Deafening noise from unmuffled race cars tortured thousands of residents in Wards 6 and 7 for three days in mid-July, thanks to a secret 10-year deal that Mayor Anthony A. Williams' appointees to the D.C. Sports and Entertainment Commission still refuse to make public.

The commission has provided D.C. City Council members with what purports to be a copy of the contract it signed with National Grand Prix Holdings LLC in July 2001. However, we're told that copy is fraught with the same blacked-out sections contained in what the commission provided The Common Denominator in response to a Freedom of Information Act request. The blacked-out contract provides little more information than definitions of words and phrases used throughout the document.

The mayor and the council need to remind the commission in no uncertain terms that it is conducting the public's business on public property with the public's money. It is absurd for the commission to assert that "proprietary" concerns require that the contract provisions remain secret. There is nothing "proprietary" about the public's business, and businesses that are worried about the public learning details of their deals simply should refrain from doing business with the government. No one forces them into these deals.

Taxpayers have a right to know the terms of deals that are made in their name.

Someone also needs to remind the mayor and the council, which confirmed his commission appointees, that the highest responsibility of government is to protect the public's health and safety. Imposing sustained high noise levels - which government measurements confirmed as approaching the sound generated by jet engines at takeoff - on residential neighborhoods violates this public trust.

Astoundingly, Mayor Williams continued to tout the recent Grand Prix race as a success that "exceeded our expectations" during his weekly press briefing on July 24. The mayor repeatedly characterized the race, which was run July 19-21 on a temporary track adjacent to Robert F. Kennedy Stadium, as merely an "inconvenience" to residents.

Inconvenience, indeed. The mayor danced around The Common Denominator's inquiry about whether his public assertions that residents should be "compensated" in some way for this inconvenience means that the government plans to buy them hearing aids.

The mayor did not answer the question when asked if he thought hearing loss was more than an "inconvenience."

If Mayor Williams is unwilling to champion the right of residents to be secure in their homes from such government-concocted intrusions, then the council needs to act. In this case, once is more than enough. The Grand Prix contract needs to be canceled.

What's more, the council needs to strengthen the city's public disclosure laws to ensure that taxpayers can find out how their government is spending their money. When it comes to the public's business, there should be no secret deals.

Copyright 2002, The Common Denominator