Meet Matthew Frumin

April is election season in the District of Columbia. In April 2011, DC held a special election to fill the At Large Council seat vacated by Kwame Brown after he was elected Council Chairman. April 2012 witnessed the primary election to select candidates for the November general election. This April, DC will again be be filling a vacant At Large seat; this one left open by Phil Mendelson when he was elected to replace Brown as Chairman. Brown resigned after a bank fraud conviction and may hold the record for creating a need for special elections.

At least six, and possibly as many as eight, candidates will be on the April 23 ballot (the nominating petitions of two candidates have been challenged). This week I had the opportunity to sit down for a discussion with one of those candidates, Mathew Frumin. Frumin proved to be a thoughtful candidate with a somewhat unique take on the campaign. Where it is common for candidates to point out what is wrong with the city and explain how they plan to change it, Frumin prefers to describe what is going right and how he would like to continue it and widen its benefits. This positive outlook was clear throughout our discussion.

Frumin is a 30 year resident of the District with three children who all attended or attend DC public schools. He was chairman of the Wilson High School Management Corporation, which led the modernization of the school. He currently serves on the Mayor’s Task Force on Undergrounding Power Lines and works with the Washington Interfaith Network on a range of issues including job creation and sustainable stormwater management. An international trade attorney by profession, Frumin is currently on leave from his law firm, Cassidy Levy Kent.

An ANC Commissioner since 2008, Frumin stressed his record of negotiating win-win solutions to the sort of vexing neighborhood issues that plague many of the District's ANCs. For instance, a proposal to accomodate the Capital City Little League by installing flood lights at Chevy Chase Park for night baseball divided neighbors and resulted in a two-year battle between proponents and opponents of the lights. Frumin helped find a solution which allowed the lights to be installed while protecting the interests of the park's neighbors. Similarly, Frumin drafted a memorandum of understanding to help resolve a dispute over a proposed move of American University's law school to AU's Tenley Campus. Both sides of the dispute signed off on the MOU as the basis for negotiations and reached an agreement allowing the project to move forward.

An issue that has been discussed extensively in the DC Urban Moms and Dads forum is the redrawing of DCPS school boundaries. The fear of losing in-boundary status to popular DCPS schools has pitted neighborhood against neighborhood. It is just the sort of seemingly intractable issue to which Frumin could apply his problem-solving skills. We spoke in-depth about the status of Wilson High School and Deal Junior High. With regard to Wilson, Frumin expressed frustration at having predicted the over-crowding issue while leading the school's renovation and not having been able to get buy-in for a solution. Frumin said that at that time he had proposed moving the Duke Ellington School of the Arts, which occupies the former location of closed Western High School, to Wilson as part of Wilson's renovation project. That would have allowed Western High School to reopen and serve many of the students now heading to Wilson. With the Wilson option now closed, Frumin continues to support relocating Ellington and reopening Western. Possible locations for Ellington include Ward 4's Roosevelt High School or Ward 1's Cardozo High School. Frumin cites a number of advantages in addition to being able to reopen Western. For instance, both Ellington and Roosevelt have large renovation budgets. Combining the funds could allow a combined school to have state of the art facilities. In addition, Ellington -- an arts magnet school that draws students from across the city -- would have a more central location and be better accessible by Metro. Frumin also believes that the presence of Ellington students at Roosevelt would increase the attractiveness of the school to inbound families who now largely shun the school in favor of out-of-bounds, charters, or private schools.

With regard to Deal, Frumin was much less concerned. DCUM discussions have often pitted those who favor limiting Deal enrollment to those neighborhoods geographically closest to the school against those who favor more geographically diverse enrollment (which would also be more racially and socio-economically diverse) at the expense of those living closer to the school. Frumin, however, cited expected future enrollment figures, combined with additional space resulting from the renovations to the Reno School which shares its campus, to suggest that Deal can handle future growth. "Wilson is the real issue", he told me.

This discussion led to a broader focus on the District's schools. Frumin believes that DCPS's actions too often send the wrong message to residents. Closures and consolidations of schools, which are now happening for the second time in recent years, are a negative signal that turn people off to the system. Frumin says that residents are not seeing the positive developments that can result from more efficient use of available funds. The purpose of closing schools, Frumin reminds, is to use the money saved to improve the remaining schools. Yet, residents are not seeing that improvement and, hence, are not being attracted to the remaining schools.

