the U.S. Department of Transportation headquarters has returned for its second year to the area near Nationals Stadium ... Also, as always, get home sales, crime reports and the D.C. council agenda and upcoming community events.

A day after the D.C. Council tabled a controversial D.C. Lottery contract, Mayor Adrian M. Fenty will withdraw it from consideration later today, administration officials said. The move is aimed at ensuring the deal is not declared dead by tomorrow's deadline for the council to vote on the matter under rules governing legislation.

But interim Attorney General Peter Nickles said the mayor will immediately re-submit the same contract for re-consideration, which would give the administration and D.C. CFO Natwar Gandhi more time to lobby the council and push for a vote. Fenty and Gandhi want to turn over lottery operations to a nine-month-old company called W2I, but council members have raised questions about the firm's credentials.

"We're not satisfied having the contract declared dead with no action," Nickles said. "We want a vote on this." He added that the administration would be happy to answer any further questions from the council but does not know of any specific concerns that were not answered by Gandhi in an April 30 letter to the council.

W2I is a partnership between international gaming services provider Intralot and W2Tech, a firm established less than a year ago by real estate developer Warren C. Williams Jr. and his wife, Alaka Williams.

If the council does not approve the legislation, the city would be forced to extend the contract with longtime vendor Lottery Technology Enterprises. LTE is a joint venture involving international lottery firm GTech and New Tech Games, headed by P. Leonard Manning.

Gandhi has said that the city is losing millions of dollars a year in potential profit under the current lottery management.

* Update 4:16 p.m.: Here is the mayor's letter to Council Chairman Vincent C. Gray (D) explaining the moves.

Mayor Adrian Fenty announced today that the city is seeking bids for a master developer for the 50-acre site next to RFK Stadium known as Hill East, which includes the defunct D.C. General campus. The project will be the second major development along the Anacostia River announced by the Fenty administration in the past 10 months. Poplar Point, a 110-acre site in Ward 8, will be developed by Clark Realty and will include condos, shops, restaurants, offices and, possibly, a soccer stadium for D.C. United.

Like Poplar Point, Hill East is possible because of a land transfer underway from the federal government to the District that officials said should be completed this year. And both projects have been on the drawing board for years and have undergone several iterations. After Mayor Anthony A. Williams shuttered D.C. General, city leaders have debated what to do with the vast tract of land.

For nearly five years, John A. Stokes has tried to sell city reporters on good news stories like summer meals for children and college tuition programs for D.C. high school students, as a spokesman for the state education office.

Now he'll be doing it from a different perch, as the city's Parks and Recreation Department director of communications, under agency head Clark E. Ray.

Education advocates scored a big win yesterday over Mayor Adrian M. Fenty and Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee when the District Council voted to reject the administration's proposal to strike the legal requirements for public hearings on the school budget.

The mayor had proposed to kill the law in the Budget Support Act for the 09 budget.

Advocates did a bit of a victory dance in a news release yesterday praising the council for its vote and giving its own broad coalition of parents, teachers and education activists a pat on the back for their hard work and victory.

Longtime school activist Iris Toyer, who played a key role in getting the initial 1987 law requiring the hearings, told the D.C. Wire this morning that yesterday's vote was the result of lobbying efforts, including meetings with council members' staff, a successful online petition and a general willingness to kick up a lot of dust over the issue of transparency in school reform.

"We used all of the list serves that we have," she said. "We testified on the issues and spoke directly from a historical perspective and talked about the impact of what it would mean in