The District of Columbia: Facts and History

The city of Washington was incorporated in 1791 on the northern shore of the Potomac river near Georgetown, Maryland and Alexandria, Virginia. It was situtated in what would become the district housing the "Seat of the Government of the United States" as described in Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution. The site along the Potomac was chosen as a result of a compromise: in exchange for the southern states agreeing to the federal assumption of the northern states' vast war debts, the northern states agreed to locate the capital in the South. George Washington picked the site along the Potomac not far from his Mount Vernon home.

The "Federal District" or the "District of Columbia" as it came to be called was carved out of pieces of Maryland and Virginia. Prior to the establishment of the District of Columbia on the first Monday in December 1800, residents of the newly founded city of Washington, and the existant cities of Georgetown and Alexandria, continued to vote for federal Congressional representatives as citizens of either Maryland or Virginia. After 1800, that was no longer the case. Curiously, the Maryland, Virginia, and Federal Acts that created the District maintained that Maryland law would continue to apply in the portion that had been Maryland, and Virginia law would apply in the portion that had been Virginia, unless superseded by Congressional statute. Congress never prohibited the citizens of the District from continuing to vote in Maryland and Virginia, and in theory District residents should still be able to!

Very early on, it was realized that there was an inherent inequity surrounding the District. Veterans of the Revolution--who had fought for independence and against 'taxation without representation'--were now being taxed and yet had no representation. As early as 1803, a bill to retrocede the District of Columbia back to Maryland and Virginia was introduced in Congress. In 1846, the Virginia portion of the District was retroceded to Virginia and is now Arlington County and Alexandria, Virginia. In the late 19th century the city charter of Georgetown was revoked and Georgetown and Washington were consolidated into one city.

In 1871, the District's first home-rule government was established. It was organized like a territorial government and consisted of a governor, and a bicameral legislature with an appointed 11-member upper house, and an elected 22-member lower house. This government was notoriously corrupt and wasteful and three years later, Congress intervened and set up a "temporary solution." This "temporary" solution lasted 100 years. This system was the commissioner system, where the city was run by three Presidentially-appointed commissioners. In the late 1960s, President Johnson reduced the number of commissioners to one, and began addressing him as "Mr. Mayor." When the Home Rule Act was passed in 1974 granting District residents their first locally elected government in 100 years, the form that government took was that of a city government with a mayor and a city council.

In the early 1990s the city experienced a severe fiscal crisis brought on by mismanagement, costly spending and crippling state-functions which had been imposed on the District by the Congress. A financial control board was established to rein in the District's finances. In 1997, the Congress tranferred the majority of the mayor's authority to the unelected control board. The city has recently posted a balanced budget (a surplus actually) and if it can do so for the next three years, home rule will be restored and authority will be returned to the locally elected government.

Throughout our nation's history, citizens of the District of Columbia have given the full measure of their allegiance to the United States. They have fought in wars for the United States, they have paid taxes, they have provided labor and resources to the United States government. They have never had a voice in that government. That government has, however, had a great voice in the lives of the residents of Washington. It has passed laws in Washington it could not impose on any state. It has prevented the limited local government, which was established a little more than 24 years ago, from exercising powers possessed by other states. In recent weeks, it has even stripped that local government of its authority, disenfranchising the Washingtonian not only from a say in how the nation is administered, but of a say in how his own city, his own neighborhood, is run.

Two hundred and twenty-one years ago, the Founding Fathers realized that it was immoral and against the natural law of God, to subject people to an authority in which they had no say. They realized that governments derived their "just Powers from the Consent of the Governed" in order to secure the rights "endowed by their Creator." The United States has spread this message of democracy and the rights of man to the far reaches of the globe, yet does not heed this message when it comes to the streets of its own capital city.

What are the consequences of this lack of voting representation? Did you know --

• That the residents of the District of Columbia are the only Americans who pay Federal taxes and have no voting representation in the Congress of the United States?
• That the U.S. Congress, in which District residents are not represented, declares wars in which District residents must fight and sets taxes that D.C. residents must pay?
• That District residents pay a higher proportion of their income in taxes than any other Americans?
• That more District residents, proportionately, have fought in U.S. wars than the residents of any state?
• That the Federal Government pays only 15% of the District's budget, even though the tax-exempt Federal Government occupies more than 40% of the District's territory?
• That the District of Columbia is the only U.S. jurisdiction prohibited by Congressional statute from taxing income earned by non-residents?
• That two-thirds of the income earned in the District every day--some $22 billion a year--is earned by non-residents, most of whom pay taxes to Maryland and Virginia?

These are just some of the problems Washington, D.C. is faced with as a result of its lack of voting representation, and just another part in a long legacy of disenfranchisement.