WASHINGTON (AP) — Washington, D.C., which has often had a tenuous peace with the federal government when Republicans controlled Congress and the White House, is now facing its most urgent threat since it was given the power of Home Rule during the Nixon administration.
The funding bill passed by the House this week calls for cuts in D.C. spending of $1.1 billion, a drastic cut that city officials said would treat the city like any federal agency and would result in a calamitous reduction in services ranging from schools to public safety.
Combined with criticisms last month from President Donald Trump who said that Washington, D.C. would be better off under total federal control, and two Republicans who have offered legislation to do just that, Democrats see Republicans as trying to wrest self-governance from the capital city. District officials have now turned their efforts urgently to the Senate, where they are pushing for lawmakers to reject the House approach.
Trusted news and daily delights, right in your inbox
See for yourself — The Yodel is the go-to source for daily news, entertainment and feel-good stories.
The House spending bill holds the city’s budget at fiscal year 2024 numbers, even though the District’s 2025 budget is based on its own revenue and had already been approved by Congress. Republicans rejected requests from Mayor Muriel Bower and the district’s non-voting Delegate to Congress, Eleanor Holmes Norton, to simply follow past practice.
“The pace with which they are moving is different,” said Christina Henderson, a member of the DC City Council. ”You could call it reckless. This is very uncharted territory for us.”
Jasmine Tyler, executive director of the Justice Policy Institute, said if the budget plan goes through, then the very thing Republicans have complained about, such as crime — which decreased last year — will immediately be impacted. “It will happen overnight,” she said. “This means law enforcement, teachers, public service cuts. Is the trash going to be collected?”
“You can’t un-ring this bell,” Tyler said.
The Constitution gives Congress authority over the District. That once meant Congress and federally-appointed commissioners ran the city, sometimes leaving members fielding complaints on local services. But Home Rule passed in 1973 allowing residents to elect a mayor, a city council and neighborhood commissioners to run day-to-day operations while Congress maintains its control of the city, including approving laws the Council passes and the city’s budget.
Over time, members have used that authority to impose cultural standards, such as stopping the city from using its own funds for a needle exchange program as it battled high rates of HIV/AIDS to win points in their home states and districts. One of its most recent reversals came in 2023 when Congress rejected the city’s criminal justice reform law.
Michael Fauntroy, professor of policy and government at George Mason University and author of a book on Home Rule, said that “there’s no legitimate justification for it now. The district government runs pretty well for as a municipal corporation.”
He said the cuts would set in motion a cascade of service reductions, including fewer police, that could be the pretext for Congress taking over the city more directly.
Officials have shied away from talking directly about home rule. A spokesman for Bowser said in a text that she was focusing her attention on trying to persuade the Senate to change the House version of the legislation. Norton expressed similar sentiments in an emailed statement.
The city, which had been home to about seven percent of the federal workforce, has been reeling from actions by the Trump administration and its Department of Government Efficiency, and recalibrating what spending cuts will be needed in coming years as thousands of people lose their jobs. Historically, federal jobs have helped lift generations of workers, many of them Black residents, into the middle class by giving them opportunities they would not have had in the private sector because of racial discrimination.
Bowser has tried to accommodate Trump’s concerns as well as those of Republicans, including removing the Black Lives Matter Plaza erected in 2020, one block from the White House. During the March 10 press conference, Bowser said she had been in contact with the administration about the House proposal and “they indicated this didn’t come from them.”
If the Senate does amend the plan, the House, which is now in recess, would have to come back to the city and approve it by Friday night to avert a shutdown.
Several senators have already indicated they will oppose the spending plan, including Maryland Democrat, Sen. Chris Van Hollen. He said, on the social media platform X, that he planned to introduce a proposal to reverse what the House has done with D.C., calling their actions “undemocratic and un-American.”
John Capozzi Jr., a former shadow representative for the District, said he knew the city’s future was not good when he saw the mayor, council members and Norton holding a press conference on Capitol Hill urging the House to step away from its proposal prior to the vote.
“If they could just make a couple phone calls and end this, it would have happened already,” he said. The question now, he added, is: “Will the senators die on the field for the D.C. budget?”
Monica Hopkins, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of D.C. said one thing may stop the Republican effort from outright repeal of local control: the realization that if Congress were to actually revoke Home Rule, then they also would be responsible for the city’s problems.
___
