The Washington Post - 28.08.2019

KLMNO

METRO

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 28 , 2019. WASHINGTONPOST.COM/REGIONAL EZ SU B

JOHN KELLY’S WASHINGTON

A poster that includes a

stamp celebrating the

Transcontinental Railroad

shows... a British train. B3

THE DISTRICT

A white bicyclist who used

racial slurs and attacked a

black motorist is handed a

three-year prison term. B5

OBITUARIES

Auto executive Ferdinand

Piëch transformed

Volkswagen into Europe’s

72 largest carmaker. B6

°

78

°

82

°

78

°

8 a.m. Noon 4 p.m. 8 p.m.

High today at approx. 5 p.m.

84

°

Precip: 55% Wind: SSW 6-12 mph

BY KATHERINE SHAVER

Maryland transportation officials have determined that building another bridge near the Ches- apeake Bay Bridge would relieve traffic backups better than an additional crossing farther to the north or south, according to state findings released Tuesday. Three corridors that are each two miles wide — one adjacent to the bridge, one just north of it and another just south — will be studied in more detail before any alignment is chosen, according to the Maryland Transportation Au- thority. That narrows the possi- ble corridors from 14 initially under consideration. However, the study has already found that building an additional bridge in the same corridor as the existing one would best reduce cross-bay traffic backups, both on summer weekends and non-summer weekdays, state officials said. The Bay Bridge connects Routes 50/301 in Anne Arundel County on the west with Queen Anne’s County on the Eastern Shore. The study found that without an additional crossing, east- bound traffic congestion at the Bay Bridge on summer weekends in 2040 would span 12 hours, two hours more than in 2017. If another bridge is built in the same corridor, the Bay Bridge would have no backups in either direc- tion — on summer weekends or SEE BRIDGE ON B2

Md. study

favors new

span near

Bay Bridge

BY RACHEL WEINER

Nicole Wittmann has been a prosecutor in Loudoun County for 15 years, taking on some of the highest-profile violent-crime cases in the D.C. exurbs along- side Commonwealth’s Attorney Jim Plowman. She hopes to re- place her fellow Republican this November. But a group of voters says Wittmann has lied about living in Loudoun in recent months and is ineligible for the office. If it suc- ceeds in pushing her off the ballot, that will clear a path for Buta Biberaj, a progressive re- former who would be Loudoun’s first Democratic chief prosecutor in more than two decades. Four people, including the chair and a vice chair of the local Democratic Party, have filed a lawsuit seeking to remove Witt- mann from the race. At issue is whether Wittmann lived in Loudoun when she regis- tered to vote there in February — or with her family in neighboring Fairfax County. A candidate for commonwealth’s attorney must be able to vote for that office; the suit argues that her voter registration and thus her candidate registration are invalid. The deadline to file as a candidate was in June. “The charges of voter fraud SEE RESIDENCY ON B4

Loudoun

candidate’s

residency

questioned

BY DONNA ST. GEORGE

Maryland students in elementary and middle school im- proved on standardized tests in English, according to new data, but math scores dipped at most grade levels. The results, released Tuesday, mark a final chapter for rigorous exams that Maryland rolled out in 2015 and is leaving behind. For the coming school year, the state is creating new standardized tests. Tuesday’s data showed 43.7 percent of students statewide reached proficiency levels in English in grades three to eight last school year — a gain of more than two points. Math was a different story, with statewide declines for grades five to eight and in Alge- bra 1. As with English, more than half of students statewide did not pass key math exams. “We have some real work to do in terms of our mathematics results,” Karen B. Salmon, state superintendent of schools, told the Maryland State Board of Edu- cation at its Tuesday meeting. In the Washington suburbs, Montgomery County — with Maryland’s largest school system — outperformed the state, with 53 percent of elementary and middle school students reaching the benchmark on English exams. The number was more than two points higher than a year ago. Performance was down in Montgomery in seventh-grade math, Algebra 1 and English 10. Neighboring Prince George’s County, with the state’s second- largest school system, posted numbers that were lower than state passing rates but mirrored SEE TESTS ON B4

