WASHINGTON (CN) — Although congressional Republicans’ most extreme attempt yet to muzzle Washington’s municipal government drew consternation this week, the capital city’s congressional representative said Wednesday that she was less than impressed with the effort.
The House GOP has for months assailed Washington’s mayor and city council, arguing largely that municipal policies have contributed to high crime rates in the city. Now, lawmakers have taken things a step further, unveiling legislation that would hand all authority over the city back to Congress.
This new proposal comes from Tennessee Congressman Andy Ogles in a bill unveiled Friday that, if made law, would repeal the 1973 District of Columbia Home Rule Act — bipartisan legislation which established Washington’s local government and gave it policymaking authority. The measure has support from Florida Congressman Byron Donalds and Montana Representative Matt Rosendale.
Ogles, a Republican, has framed his bill as an effort to give Congress back its constitutional power over the nation’s capital. Despite that, Washington Representative Eleanor Holmes Norton said Wednesday that her GOP colleague doesn’t know what he’s getting himself into.
“It’s hard to take it seriously,” said Representative Eleanor Holmes Norton during an interview Wednesday.
“My first reaction is,” she added through a chuckle, “leaving what? A $20 billion budget for Congress to figure out?”
Norton criticized Ogles’ measure — a single page of legislation that merely repeals the 1973 home rule law — as lacking in substance.
“Notice the absence of detail,” she remarked. “It’s kind of like a fly in the ointment.”
The lawmaker suggested that the bill ignores the challenge of forcing Congress to become the capital’s de facto administrators. “I wonder if my colleagues would like to take complaints about potholes and the like,” Norton said.
Ogles meanwhile has couched his bill in what he sees as rising crime in Washington.
“D.C. is overrun with homicides, violent crime, drugs, homelessness, and riots,” the Tennessee congressman said Friday in a post on X, the site formerly known as Twitter. “The constitutional responsibility to keep our nation’s capital safe for the people lies with Congress.”
In a statement provided Friday to the Washington Examiner, Ogles said there had been 13 homicides in Washington since the beginning of August, citing that statistic as evidence for congressional action.
Norton, who has served as Washington’s nonvoting congressional representative since 1991, was not convinced.
“Crime is going up in D.C. as it is around the country,” she responded. “I don’t think that members of Congress are equipped to deal with the problems of rising crime here, and I don’t even think [Ogles] does.”
According to a July report from the Council on Criminal Justice, the homicide rate in Washington increased by roughly 11% in the first half of 2023, compared with the same period last year. That figure puts the city on par with Omaha, Nebraska, and Richmond, Virginia.
The city of Chattanooga in Ogles’ home state of Tennessee saw its homicide rate increase around 36% during that same period, according to the report.
Despite her reservations about crime rates, there is no question that Congress has some constitutional authority over Washington, Norton said.
While the Home Rule Act gives Washington limited autonomy in the form of a mayor and city council, the law leaves Congress the right to disapprove of municipal laws, a liberty that the legislature has taken on more than one occasion. The act also gives Congress authority over the capital city’s annual budget and does not grant Washington a voting congressional delegation.
Norton predicted Ogles’ bill would not gain much traction and that the House Oversight Committee, which has considered previous challenges to Washington’s municipal authority, would not take it up.
“Oversight has done a lot of bills that have gone at district home rule in more legitimate ways,” said the congresswoman, who sits on the panel. “I think they’ve done enough harm, and even they think so.”
Even if Ogles’ legislation were to clear the House, it would not survive a Senate filibuster, she forecast.
For Norton, a bill to do away with the Home Rule Act is less about the content of the legislation and more about what she sees as a concerted effort by House Republicans to pare down the capital city’s autonomy.
“They have, more so than in other congresses, gone after D.C.’s governing authority bit by bit,” the lawmaker said.
Norton surmised that her GOP colleagues are aiming to use Washington as a political cudgel. “I think that they’re feeling their power and trying to chip away at D.C. while they have it,” she said. “If you want to make a statement about crime, you can use D.C. to do it. You certainly can’t use your own jurisdiction, or any other jurisdiction.”
The Senate in May passed a GOP-led resolution rolling back a sweeping policing reform law approved by Washington's city council earlier this year, although the measure got a veto from President Biden. However, lawmakers in April successfully blocked a similar municipal law that would have lightened sentencing guidelines for certain criminals.
Biden, who has said he supports D.C. home rule, signed off on that resolution in March.
The American Civil Liberties Union, which operates a statehood advocacy group in Washington, urged Congress in a statement to oppose any attempt to overturn the capital city’s home rule law.
“Our elected city council members and mayor are better positioned to address our local issues than a Congress where D.C. residents have no vote,” the ACLU said. “Congress should not interfere in D.C.’s fundamental right to self-governance to win points in the culture wars. That’s not what D.C. residents want, and it won’t make us safer.”
A spokesperson for Phil Mendelson, chair of the Council of the District of Columbia, did not immediately return a request for comment. The city official told the Washington Post Wednesday that Ogles “hasn’t a clue how to run the District of Columbia.”
Norton said the best way to protect Washington’s governing autonomy was to make it the 51st state. The lawmaker has on more than one occasion sponsored legislation to achieve such an end: Her statehood bill in 2019 passed the House for the first time.
“I don’t take this bill seriously,” Norton said, “but it certainly is an indication that the only answer to this kind of approach is simply to get statehood for the District of Columbia so that Congress, even with foolish bills like this, can’t interfere with the district.”
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