DISTRICT OF CALAMITY

By Margaret Carlson/Washington

When the story of the decline of Washington is written, historians may decide that its beleaguered citizens finally snapped on the day the city decided to seek out and fine homeowners who failed to rake leaves from the public space in front of their houses. The unraked-leaves strike force emerged this month after a winter of discontent, when the city with one of the nation's highest tax rates ran out of money and stopped providing some basic services. The streets are almost never clean (grit and cigarette butts blow up from littered gutters on K Street), only 40 of the 104 garbage trucks function, and during the winter's snowstorms some city buses made up their routes according to which streets were passable. (Only 1 in 3 plows worked.) Now that it's spring, there are so many deep, unrepaired potholes that some neighbors have banded together to patch their own; others have resorted to throwing 25-lb. bags of mulch into them and, in the neighborhood of Kalorama, a mattress.

Signs of breakdown are all around. At one time, 1,500 traffic signals were on the blink because the city had failed to pay its electricity bill. Police officers who wanted their cars to run gassed up and made repairs themselves. Even then, the cops were not investigating anything but the worst crimes. Residents who call 911 sometimes end up with just a file number for insurance purposes. Because the water-treatment plant is inadequate, the District has issued several advisories in the past year cautioning residents to boil water before drinking it. The city has shut down two fire companies in the past 18 months, and three more are targeted to close. Only 12 of the department's 16 ladder trucks are operating.

By April of last year, the city was in such bad condition, with more than $3 billion in long-term debt, that the President signed legislation creating a financial-control board to impose some discipline. Headed by former Federal Reserve Board member Andrew Brimmer, the new board set out to end the city's worst fiscal excesses--noncompetitive bids, deficit budgeting, a bloated work force whose ranks include 40,000, or 1 out of 9 adults in the District--while figuring out how to pay overdue bills and eventually refinance the district's $379 million current deficit. But the board ran into a recalcitrant Mayor Marion Barry, who was initially reluctant to make any significant cuts. In his "State of the City" address last January, Barry blamed "District-bashers" for the city's near bankruptcy. "Negative, biased publicity," he said, "has cost D.C. more jobs and destroyed more economic-development possibilities than any other single force."

Except for the force many residents would name: the mayor himself. For months he snubbed the board, refused to provide it with basic financial data and called allegations of featherbedding a "big lie." He joined a protest by students at the University of the District of Columbia, who tied up traffic on Connecticut Avenue for 14 hours after hearing that their funds might be cut. His standing fell last week when it was disclosed that he had had a $20,000 security fence built around the mayor's residence under a no-bid contract by a former member of his staff.

In February Barry offered a "transformational plan" that would perhaps eventually cut 10,000 jobs. Earlier this month, the control board released $220 million for the District to pay vendors, but some traffic lights downtown were still on the blink last Wednesday during rush hour. On the same day, the Washington Post ran a picture of a city doctor, lacking a light table, reading an X-ray by putting it up to a window. Parents of public school children have been warned there is no money for substitute teachers despite $7,400 in spending per pupil, so students will have to sit idle in the gym when teachers are absent. In some school buildings the stench from backed-up toilets is so bad that kids won't use them.

Crime--of the random, brutish, frightening kind--is on the rise. Areas once relatively immune are besieged; since March 5 there have been 11 robberies, nine at gunpoint, of Georgetown stores like the Gap and Eddie Bauer. At a meeting of angry residents on Capitol Hill, a police lieutenant advised them to get guns to defend themselves in the "war zone."

Housing values have fallen sharply in some neighborhoods, from a median price of $200,000 in 1992 to $135,000 this year, but property taxes remain sky high, as do assessments, which the city is slow to reduce even when homeowners appeal. Since the beginning of the decade, 50,000 residents have fled the District, which explains in part why its nonvoting delegate to Congress, Eleanor Holmes Norton, introduced legislation last week that would cut federal income taxes in the District to 15%.

But it may take more than tax relief at this point. The only bureaucrats who work with ruthless efficiency are the ticket-writers, now joined by the leaf patrol. Yet few residents see where the money goes. Three weeks ago, during efforts to free a woman pinned under a runaway Metrobus, fire fighters lost crucial minutes because of broken equipment. One of her legs was severed and the other had to be amputated on the spot, a scene that the worst District bashers could never have imagined.

--With reporting by Ann M. Simmons/Washington

With reporting by Ann M. Simmons/Washington