Home Rule Dies Slow Death in Congress

Every now and then Washington the city--as opposed to Washington the Nation's Capital--gets attention in the national press. A handful people realize that the Twenty-third Amendment to the Constitution, adopted in 1961, finally gave District of Columbia residents the right to vote in Presidential elections. And many people who know nothing else about District affairs know that rioting broke out at Glen Echo amusement park on Easter Monday.

But it isn't often that District affairs achieve national prominence. Nevertheless, the fact is that Washington affairs, from the most important to the most minute, are national matters. Action by both houses of Congress is required to set District teachers' salaries and to establish dog license fees. During the Kennedy Administration, with the civil rights and tax cut bills pending, Congress had to take time off to repeal laws forbidding kite-flying and icecream cones Washington.

This situation has been institutionalized in what are known as "District Days"--the second fourth Mondays of each month, which are set aside for the Congress of the United States to act as city council for Washington, D.C. And the result is a nuisance to Congress, it is worse than a nuisance to District residents. Of District bills which have been sent to Capital Hill during the 89th Congress, only two major bills and a few routine housekeeping measures have been enacted.

This is nothing new, either. A few years ago school classrooms designed to accomodate people had to handle as many as a hundred time because Congress failed to appropriate money for teachers' salaries until late in the semester. Washington workers are excluded from coverage under the national minimum wage law. Yet a minimum wage bill which still would leave them below the Administration-defined poverty line is currently stalled in conferences. Washington children whose parents are unemployed are not entitled to Federal payments available to children of unemployed parents in the states.

Washington government, in short, is a shambles, and it is hard to see how it could be anything else. The three commissioners appointed by the President, while ostensibly the heads of the government, have little real power. Not only are they forced into extreme caution by the need to propitiate their Congressional bosses; but they also can be undercut at any time by a department of the city government which appeals to the House or Senate District Committees over their heads. The Police Department, for instance, has a much more powerful voice on Capitol Hill than the D.C. Board of Commissioners. Add to all this the fact that the House District Committee is controlled by Southern Democrats who are hostile to Washington's Negro majority and it is easy to see why the demand for home rule in Washington is becoming more and more intense.

In the period since World War II the struggle of Washingtonians to regain the right of self-government has gained in intensity and sophistication, and has at least one victory--the Twenty-third Amendment--to its credit. Finally in the 89th Congress, thanks to Goldwater's landslide defeat, home rule advocates found themselves in a more favorable position than ever before.

Five times since 1948 they had succeeded in getting home rule bills through the Senate. Each time the House District Committee had prevented the full House from voting in the bills.

But last September it appeared that things might be different. White House influence had secured the 218 signatures for a discharge petition. Home rule advocates, who had learned from years of experience to expect nothing allowed themselves to become hopeful. They had always been convinced that, once the bill got to the House floor, the rest would be simple.

The Administration bill, which the Senate passed and which most Washingtonians wanted, provided for an elected mayor and 19-member partisan city council, and a 14-member nonpartisan school board. The heart of the measure, in many people's estimation, was the automatic Federal payment: each year Congress would automatically appropriate for the District a Federal payment based on the amount the District government could expect to receive if Federal property--ocupying over 50 per cent of the District's land area--were taxable.

In addition to the Senate-Administration version of home rule there were twenty-odd others before the House District Committee. Among these were such curiosities as the Broyhill Bill, proposing that the District of Columbia be given back to Maryland, and the Sisk Bill.

The Sisk Bill called for a referendum to select a 15-member charter-writing board. The charter written by the board would be submitted to a second referendum. If approved, the charter would proceed to Congress, which could veto the whole charter if it objected to anything in it. Should Congress veto the charter, the whole process would have to begin again with a new referendum to select a charter-writing board.

The House of Representatives made it apparent fairly early that it found the automatic Federal payment formula in the Administration bill unacceptable. Administration forces finally worked out the compromise Multer Bill, which was essentially the Senate bill without the automatic Federal payment. It was less than home rule advocates wanted, but it seemed likely to pass and differences over the Federal payment could be worked out in conference.

But the Multer Bill did not pass. Instead, the House voted to amend the Multer bill by adoption of the Sisk substitute, and once more a Senate-passed Administration home rule bill was removed from consideration on the House floor.

Representative B. F. Sisk (D-Calif.) maintains that he is not opposed to home rule, and claims his bill was a sincere effort to present home rule in a form that the House would accept. The fact remains, however, that his bill was widely supported by opponents of home rule, while home rule advocates never took the bill seriously and were very much surprised when the House passed it.

