[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 65 (Wednesday, May 20, 1998)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E921-E922]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[[Page E921]]
INTRODUCING DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA LEGISLATIVE AND BUDGET AUTONOMY ACT OF 
     1998, THE FIRST BILL IN A SERIES OF DEMOCRACY TRANSITION BILLS

                                 ______
                                 

                       HON. ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON

                      of the district of columbia

                    in the house of representatives

                        Wednesday, May 20, 1998

  Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, today I introduce the District of Columbia 
Legislative and Budget Autonomy Act of 1998, the first in a series of 
bills that I will introduce this session to ensure a process of 
transition to democracy and self-government for the residents of the 
District of Columbia.
  The National Capital Revitalization and Self-Government Improvement 
Act passed last summer eliminated the city's traditional stagnant 
Federal payment and replaced it with Federal assumption of escalating 
State costs including prisons, courts and Medicaid, as well as 
federally created pension liability. Federal funding of these State 
costs involve the jurisdiction of other appropriations subcommittees. 
The DC Subcommittee is put in the position largely of appropriating the 
District's own locally-raised revenue from its own taxpayers money! Any 
new federal money for the District will come on a targeted basis 
covered by other subcommittees. My bill corrects an untenable position 
in a democracy that operates under principles of federalism, namely a 
national legislature appropriating in whole the budget of a local city 
jurisdiction. The budget autonomy component of the bill would allow the 
District government to pass its own budget without congressional 
approval.
  Congress has put in place two safeguards that duplicate the function 
of the appropriation subcommittees--the Chief Financial Officer and the 
District of Columbia Financial Responsibility and Management Assistance 
Authority (Financial Authority). Moreover, the District has already 
begun to demonstrate that it is capable of exercising prudent authority 
over its own budget. This year, an independent accounting firm 
certified the District's first year (FY 1997) of a balanced budget and 
surplus, and the District is scheduled to continue to run balanced 
budgets and surpluses into the future. Under the Financial 
Responsibility and Management Assistance Authority Act (FRMAA), the 
Financial Authority will remain in place for two more fiscal years (FY 
1999, FY 2000) in any case, allowing the necessary monitoring and 
affording a period for the city to exercise the new authority while 
being monitored.
  Budget autonomy will also serve to encourage more rapid and effective 
action by the District government and the Financial Authority to return 
the District to permanent solvency and to reform its budgetary 
governmental procedures. Budget autonomy facilitates the two 
indispensable goals of (1) streamlining the District's needlessly 
lengthy and expensive budget process in keeping with the congressional 
intent of the FRMAA to reform and simplify D.C. government procedures, 
and (2) facilitating more accurate budgetary forecasting. This bill 
inserts into the DC reform process a carrot where there have been only 
sticks. Incentives will help to hasten reform.
  This bill would return the city's budget process to the simple 
approach proposed in the Senate and the District of Columbia Committee 
during the 1973 consideration of the Home Rule Act. The Senate version, 
as well as the bill reported by the District of Columbia Committee, 
provided a simple procedure for enacting the city's budget into law. 
Under this procedure, the Mayor would submit a balanced budget for 
review by the City Council with only the federal payment subjected to 
congressional approval. A conference compromise, however, vitiated this 
approach treating the DC government as a federal agency (hence the 1996 
very harmful shutdown of the DC government for a full week when the 
federal government was shut down). The Home Rule Act of 1973, as 
passed, requires the Mayor to submit a balanced budget for review by 
the City Council and then subsequently to Congress as part of the 
President's annual budget as if a jurisdiction of 540,000 residents 
were an agency of the federal government.
  The D.C. budget process takes 18-22 months from start to finish. The 
usual time for comparable cities is six months. The necessity for a 
Financial Authority significantly extended an already uniquely lengthy 
budget process. Even without the addition of the Authority, the current 
budget process requires the city to navigate its way through a complex 
bureaucratic morass imposed upon it by the Congress. Under the current 
process, the Mayor is required to submit a financial plan and budget to 
the City Council and the Authority. The Authority reviews the Mayor's 
budget and determines whether it is approved or rejected. Following 
this determination, the Mayor and the City Council (which also hold 
hearings on the budget) each have two opportunities to gain Authority 
approval of the financial plan and budget. The Authority provides 
recommendations throughout this process. If the Authority does not 
approve the Council's financial plan and budget on second review, if 
forwards the Council's revised financial plan and budget (containing 
the Authority's recommendations to bring the plan and budget into 
compliance) to the District government and to the President. If the 
Authority does approve the budget, that budget is then sent to the 