Frumin stresses the connection between improving the schools, attracting residents to send their children to those schools, and continuing the city's growth. While he is a resident of Ward 3, serves on the ANC there, and participated in the renovation of Ward 3's Wilson High School, Frumin explained that he has always viewed school improvement as a city-wide endeavor. He says that when he sought funding for Wilson's renovation, he proposed it as part of city-wide funding and advocated for city-wide funding among those with whom he worked in Ward 3. "I'm a passionate advocate for all the city's schools", he said. Frumin says that he has a reputation for supporting schools throughout the city and expects that those involved in improving schools in other wards will be one of his bases of support.

Frumin emphasized that improving the schools was more than a matter of simply renovating them. He cited recent budget cuts that had caused many schools to cut librarians and increase class sizes as measures that, like school closings, send the wrong message. Frumin compared staff-to-student ratios at successful schools to those at schools that are struggling. The successful schools generally have better ratios. "We need more adults under the roof, even if that costs more money", he stated. Creating great programs sends a positive message that attracts parents to send their children to the school, keeps current residents in the city, and helps attract new ones.

On the issue of affordable housing, Frumin says he supports current efforts to offer subsidies or tax incentives to include affordable housing in new development projects. In addition, he supports Council proposals to put a moratorium on property tax for elderly residents that have lived in their current home for a certain number of years. In addition, he has his own proposal to offer a $500 a month voucher to teachers, firefighters, and police officers who live in the city. The vouchers could be applied to market-rate housing. This would effectively increase the amount of affordable housing, while attracting more residents to the city.

Frumin also brought up the issue of returning citizens (prisoners who have served their time). He says that the city is now home to 60,000 returning citizens and that he believes their needs are something that must be addressed. He explained that his neighbors in Ward 3 might not encounter returning citizens or the challenges they face on a very frequent basis. Nevertheless, Frumin says, "I want to be an advocate for returning citizens as a Ward 3 resident." He says he tell his neighbors that "if we don't help returning citizens, we are hurting ourselves."

I asked Frumin to discuss the nuts and bolts of campaigning. He has already shown considerable success on one important measure: raising campaign funds. For the reporting period ending January 31, Frumin reported raising $82,360 with $75,961 in cash on hand. By comparison, this is more than double the amount raised by his closest competitor, former reporter and budget analyst Elissa Silverman. Frumin says the he had set a fundraising goal and accomplished that goal. He said that is evidence that he is a serious candidate and that he plans to be equally successful at achieving his additional goals. He has been building a staff of campaign professionals and said that we will see evidence of the field team he is putting together very shortly. Frumin has an obvious base of support in Ward 3, but believes he can count on support from those with whom he has worked on school improvement as a city-wide base. He also explained that in a special election, turnout is very low and name recognition is much less important than in ordinary elections. "In a presidential election, people come out to vote for president and work their way down to the bottom of the ballot to the council race. Then they choose the name they know best," he said. But, in a special election, it is more important to have dedicated voters who are willing to come out and vote for you. Frumin feels good about his ability to attract such voters.

On the issue of ethics, Frumin said that he believes the proposal drafted by Attorney General Irvin Nathan on behalf of Mayor Vincent Gray was a good start. He supports campaign finance reform, but stressed that regardless of the laws on the books, an individual's character was what mattered. People of good character will behave properly whether laws required it or not. When asked whether he would quit his job and be a full-time Council Member, Frumin said that he wasn't prepared to make that commitment at this time because he felt he had an obligation to his law firm. However, he didn't close the door on the idea if it turned out that he couldn't balance both jobs. He stressed that since his firm deals with international trade, he didn't expect conflicts of interest to arise.

In the DCUM Forums, Frumin's own ethics have been questioned because he raised campaign funds from developers such as Douglas Development and Donatelli and Klein who have had business before Frumin's ANC. Neither developer contributed the maximum amount and corporate donations are less than ten percent of Frumin's fundraising haul. However, given that Silverman and Statehood-Green candidate Perry Redd  refuse all corporate donations, this is one distinguishing factor between the candidates.

With regard to the other candidates, Frumin said that he didn't want to run against anyone, but rather for something. He wouldn't criticize his opponents and, to the contrary, had positive things to say about several of them. For instance, he praised Redd for emphasizing the challenges faced by returning citizens.

Frumin said that it is important to remember that DC is a much different place than it was 10 or 20 years ago and that a lot of people -- many of whom were political enemies of each other -- contributed to that change. He said that while Anthony Williams, Adrian Fenty, and Vincent Gray may not agree with each other, they all contributed to improving the city. "We need to move past flogging ourselves and say that we actually accomplished a lot and let's shape those accomplishments so they are positive for all of our residents."

You can learn more about Mathew Frumin at his website http://www.matthewfrumin.com.