Opinion | The GOPs platform calls for the end of D.C. home rule

Donald Trump, whose primary contribution to the District of Columbia during his presidency was a white elephant of a hotel that he unloaded when his sycophants left town, promises far bigger things for the capital city if he’s elected again. Republican delegates at this week’s convention rubber-stamped Trump’s platform, which includes a pledge to “Make Washington D.C. the Safest and Most Beautiful Capital City” by asserting “greater Federal Control over Washington, DC to restore Law and Order in our Capital City, and ensure Federal Buildings and Monuments are well-maintained.”

How magnanimous! Except that 1. the last time the feds took over the city, in the late 1990s, management of the police remained problematic. And 2. the feds already control federal buildings and monuments, so any maintenance issues are entirely their fault.

No matter! The Republicans are coming to our rescue, like it or not. “We will take over the horribly run capital of our nation in Washington, D.C., and clean it up … so that it is no longer a nightmare of murder and crime,” Trump promised at a rally in Florida last week. “We’re going to take over our capital and we’re going to run it tough and smart, and we’re going to beautify it. We’re going to get all the graffiti off the marble. We’re gonna fix the roads and the medians, which are falling down all over the streets.”

Advertisement

Cleaning off graffiti is a lovely goal — the sort of thing Trump the real estate developer enjoyed doing, walking his properties and ordering underlings to make superficial fixes that might divert the tenants’ attention from larger problems. But a memo to the ex-president: Although D.C. faces daunting problems, crumbling curbs are not among them. One lasting legacy of the Marion Barry era is the District’s extremely expensive and durable granite curbs, unique to the capital city.

Trump’s fellow Republicans in Congress are also budding city managers. Sen. Mike Lee, evidently eager to apply his experience from gritty, urban Utah, has introduced a bill to scrap D.C.’s home rule entirely. Get rid of the mayor and the council and have Congress run the place, like in the good old days of segregation. Lee knows his bill isn’t going anywhere as long as Democrats cling to control of the Senate — a grip that might be measured in months.

A similar effort by House Republicans died quickly last year. Rep. Andrew Ogles (R-Tenn.) said Congress needed to rule a capital “overrun with violent crime, drugs, theft, homelessness, and riots.” Ogles’s district includes a chunk of Nashville, where the violent crime rate last year was about the same as in the District.

Advertisement

Democrats can be delusional, too. Eleanor Holmes Norton, the District’s nonvoting delegate to the House, responded to Lee’s antics by calling them “a sign that D.C. is closer than ever to statehood.” In what galaxy?

Lee, who loves to sing the praises of federalism when that approach leads to a result he favors, conveniently ignores the fact that home rule was signed into law by Republican President Richard M. Nixon in 1973. And Congress has always had veto power over anything the D.C. Council does. Lee’s not interested in the fact that District residents pay more federal taxes per person than their counterparts in any of the 50 states, nor that D.C. has a larger population than two of those states, including Wyoming, home of a co-sponsor of Lee’s bill, Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R, natch).

Lummis has done nicely as a D.C. resident. According to city real estate records, she bought a condo here for $550,000 when she was elected to the House in 2009, then sold it for $700,000 when she left the House in 2017 — a tidy profit for someone who subscribes to the notion that the city has become an anarchic cesspool. The city’s condition didn’t stop her from returning to the District in 2021, this time as a senator.

Advertisement

When Lee arrived in D.C. in 2011, he was the only freshman member of Congress to tell a Newsweek survey that he would move his family to Washington and raise his kids here. Yet he has made a hobby of bashing the District. He has introduced bills to restrict abortions in the city and remove anti-discrimination protections for gay residents, while claiming vaguely that congressional control is the answer to crime in the District.

To which D.C. Council member Brooke Pinto (D-Ward 2) retorts that if these meddlers really wanted to make local streets safer, they would approve more judges, fully staff the prosecutors’ offices and “pass common sense gun control reforms.”

Residents of D.C. would be happy to have genuinely constructive help from Congress as we pitch in each day to make America’s capital city beautiful, welcoming and safe. But we have learned not to hold our breath. Instead, we’ve learned that when Congress or the president starts talking about D.C., it usually means they’re avoiding talking about the stuff they’re failing to deliver for the folks back home.

ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7uK3SoaCnn6Sku7G70q1lnKedZLyxtc2ipqerX2d9c4COaW5oaWdkwbPBzKlkqaSRqbOwvsxmnKecXZmwbrTOppyrrZyafA%3D%3D