Gov. Williams, If You Please

D.C. Mayor Says Next City Leader's Title Should Match Duties

Washington Mayor Anthony A. Williams, right, talks with John B. Parham III, D.C.'s director of education financial services, at a hearing this week. At his news conference, Williams said D.C.'s next leader should officially be called a governor. (By Gerald Martineau -- The Washington Post)

Forget that old "mayor of Washington" schtick. In the future, the chief executive of the District of Columbia should be known as "governor," according to D.C. Mayor -- er, Gov. -- Anthony A. Williams.

Williams (D) announced his preference yesterday at his weekly news conference. Since the District performs the functions of a state as well as a city, he said, its leader should be appropriately recognized.

"I do believe that for the next mayor we should consider, and I would support, changing the title," Williams said. "A number of major capitals have governors. I think Tokyo, Bangkok, Buenos Aires, and maybe Berlin is a governing mayor. And we should change the title to reflect the full responsibility of the office."

A new title is not the only item on Williams's wish list for his successor. After he retires in January, Williams said he would work to guarantee the next leader of the nation's capital "suitable retirement" benefits as well as a house -- or "mayor's residence," as he put it. Williams, a native of Los Angeles, has rented an apartment in Foggy Bottom throughout his seven years in office. A highly contentious plan to build a mayor's mansion in the tony Foxhall neighborhood fell apart a few years ago.

The subject of the title and trappings of Williams's office arose after the mayor revealed that he had yet again been denied admittance to the annual Washington conference of the National Governors Association, which closed Tuesday. Williams said he has worked for years to gain access to the meetings and has sought the support of Maryland Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. (R) and former Virginia Gov. Mark Warner (D).

"There's no problem with me at NACO, the National Association of Counties," Williams complained. "The mayor should be represented at the state level," too.

Williams actually attended last year's NGA meeting at Warner's invitation, he said. But this year, Williams was shut out, he said, "partly because I do not have a title of governor."

NGA executive director Ray Scheppach said it's not really as simple as all that. Although the group's bylaws contain no definition of a governor, Scheppach said it seems clear that certain conditions must be met.

For example, Williams "has a city council," Scheppach said. "I don't think any of the others have a city council."

But many of the group's members do have a lieutenant governor, "certain attorney general-type functions," a state legislature -- "a whole different form of government, really," Scheppach said. By those standards, the NGA welcomes the leaders of Guam, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, the Northern Mariana Islands and American Samoa but not the mayor of Washington.

"There have been discussions in the past. We do invite some of his staff and so on to some of our working sessions, be it on Medicaid or what have you," Sheppach said. "But in terms of actual membership, the answer has been no, really."

That answer infuriates WTOP radio political analyst Mark Plotkin, an ardent champion of statehood for the District, who sees the mayor's exclusion from NGA meetings as "just a continuation of the nation's insult toward us."

"We had to fight to get the D.C. flag up at Union Station. We're still not on the back of a quarter. And one of my major ones is we have no statue in Statuary Hall" in the U.S. Capitol, Plotkin said. "We need some chutzpah. We need to start calling ourselves a state. And if tepid, tenuous, timid Tony in the last few months of his tenure is becoming Tony the Tiger, I think that's great."

Yesterday, Williams's would-be colleagues in Maryland and Virginia declined to comment on his ambitions. Tim Kaine (D), the newly elected governor of Virginia, told Plotkin this week that he was "a little busy in week six to begin rewriting the bylaws of the National Governors Association," Kaine spokesman Kevin Hall said.

Ehrlich spokesman Henry Fawell said in an e-mail that "the Governor (our governor) will refrain from wading into a D.C. matter." But Ehrlich "enjoyed working with Mayor Williams these past four years," Fawell said, "and has a great respect for him no matter what his title."