There’s a new parking sheriff in town, and she’s got tickets — not just for you double-parkers of the world, but a few of her own, too.
Kim Stevens, the finance director for the House Administration Committee and one of the pooh-bahs of the new House parking regime, has herself racked up more than a dozen parking violations, a source tells HOH. Her parking sins include parking multiple cars (you’re permitted to have only one) and parking in non-designated areas, the source tells us. In fact, a Roll Call photographer last week snapped a photo of what the source tells us is Stevens’ car, a blue Mercedes, sitting in a House-side garage with an expired D.C. registration and three parking tickets slid under the windshield wiper on the driver’s side.
Stevens is one of a three-person team on the committee tasked with overseeing the parking operations for the House, House Administration spokesman Kyle Anderson tells HOH. Though she and the team just took over the parking duties starting Tuesday, Anderson says Stevens is starting her new task by vowing to be a better parker in the future. “She acknowledges the violations that have occurred over an extended period of time and is committed to adhering to parking guidelines moving forward,” he wrote in an e-mail.
Overseeing parking operations is one of the last duties to be transferred from the committee’s Republicans to the Democrats, he noted.
HOH would let this whole thing go with a warning, not that she can issue tickets or anything.
Capitol Cruising. Since the scandal surrounding Sen. Larry Craig (R-Idaho) broke, those of us who didn’t already know have learned that extracurricular bathroom activity isn’t confined to powdering one’s nose. Though many were surprised by Craig’s stall-side disorderly conduct arrest as part of a gay-sex sting, the phenomena of cruising bathrooms — a meet-up destination for guys looking for action in the stalls — isn’t new to Capitol Hill. Several bathrooms in and around the hallowed Capitol complex have reputations as exactly such spots.
Topping the list is a men’s room on the sixth floor of the Longworth House Office Building. Lore has it that the restroom, located in the southwest corner of the building, is a hook-up venue for staffers and other Hill types, several gay staffers tell HOH. Back in January, gossip blog Wonkette reported that a man posted a message on Craigslist for another guy he met up with in that bathroom.
A sixth-floor bathroom was the site of the arrest of former Rep. Jon Hinson (R-Miss.), who was collared back in 1981 on attempted sodomy charges, although it isn’t clear in which of the Longworth men’s rooms the naughty scene, er, went down. According to press reports at the time, the bathroom was “reported in complaints to police as a meeting place for homosexuals.”
It’s difficult to determine whether the bathroom still is an actual meet-up spot or whether that’s just legend, and many staffers, gay and otherwise, treat the bathroom’s reputation as a joke.
A man from Kentucky attends a Tea Party Patriots rally on the West Front of the Capitol to protest the IRS' targeting of conservative political groups.
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