The worst city government.

• Author: Boo, Katherine
• Position: Washington, D.C.

The Worst City Government

Because we regard the breadkwond of big-city government a terrible problem, we plan to continue our reports, not only from D.C, but ftom New York's carnival and elsewhere. Nominations are welcome.

How to explain the decision of the Virgin Islands to import consultants from the Worst City Government in America? Who better, we say, to help set up a system of civil service gradations. After all, a few years ago federal auditors found that 80 percent of the D.C. housing authority's maintenance workers were "overgraded"-getting an electrician's salary, say, for taking out the trash. . . .

While Marion Barry enjoys the company of suspected drug dealers, city managers oversee drug programs in their own way. In 1986, the city gave $75,000 for a study to a former campaign worker for a city councilman. The study found that citizens consider drugs a problem. The husband of a top city official received twice as much, mostly for another survey, which found that young people's attitudes...