[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 50 (Monday, April 29, 2002)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E652]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




   BILL TO ELIMINATE THE DISCRIMINATORY TREATMENT OF THE DISTRICT OF 
                  COLUMBIA UNDER THE FEDERAL HATCH ACT

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                       HON. ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON

                      of the district of columbia

                    in the house of representatives

                         Monday, April 29, 2002

  Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, today I am introducing a bill to eliminate 
the discriminatory treatment of the District of Columbia under the 
federal Hatch Act. This bill would reverse the undemocratic and 
discriminatory inclusion of the District of Columbia, including its 
teachers, in the federal Hatch Act.
  The introduction of this bill today follows the recent announcement 
by the U.S. Office of Special Counsel that the U.S. Merit Systems 
Protection Board (Board) had granted its petition for the removal of 
Mr. Tom Briggs, a D.C. public school teacher at Dunbar Senior High 
School. Mr. Briggs lost his job after the Board found that he had 
violated provisions of the federal Hatch Act that apply only to the 
District of Columbia and no other local jurisdiction. These provisions 
prohibit D.C. public school teachers and other D.C. government 
employees from being candidates for partisan political office, despite 
the fact that teachers in the 50 states are exempt from the Act, and 
despite the fact that the District of Columbia is the only local 
jurisdiction in the Act treated as if it were a federal agency. In 
2000, Mr. Briggs ran as the Statehood Green party candidate for Ward 2 
Council Member.
  My bill would remove discriminatory provisions in the federal Hatch 
Act that apply only to the District of Columbia and would exempt D.C. 
teachers, like the teachers from the 50 states, from the federal Hatch 
Act prohibition against seeking partisan elective office. The effective 
date of the bill is the year 2000, in order to remove Mr. Briggs' 
apparent violation of an antiquated, anti-home rule law that cannot be 
justified today. The Briggs case is particularly harmful because the 
victims of this inequity are not D.C. employees but the children in Mr. 
Briggs' class, who will face severe disruption to the continuity of 
their learning by having their popular and energetic teacher removed 
prior to the close of the school year.
  My bill would leave the District to craft its own local laws in 
accordance with local needs and norms. It is certain that the D.C. City 
Council would enact its own local law to avoid any gap, and I have 
secured the commitment of the appropriate members of the Council to 
introduce and guide the local law to passage.
  This is not the first time I have objected to discriminatory 
treatment of the District of Columbia under the federal Hatch Act. 
Nearly a decade ago, Congress passed the Hatch Act Reform Amendments of 
1993, a bill which ended most of the limitations on political rights of 
federal employees. However, the bill contained perverse provisions that 
leave D.C. government employees alone among employees of the 50 states 
and the four territories under the federal Hatch Act. Although I was 
successful in keeping the District of Columbia language out of the 
House version of the 1993 amendments, the Senate included the language. 
Opponents of Hatch Act reform blocked a conference on the House and 
Senate versions of the bill, where I had intended to press for the 
Senate to recede to the House's position. Consequently, the 1993 reform 
law passed ironically benefiting 62,000 federal employees who lived in 
the District and, if they taught at Dunbar could seek public office, 
yet punishing the 40,000 District employees targeted by the law. In my 
comments on the floor prior to passage of the 1993 bill, I said: ``I 
serve notice now that I am not through today. I will not be through 
until, with the help of others in this House, I succeed in making 
District employees the equal of the employees of other state and local 
jurisdictions. Today, we must blush as we try to conceive of any 
justification for such disparate treatment. I pledge to work to 
eliminate the shameful distinction we create today.''
  After the 1993 fight, I subsequently introduced legislation in 1996 
to free the District from discriminatory treatment under the federal 
Hatch Act. It has not been possible to move appropriate legislation 
since, largely because no overall review of the Hatch Act, where such 
changes are generally made, has occurred. However, in light of the 
Briggs termination, I am asking the House to pass a stand alone bill.
  The case of Mr. Briggs simply brings home the sad fact that the 
District of Columbia, and particularly its school teachers, have been 
singled out in a manner that is a complete affront to fairness, 
democratic principles, and self government. I urge my colleagues to 
support this bill to eliminate the discriminatory treatment of the 
District of Columbia under the federal Hatch Act in order to remove 
this unjust anomaly without delay.

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