Pressure Tactics

Just why the House passed the bill is an unanswered question. Some people have suggested that Congressmen were fed up with White House pressure tactics. According to this theory, Congressmen chose home rule as the issue on which to buck the Administration because they knew it was an issue their constituents couldn't care lose about.

Other people maintain that there simply never was enough support to pass a home rule bill in the House. Certainly it must have been apparent to those who voted for the Sisk version that the wide divergence between it and the Senate bill would preclude final passage of any bill at all during that session of Congress.

It is easy enough to understand why Southern Democrats and their conservative friends across the aisle oppose home rule for Washington. Over the years they have used various arguments. But in the end it comes to the fact that Negroes are in the majority in Washington and post-home rule politics would inevitably reflect this fact.

It is harder to understand the rest of the House. No one in Washington seems able to explain why the House as a whole is so much more hostile to the District of Columbia than the Senate. Why, for instance was the Senate willing to accept the automatic Federal payment, while even those House members who favored home rule balked at the payment provision?

Passage of the Sisk Bill left the D.C. home rule movement temporarily wondering what to do. Nearly everyone considered it a victory for anti-home rule forces. But at the same time everyone was anxious to save what was left of the situation. If the Sisk Bill was the best they could get out of the 89th Congress, there was no reason to hope for better things from succeeding Congresses, which would most likely be more conservative.

Eventually a group of local home rule advocates, including the Washington Home Rule Committee and the League of Women Voters, issued a statement advising home rule proponents to accept a modified Sisk plan as the only reasonable hope for home rule. Most people expected the Senate to withdraw its own bill and pass something similar to the Sisk Bill in order to expedite final passage of home rule in some form.

Confusion

As it turned out, the Senate did nothing of the kind. Instead it stood by its own bill and called for a conference with the House. Local home rule advocates are now split. The Democratic Central Committee has refused to go along with the Home Rule Committee and the League of Women Voters. It insists that the Sisk Bill is a fraud, that it was not offered in good faith, and that anyway the home rule movement should not be in such unseemly haste to back down. Besides, they argue, the Senate and the Administration have not yet backed down and it would be pointless for local home rule forces to be the first ones to do so.

If the latest home rule tiff has not produced much activity in Congress, it has stimulated local activity. For years the home rule movement has been sedate, attracting very little attention to itself.

But now things are different. Last November, the Metropolitan Washington Board of Trade, the only important local opponent of home rule, circulated around the country a letter implying that Washingtonians do not want home rule. In response to that action, a whole new group of rule agitators--the Free D.C. Movement--has grown up. The activities of the Free D.C. Movement have been far from sedate: in a few months it has created more publicity for home rule than past home rule activity has created over a period of many years.

Opposition

The Board of Trade, an organization of some 7,000 business and professional people in the Washington area, has traditionally opposed home rule. The reasons for this opposition are not hard to find.

Under the present system, with no responsible officials and no clear ilnes of authority within the District government, there exists a power vacuum. The Board of Trade (or, more precisely, the board of directors of the Board of Trade) moved into this vacuum happily.

David Clark of the D.C. Coalition of Conscience (a part of the Free D.C. Movement) maintains that the Board of Trade has a pork barrel arrangement with members of Congress. Examination of campaign receipts of Southern Congressmen, he believes, would show substantial contributions from members of the Board of Trade. In addition, business hostility to the increased real estate and other taxes which local self-government might entail is no secret.

The objective of the Free D.C. Movement was to demonstrate local residents' desire for home rule, and to find and isolate that part of the Washington business community which opposes home rule. To do this, it chose the tactics of boycott.

From the beginning, Free D.C.'s tactics were controversial. It threatened to boycott businesses which did not sign home rule petitions, send pro-home rule telegrams to the President and Congress, display Free D.C. stickers, and contribute to a pro-home rule fund. The demand for contributions was subsequently dropped.

Controversial Tactics

Opinions differ as to the effect of the Free D.C. tactics. It is undeniable that the Free D.C. Movement has aroused enthusiasm for the home rule struggle among groups of people who could never have felt a part of the sophisticated intellectual activities of the Home Rule Committee. The Free D.C. campaign has also showing that the Board of Trade, so far from expressing the opinion of all Washtonians, does not even speak for all of its own members.

Free D.C. has been criticized for using economic reprisals against those who differ with it politically. To this it must be replied that the Board of Trade has itself made effective and unabashed use of economic warfare first, in the relationship it maintained with the House District Committee