President without recommendations. The District budget includes 
proposed expenditures of locally raised revenues as well as a proposed 
federal payment. The proposed District budget is then included in the 
federal budget, which the President forwards to Congress for 
consideration. The DC subcommittee in both the House and Senate review 
the budget and present a Chairman's mark for consideration. Following 
markup and passage by both Houses, the DC appropriations bill is sent 
to the President for his signature. Throughout this process the bill is 
not only subject to considerations of fiscal soundness but individual 
and political considerations.
  This procedure made a bad budgetary process much worse causing me to 
write a consensus budget amendment that allows the parties to sit at 
the same table and write one budget. Even so, instead of that budget 
becoming law now, the District is likely to be without a budget until 
close to the adjournment of Congress this year.
  Under the legislation I introduce today, the District of Columbia 
still remains subject to the full appropriations process in the House 
and Senate for any federal funds. Nothing in this bill diminishes the 
power of the Congress to ``exercise exclusive legislation in all cases 
whatsoever'' over the District of Columbia under Article I, section 8, 
clause 17 of the U.S. Constitution should it choose to revise what the 
District has done concerning locally raised revenue. Nothing in this 
legislation prevents any member of Congress from introducing a bill 
that addresses her specific concerns regarding the District. Once the 
District receives budget autonomy, the Financial Authority Act still 
mandates that the Authority review the District's budget. Granting the 
District the power to propose and enact its own budget containing its 
own revenue free from Congressional control during the period when the 
Authority is still the monitoring mechanism eliminates all risk in 
granting this power and provides an important incentive to help the 
District reach budget balance and ultimately meaningful Home Rule.
  My bill also contains another important section. It eliminates the 
congressional review period of 30 days and 60 days respectively, for 
civil and criminal acts passed by the DC City Council. Under the 
current system, all acts of the council are subjected to this 
Congressional layover period. This unnecessary, unprecedented and 
undemocratic step adds yet another unnecessary layer of bureaucracy to 
an already overburdened city government.
  My bill would eliminate the need for the District to engage in the 
byzantine process of enacting emergency and temporary legislation 
concurrently with permanent legislation. The Home Rule charter 
contemplates that if the District needs to pass legislation while 
Congress is out of session, it may do so if two-thirds of the Council 
determines that an emergency exists, a majority of the Council approves 
the law and the Mayor signs it. Emergency legislation, however, lasts 
for only 90 days, which would (in theory) force the Council to the pass 
permanent legislation by undergoing the usual congressional review 
process when Congress returns. Similarly, the Home Rule Charter 
contemplates that the Council may pass temporary legislation lasting 
120 days without being subjected to the congressional review process, 
but must endure the congressional layover period for that legislation 
to become law.
  In actual practice, however, most legislation approved by the City 
Council is passed concurrently on an emergency, temporary and permanent 
basis to ensure that a large, rapidly changing city like the District 
remains running. This process is cumbersome and inefficient, and would 
be eliminated by my bill.
  It is important to emphasize that my bill does not prevent review of 
District laws by Congress. The DC Subcommittee would continue to 
scrutinize every piece of legislation passed by the City Council if it 
wishes and to change or strike that legislation under the plenary 
authority over the District that the Constitution affords to the 
Congress. My bill merely eliminates the automatic hold placed on local 
legislation and the need to pass emergency and temporary legislation to 
keep the District functioning.
  Since the adoption of the Home Rule Act in 1973, over 2000 acts have 
been passed by the council and signed into law by the Mayor. Of that 
number, only thirty-nine acts have been challenged by a congressional 
disapproval resolution. Only three of those resolutions have ever 
passed Congress--two of which involved a distinct federal interest. Two 
bills, rather than a hold on 2000 bills, would

[[Page E922]]

have served the purpose and saved considerable time and money for the 
District and the Congress.
  I ask my colleagues who are urging the District government to pursue 
greater efficiency and savings to do your part in giving the city the 
tools to cut through the bureaucratic maze the Congress has imposed 
upon the District. Congress has been clear it wants to see the DC 
government taken apart and put back together again in an effort to 
eliminate redundancy and inefficiency. Congress should therefore 
eliminate the bureaucracy in DC that Congress is solely responsible for 
by granting the city budgetary and legislative authority.
  Only through true budgetary and legislative autonomy can the District 
realize meaningful self-government and Home Rule. The President and the 
Congress took the first step in relieving the District of costly 
escalating state functions in the President's Plan. This bill takes the 
next logical step by granting the District control over its own 
budgetary and legislative affairs. I urge my colleagues to pass this 
important measure.

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