[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 43 (Thursday, March 18, 1999)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E485-E486]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




 THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA BUDGET AUTONOMY ACT OF 1999 AND THE DISTRICT 
              OF COLUMBIA LEGISLATIVE AUTONOMY ACT OF 1999

                                 ______
                                 

                       HON. ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON

                      of the district of columbia

                    in the house of representatives

                        Thursday, March 18, 1999

  Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, today I introduce the District of Columbia 
Legislative Autonomy Act of 1999 and the District of Columbia Budget 
Autonomy Act of 1999, continuing 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 
first provision of the first bill in my D.C. Democracy Now series, the 
District of Columbia Democracy 2000 Act (D.C. Democracy 2000), has 
already been passed and signed by the President as Public Law 106-1--
the first law of the 106th Congress. This provision repeals the 
Faircloth attachment and returns power to the Mayor and City Council.
  The Revitalization Act passed in 1997 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, not the D.C. appropriations subcommittee. 
Yet, it is the D.C. subcommittee that must appropriate the District's 
own locally-raised revenue derived from its own taxpayers before that 
money can be used by the District government. My bill corrects an 
untenable position whereby a national legislature appropriates the 
entire budget of a local city jurisdiction. The District of Columbia 
Budget Autonomy Act 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 (CFO) 
and the District of Columbia Financial Responsibility and Management 
Assistance Authority (Financial Authority). Today, however, the 
District has demonstrated that it is capable of exercising prudent 
authority over its own budget without help from any source except the 
CFO. In FY 1997, the District ran a surplus of $186 million. Last year, 
the District's surplus totaled $444 million, and the city government is 
scheduled to continue to run balanced budgets and surpluses into the 
future.
  Budget autonomy will also help the District government and the 
Financial Authority to reform budgetary procedures by: (1) streamlining 
the District's needlessly lengthy and expensive budget process in 
keeping with the congressional intent of the Financial Authority Act to 
reform and simplify D.C. government procedures, and (2) facilitating 
more accurate budgetary forecasting.
  This bill would return the city's budget process to the simple 
approach passed by the Senate during the 1973 consideration of the Home 
Rule Act. The Senate version 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. Under the 
Constitution's District clause, of course, the Congress would retain 
the authority to intervene at any point in the process in any case, so 
nothing of the prerogatives and authority of the Congress over the 
District would be lost ultimately. A conference compromise, however, 
vitiated this approach treating the D.C. government as a full agency 
(hence the 1996 very harmful shutdown of the D.C. 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 much longer compared to six months for 
comparable jurisdictions. 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 holds 
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, it 
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 proposed District budget is then 
included in the federal budget, which the President forwards to 
Congress for consideration. The D.C. subcommittees 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 D.C. 
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 political considerations.

[[Page E486]]

  This procedure made a bad budgetary process much worse causing me to 
write a consensus budget provision in the President's Revitalization 
Act that allows the parties to sit at the same table and write one 
budget. Even so, instead of that budget becoming law then, the District 
remains without a budget for months, often after the beginning of the 
fiscal 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. The 
Congress should grant the District the power to propose and enact its 
own budget containing its own revenue free from Congressional control 
now during the period when the Authority is still the monitoring 
mechanism providing an important incentive to help the District reach 
budget balance and meaningful Home Rule.

  The second bill I introduce today, the District of Columbia 
Legislative Autonomy Act of 1999, eliminates the congressional review 
period of 30 days and 60 days respectively, for civil and criminal acts 
passed by the D.C. City Council. Under the current system, all acts of 
the Council are subjected to this Congressional layover period. This 
unnecessary 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 in 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 the large, rapidly changing city 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 D.C. 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. Only 
thirty-nine acts have been challenged by a congressional disapproval 
resolution. Only three of those resolutions have ever passed the 
Congress and two involved a distinct federal interest. Two bills to 
correct for any federal interest, rather than a hold on 2000 bills, 
would 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 itself has 
imposed upon the District. Congress has been clear that it wants to see 
the D.C. government taken apart and put back together again in an 
effort to eliminate redundancy and inefficiency. Congress should 
therefore eliminate the bureaucracy in D.C. that Congress is solely 
responsible for by granting the city budgetary and legislative 
autonomy.
  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 Revitalization Act. 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.

                          ____________________