REGION | Frank Principi, Chairman of the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments, says that our region’s economy has become overly reliant on the federal government. With major federal spending cuts expected, he says (WaPo, 1/30):

To maintain and improve the region’s economic growth and competitiveness, we need to develop new job sectors and recruit and retain skilled workers for those sectors. Which sectors should metropolitan Washington focus on? How will this development and recruitment occur? What resources are needed to ensure success?

To answer these questions, the Council of Governments is working “to hammer out a plan for economic growth and competitiveness in a new reality of fewer federal workers and less federal spending.”

EDUCATION | One complaint in the conversation around education reform in the District is that there is a disproportionate number of “highly effective” teachers in wealthier school districts. The Examiner ran an analysis and found that when “effective” teachers are mixed in with the “highly effective” ones, the distribution is far more even across all wards. (Examiner, 1/30)

COMMUNITY | The Prince Charitable Trusts’ Kristin Pauly shared the news that Leonard Berman has joined their D.C. staff as a part-time Senior Program Officer. He has been serving as a consultant to Prince Charitable Trusts since 2001. He came to Prince with 15 years of philanthropic experience, having previously served as a Program Officer with the Public Welfare Foundation and as Senior Program Officer/Consultant with the Arlington Health Foundation and the Case Foundation.

Len has always been an important member of the WRAG community, and we’re excited to hear about his new role. Congratulations, Len!

FOLLOW UP | In a comment on my response to Pablo Eisenberg, reader K.L. Davis cited Mark Rosenman’s “Charities Suffer From a Wealth Gap, Too” article in last week’s Chronicle of Philanthropy as useful evidence to support Eisenberg’s position. Rosenman himself then weighed in with some interesting additional data related to the conversation:

According to the most recent data available in Foundation Center publications, well under a third of grant dollars are aimed at the “economically disadvantaged” and only about 12% (including many of those same dollars — double counting them) go to human services. That compares to 23% going to education and 23% going to health. As to “social justice” — (which includes — again double-counting — some grants categorized as for the economically disadvantaged, human services, health and education in the preceding sentence), that figure is about 12%.

Thank you to both Mark and K.L. – and our other readers who sent comments – for the thoughtful engagement!

ENVIRONMENT | You can thank a “Bandalong litter trap” for helping keep the Anacostia cleaner. The device, paid for by the District’s bag tax, captures floating trash. (WAMU, 1/30) I wonder if it captures floating bodies, like the one my little brother’s crew team bumped into on the Anacostia last year. True story.

HEALTH | Anti-Sprawl Doctor to Host PBS Series on Urban Design and Public Health (DC Streets, 1/27) “We have built America in a way that is… fundamentally unhealthy.”

- Related: This series sounds like it will be a good companion to the 2008 series Unnatural Causes, which generated great conversation in the funding community.

TRANSIT
- New Potomac river crossing coming? (WTOP, 1/30) Don’t hold your breath!

- ‘Social Equity’ to Be Weighed in U.S. Transit Funding Rule (Bloomberg, 1/28)

Happy Monday, friends. It looks like it is going to be a beautiful late spring mid-winter week, with temperatures in the mid sixties?!

In colder news, something pretty crazy happened at the X-Games this weekend. Snowmobiler Heath Frisby (great name) became the first person to successfully land a front flip in competition. Watch this video, and then consider what might have happened if he wasn’t absolutely perfect in the execution.