What D.C.'s Elves Do With Your Taxes

· $100,000 to the Takoma Theater.

· $200,000 to the U Street Theater Foundation.

· $200,000 to the Source Theater.

The elves' generosity with other people's money left a lump in my throat -- and coal in taxpayer stockings.

The Washington National Opera -- so rich after selling its building in 1999 for $28.2 million that it was able to endow its Eugene B. Casey Fund -- was awarded $500,000.

The National Building Museum, a congressionally chartered private nonprofit educational institution and home to presidential inaugural balls since 1885, pocketed $300,000 from the D.C. treasury.

The generosity extended to more than the arts and historic artifacts.

Several recipients, and I stress this, provide needed services. I don't have space to list them all. But earmark recipients cover the gamut: neighborhood business associations, churches, crime-fighting groups, community festivals galore and every ethnic group imaginable (except maybe Aleuts).

So I asked Doxie A. McCoy, communications director for D.C. Council Chairman Vincent C. Gray, whether the grantees' requests had been subjected to public hearings and comment.

She said in an e-mail that Gray's Committee of the Whole held a hearing April 25 "that ran from 10 a.m. to about 11:40 p.m." and that had 46 listed witnesses, including some of the groups seeking funds. That was their public vetting.