District of Columbia Home Rule - Relationship With Congress

Relationship With Congress

See also: District of Columbia voting rights

Despite the fact that Washington, D.C. has an elected mayor and city council, significant congressional oversight of the District's local affairs remains in place. The Congress can also revoke the city's home rule charter at any time or pass legislation in regards to the city without approval from residents or the local government. District leaders have long complained about the interventionist approach that members of Congress, who have no particular attachment to the city, take in dealing with the District's local affairs. However, when confronted by hot-button political issues such as the death penalty, gun control or gay marriage, members of Congress are often pressured to cast votes consistent with the beliefs of their constituents, regardless of the law's effect on the city.

In some instances, congressional intervention in the city's affairs has produced ruinous results. As an early example from the mid-19th century, when Jacksonian Democrats tried to exercise greater authority over the District, the population convened to request retrocession of the District back to the states of Maryland and Virginia. The efforts to return the northern portion of the District failed; however, the citizens of the District's southern county of Alexandria successfully petitioned for the retrocession of that area to Virginia in 1846.

The standing committees charged with oversight of the federal city, known as the District committees, were also originally believed to be unimportant when compared to other committees with greater scope and authority. As such, those appointed to the District committees were often less-respected members of Congress. For example, Theodore G. Bilbo, a senator from Mississippi in the 1930 and '40s, was made chairman of the United States Senate Committee on the District of Columbia during his final years in the Senate. Bilbo, an unapologetic racist, used the appointment to extend segregationist policies among the District's increasingly African American population.

The District committees were largely restructured in the late 1970s. Currently, the District of Columbia is overseen in the House of Representatives by the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform and its Subcommittee on Health Care, District of Columbia, Census and the National Archives. As a courtesy to the city's residents, the District's non-voting delegate, currently Eleanor Holmes Norton, serves as a member of both committees. The District is overseen in the United States Senate by the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs and its Subcommittee on Oversight of Government Management, the Federal Workforce and the District of Columbia. There is no Senate equivalent to a delegate and therefore the District has no representation at all on those committees.

The Congress has intervened in the District's local affairs several times since the passage of the Home Rule Act in 1973. In most instances the Congress has intervened by passively prohibiting the District from spending funds to implement laws passed by the city council as opposed to directly overturning them. Most notable was the prohibition on spending funds to enact the Health Care Benefits Expansion Act of 1992, which extended health benefits to registered domestic partners in the city, and prohibiting the expenditure of funds to lobby for greater representation in Congress. In other instances, however, the Congress has implemented a more active approach in exercising its authority over the District. For example, legislation was passed in 1992 mandating a referendum on the use of the death penalty in the District, and bills to remove the District's strict gun control regulations have been continuously introduced in the Congress as well.

Efforts to roll back the city's gun laws were curtailed following the June 26, 2008, Supreme Court decision in District of Columbia v. Heller. The court held that the city's 1976 handgun ban violates the Second Amendment right to gun ownership. However, the ruling does not prohibit all forms of gun control, and pro-gun rights members of Congress are still attempting to repeal remaining gun regulations such as the District's assault weapon ban.

The most significant intrusion into the city's local affairs since the passage of Home Rule Act was when the Congress removed the city's authority to control its own finances in the mid-1990s. The situation was a result of mismanagement and waste in the city's local government, particularly during the mayoralty of Marion Barry. By 1995, the city had become nearly insolvent, which prompted the Congress to create the District of Columbia Financial Control Board. As part of the restructuring arrangement, the appointed members of the Financial Control Board had the authority to approve all city spending; however, Congress also agreed to provide more funding for federally-mandated programs such as Medicaid. Mayor Anthony Williams won election in 1998. His administration oversaw a period of greater prosperity, urban renewal, and budget surpluses. The District regained control over its finances in September 2001 and the oversight board's operations were suspended.