Md. testing

data mixed

on student

learning

My dad, who is 94, occupies his days touching up old family photos, doing research on the family tree and otherwise just taking life “one day at a time,” as he likes to say. Not long ago, he discovered that a maternal great- grandfather had come to South Carolina on a slave ship in 1822 and was later sold to a plantation owner in Mississippi. But he could not find where in Africa the man had come from, so he took one

of those Ancestry DNA tests. The results showed lots of DNA from the Congo and Cameroon, Dad said. And in a tone barely above a whisper, he added, “and a certain percentage that’s British.” When I called to check up on him at his home in Shreveport, La., this past weekend, bells were being sounded here at Washington National Cathedral and at other churches throughout the country in remembrance of the first documented arrival of enslaved Africans in Virginia 400 years ago. So we began what I figured

would be just another chat about slavery and race. Dad recalled that his paternal grandmother, who lived to be 108, had been born into slavery on a plantation in Mississippi and that he had met her. “She said it was true that landowners would take advantage of black women, force them to do whatever they wanted... ” He stopped mid-sentence and let out a sigh. “Oh, my God, why do you have me telling you all this?” he asked, sounding exasperated. “I didn’t intend to get into this. It’s so depressing, every time I think about the kind of life that they

had to live.” There was something in his voice — a weariness. Then he said, “I’m feeling sick to my stomach.” There have been some excellent reports on slavery recently in The Washington Post, the New York Times and USA Today, among other news organizations that have dug deep into the history and its impact on the country and the world. You can get insightful commentary on the subject by a new generation of black scholars, hear them on podcasts or see them on various television SEE MILLOY ON B5

Personal connection to slavery still induces anguish

Courtland

Milloy

BY MICHAEL E. RUANE

P

resident Richard M. Nixon once mused on the sex lives of the National Zoo’s giant pandas. In 2015, first lady Michelle Obama and the first lady of China, Peng Liyu- an, attended the naming of one of the cubs. Now, in light of the U.S.-China trade war, the giant pandas could again take on a high political profile. The National Zoo’s beloved black-and-white bears, who have delighted Washingtonians for generations and have created joyous episodes of pandamania and profit, often have been on the world stage. But next year, the extended 20-year Chinese lease of the two adults — Mei Xiang, a female, and Tian Tian, a male — will be up Dec. 7. The zoo said it has not started discussions with the Chinese about the lease and could not speculate on an outcome. And the U.S. political landscape by late 2020 is a mystery. “Our agreements are based on science sur- rounding the giant pandas,” zoo spokeswoman Pamela Baker-Masson said. “We’ve accom- plished a lot over the last 40-plus years. Now both sides have to take a look at what the future science goals should be, and they go from there.” Chinese and American giant panda experts get on “exceptionally well,” she said. The zoo’s only other giant panda, Bei Bei, who turned 4 on Aug. 22, is slated to be gone within the next few months. By prior agreement with the Chinese, all giant panda cubs born in U.S. zoos must be sent to a breeding program in China once they turn 4. Two of the zoo’s cubs have been shipped to SEE PANDAS ON B2

KATHERINE FREY/THE WASHINGTON POST

Could D.C.’s pandas get

caught up in a trade war?

Chinese lease on National Zoo’s pair of adult giant pandas is set to expire next year

JONATHAN NEWTON/THE WASHINGTON POST Under the terms of a long-term agreement, the National Zoo’s two adult giant pandas — Tian Tian, top, and Mei Xiang — are slated to be sent back to China in December 2020. A third giant panda, 4-year-old Bei Bei, is to be shipped out within months.

Opponents seek to remove her from race for top prosecutor’s job

Crossing sites narrowed to three; forecast sees backups reduced to zero

BY PETER HERMANN

A D.C. police officer notified two city agencies that a rowhouse appeared to be illegally rented months before two tenants died in a fire, but his warnings of “life safety violations” went largely unheeded, the city administrator said Tuesday. The official, Rashad M. Young, said an inspector with the De- partment of Consumer and Regu- latory Affairs (DCRA) visited the house at 708 Kennedy St. NW three times after receiving the complaint in March but could not gain entry. Young said the inspector sent a letter to the owner but took no further action. He said inspectors with the fire department failed to act on the officer’s complaint and subsequent emails about the rowhouse, which was partitioned into small rooms and lacked a permit for rentals. Fitsum Kebede, 40, who came to the United States from Ethio- pia more than a decade ago, and Yafet Solomon, 9, described as one of the “brightest stars” at Barnard Elementary School, died of their injuries after being pulled from the burning house on Aug. 18. “It is clear that our agencies should have done more to better SEE FIRE ON B4

O∞cer

flagged

D.C. about

rowhouse

HE WARNED OF ‘LIFE SAFETY VIOLATIONS’

Agencies largely failed to act before 2 died in fire