You Call This Democracy?

Question: Was "taxation without representation" abolished after the Revolutionary War? Answer: Not for everyone. Citizens of the District of Columbia have one of the highest tax rates in the nation-but no voting representative in Congress. To add insult to injury, the power of their only elected officials-the mayor, the city council, and the school board-has recently been stripped away by Congress.

For most Americans the face of Washington, D.C., is David Letterman's favorite politician, Mayor Marion Barry. Or it may be the criminals who helped D.C. gain the reputation as the Murder Capital of the world. Or maybe it is the infamous, car-swallowing potholes; or the schools that yet again did not open on time; or the broken and dysfunctional welfare, housing, mental health, or prison systems. The fact is, the District is a mess.

That's ostensibly why earlier this year the U.S. Congress, led by Sen. Lauch Faircloth of North Carolina, took control of the District. This didn't happen overnight. It started with the 1995 appointment of a control board to oversee city finances. In 1996, the control board disbanded the school board just days after members had been elected and appointed a retired military general and a board of trustees to run the disintegrating school system. The city's last vestiges of independence finally disappeared this fall when Congress stripped all power away from the mayor and city council, leaving them as primarily ceremonial figureheads. Within hours of the president's signing of the legislation that accomplished this, the control board met and-in a move that far exceeded the power intended for them-fired the heads of every city agency and appointed temporary replacements.

This story is a much older one. It started when a federal city was established in the Constitution. The federal city, which was named the District of Columbia, was intended to provide a safe home for the government of the United States. It was never designed to be a democratic home for its residents, who have always been denied voter representation in Congress. While there have been several experiments with democracy, the deck was stacked against them from the beginning.

The current example is a good one. Until 1978, the District of Columbia was run by congressionally appointed commissioners. At that time Congress created a quasi-democratic system and called it home rule. Marion Barry was the first elected mayor under the home rule system. While D.C. residents were able to elect local officials, they were only allowed a non-voting delegate to Congress. That changed briefly in 1994 when the last Democratically controlled Congress gave Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton a vote on most issues. One of the first acts of the Republican Congress elected that year was to strip away her vote. In addition, the home rule agreement gave Congress the right to approve or reject the budgets and all the laws passed in the District. It also passed along a few unpaid bills-most notably a pension liability and other functions usually maintained by state governments-that would ultimately cost the District billions of dollars and overwhelm local government finances.

THE TAKEOVER HAS LEFT this already divided city even more divided. Seventy percent of District residents are African American. Washington, D.C., represents the pinnacle of political power and at the same time is home for some of the nation's poorest people. Most history books do not record the fact that the U.S. Capitol building was built by slaves. The stripping away of the powers of D.C.'s elected officials has different meanings for each of the varied ethnic, racial, and economic communities represented here. Most resent the further breach of democracy, but many welcome the promised return to a functioning government.

Congress has been for the large part oblivious to the insult and disrespect handed down to D.C. residents. Sen. Faircloth at one point told residents that if they didn't like it, they could all pack up and move. While America struggles to bring democracy and free elections to nations around the world, the residents of the capital of the free world have been waiting 200 years for their turn. There are ways to bring economic solvency to Washington, D.C., without abridging the right to elected representation. New York City, Philadelphia, Cleveland, and a host of other cities have found ways to pull it off. There are more politicians, attorneys, and psychiatrists per capita in D.C. than in any other city in the nation. With all those great minds, one would think they could do better than this.