A few weeks ago, Marc Fisher of The Post wrote a column about an unusually successful District government agency:

The baseball stadium — organized, designed and built by the city — is on time and on budget. The new convention center similarly got done with an efficiency not associated with the D.C. government. There’s even sudden movement to install artificial turf, lighting and other improvements on fields at five city high schools.

What those three examples have in common is Allen Lew, chief executive of the D.C. Sports and Entertainment Commission. He is running the stadium project, oversaw construction of the convention center and has just agreed to manage the high school sports effort.

While other D.C. agency heads whine about the difficulties of dealing with the city’s legendarily plodding bureaucracy, Lew charges ahead.

In short, Lew creates a culture of accountability and expectations that gets the job done.

I can imagine there were some people who read this and wondered why the District is so efficient when it comes to a project for the benefit of baseball and suburbanites instead of libraries and schools — won’t someone please think of the children?! Apparently, Lew thought of the same thing:

He asked contractors at the stadium why they won’t work for the city’s school system. The answers, Lew says, went like this: ” ‘Well, they don’t make decisions; you can’t get an answer from them.’ I asked my architect why he hasn’t worked for the school system for 30 years, and he said, ‘How do you expect people to bid on your work when you don’t pay your bills?’ “

Had I blogged this two weeks ago I probably would have said something along the lines of maybe the ballpark will show the schools how to get stuff done and the story would have ended there. However, the story isn’t over and has taken an interesting turn.

In this morning’s Post I learned that Lew has been tapped by Mayor Adrian Fenty to lead a $2.3 billion plan to upgrade D.C. schools. The greatest concil member ever Jack Evans (D, Ward-2), is very concerned:

“Do you want to take the main guy out of the picture, the guy who is able to get it done on time and on budget on opening day?” Evans said. “If you take him out of it, who will replace him? Getting the stadium done is not automatic.”

I can understand why Evans is concerned because it would be unfortunate for the ballpark to start missing its goals and exceed the spending cap of $611 million (not mention all the whining from the usual suspects about what a grave injustice the ballpark is), but there is much more at stake with the school upgrades.

I salute Mayor Fenty for choosing Lew for this difficult task. I disagreed with then-councilman Fenty on the ballpark vote, but once it became law, he went adopted the position of “it’s the law, let’s make it work.” He has made his share of mistakes, but he has choosen some good people (like Dan Tangherlini) and I like his “make a decision, the government isn’t going to make it for you” approach. Do you think this would have happened under Linda Cropp?