It’s been 21 days since the D.C. Council passed the Large Retailer Accountability Act, but Mayor Vince Gray still hasn’t received the bill. Until he gets it, the countdown of how long he has to veto it remains stuck at 10 business days. How hard is it to transfer a bill between two people who work in the same building?

Gray has a theory on the hold-up. In an interview this morning on NewsChannel 8’s NewsTalk, Gray said what a lot of people around town are saying privately: Chairman Phil Mendelson is holding up the bill because, with the Council in its summer recess, members are hard to track down.

“Let’s say I veto it,” Gray says. “Then he’s got the situation of being able to gather the members of the Council who may be all over the place.”

The closer the Council gets back to returning in September, the theory goes, the easier it will be for Mendelson to get members together—-and easier to convince one more member to join the bill’s eight Council supporters for a veto-proof nine votes. Mendelson’s office didn’t return a request for comment.

Photo by Darrow Montgomery