Federal city guns toward a crossroad

0 Comments | Insight on the News, March 27, 1995 | by Chi Chi Sileo

The future of Washington is up for grabs. Federal lawmakers and city officials are juggling quick-fix ideas ranging from statehood to secession.

D.C. is both an opportunity and a danger," says House Speaker Newt Gingrich. To Republicans, that means an opportunity to practice what they preach: fiscal responsibility, social change and back-to-basics management.

As the district teeters on the edge of bankruptcy and as new allegations come to light regarding book-cooking by city financial officers, lawmakers are calling for tough new measures to rein in the city. Gingrich and other Republicans like to frame the perpetual problem of the district as a chance to implement their vision of how government ought to work. If they can do it in ac., this argument goes, they can more easily argue their case across the country.

But it's a dicey experiment. GOP lawmakers have done little to gain the trust of the city's overwhelmingly Democratic residents and politicians, and renascent talk of ceding the district, in part or in whole, to another state has done little to ameliorate that mistrust. Behind the talk about saving the district, many residents believe, lurks an unstated but perceived desire to decimate the city. And if this experiment fails, Republicans may feel a backlash when Gingrich & Co. try to take charge of local affairs elsewhere.

So far, the measures taken by House Republicans have been lean and mean -- mandating cuts in government, stripping D.C.'s only elected representative, Eleanor Holmes Norton, of her vote in the House and stamping out any talk of of greater home rule or statehood.

But according to Gingrich, it isn't just balanced budgets; it's also a quality-of-life question. "The easy solution would be to start with government as though government were the end resuit," he explains to Insight. "In fact, you have to start with people: What do you want for the children? What do you want for the neighborhoods? What do you want for the community? I am adamant that our goal has to be to become the best capital city in the world."

"If you measure everything in cities by the children," he continues, "you rapidly figure out how to dramatically increase safety; you've got to dramatically increase living and you've got to dramatically increase jobs."

Most lawmakers agree that the first step the district must take is to mold itself into better shape financially; otherwise, no sweeping change can occur. But lawmakers disagree on ways to help the city out of its fiscal mess and where first to turn. For instance, the idea of moving the city's prison, the Lorton Reformatory, to federal oversight is one that representatives from suburban Virginia and Maryland support but district residents and City Council members vehemently oppose. City lawmakers believe the top priority is job creation within the city; congressional lawmakers wish first to see cuts in the city's bloated bureaucracy. And so it goes.

As for home rule, "it has to be renegotiated," says Gingrich. That sounds less than specific and, indeed, Gingrich is long on rhetoric about "saving the children of D.C." but short on specific solutions, except for one: giving the city to Maryland. And that's not an idea likely to win support on either side of the D.C.-Maryland border.

The notion of returning the District of Columbia to one of the states that originally formed it -- Virginia or Maryland -- is one that surfaces often. After all, the reasoning goes, these are states with large, solid tax bases and industry, good schools -- especially in the suburbs -- that easily could incorporate the district, take over its finances and get it on a better footing.

As for the constitutional question, which mandates a separate federal city, Gingrich has suggested dividing the city in half, returning the residential areas to Maryland and keeping the government zone, which includes the Capitol and the White House, as a federal "box." The mayor of this little box, says Gingrich, would "basically be a gardener."

What the argument leaves out, however, is whether Virginia or Maryland would view acquiring the district as a benefit. Lawmakers and residents of both states have a universal response to that question: No, thanks.

"We already have Baltimore," say many Maryland residents, referring to another large, troubled city that relies upon state funding for support. And Democratic Gov. Parris Glendening has joked, "Why Maryland? We'd be happy to turn the district over to the 6th District of Georgia," referring to Gingrich's congressional district. Informed that the speaker was reiterating his support for the back-to-Maryland move, Glendening says flatly, "The city is a federal city, and oversight of it is a federal issue. D.C. is the responsibility of the federal government and should remain so."

Rep. Kweisi Mfume, a Maryland Democrat and former chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, agrees: "These are decisions that are best left to the residents of the district themselves."

And Virginians have shown a feisty unwillingness to enact radical changes to that state's structure. Voters have defeated Republican Gov. George Allen on almost every initiative he has introduced because they saw those moves as disruptive to the state's status quo. And it's an enviable position: scanty taxes, an excellent education system and low unemployment and crime -- one, in short, that incorporating the district would upset.