New day may dawn at city hall

0 Comments | Insight on the News, July 6, 1998 | by Michael Rust

Sen. Lauch Faircloth, the North Carolina Republican who chairs the Senate Appropriations subcommittee on the District of Columbia, has pushed to abolish home rule and establish a city-manager form of government. Not coincidentally, as a result, he has been targeted for attack by some district advocates in his tough reelection race. Some, including Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch of Utah, have suggested that the federal government may wish to take over the scandal-racked Metropolitan Police Department.

The district has 323 Advisory Neighborhood Commissions. The idea of devolving more power down to the neighborhoods is another with great appeal (see "Seeds of City Reform Will Bloom in Neighborhoods," p. 25). Sam Smith, a district political activist and editor of the Progressive Review, long has suggested giving neighborhoods more power, especially for policing and economic development. Washington times columnist Adrienne T. Washington has asked, "Would more people get involved in local politics if they understood that it's at this level that they could have the greatest impact, and saw concrete evidence that they could make a big difference?"

Of course most observers of all political stripes realize that abstract solutions become more complicated once an attempt is made to implement them. "The problems that converged to create the current crisis in the district are complex," wrote Jonetta Rose Barras, a district journalist and biographer of Mayor Marion Barry, when the control board was created last year. "They are not simply derived from a flawed governance structure, though clearly that is a significant aspect of the equation. Nor were they created solely by a lack of money or poor management. They emanate from all of the above, and from the amalgamation of a decade of failed federal urban policies and myopic local economic-development policies."