"In some communities, we are the only link between the residents and the government," said Roscoe Grant, chairman of ANC 7B which represents about 14,000 residents in the Naylor and Fort Dupont neighborhoods of Northeast. "Who else is going to handle this stuff? Certainly not city council."

A last-ditch effort last week by Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, D-D.C., to restore funding for the elected ANCs in the city’s fiscal 1999 budget failed on the House floor. ANC funding was stripped from the city’s consensus budget, supported by both the council and the control board, at the urging of D.C. appropriations subcommittee Chairman Charles Taylor, R-N.C. Eliminating the $573,000 in ANC funding from the city’s $5 billion budget amounts to a savings of 0.01 percent.

"The ANCs are wracked with mismanagement and fraud. It’s a waste of the taxpayers’ money and an unnecessary level of added bureaucracy," said Roger France, Taylor’s spokesman. "If anyone wants to get involved, it’s just a short bus ride down to city hall."

D.C. officials say that although a few ANC commissioners were found committing fraud, a majority of ANCs are responsible and active.

"We found a few ANCs that embarrassed everyone else," said former D.C. auditor Tony Cooper, whose office last year uncovered fraud involving former ANC1B Chairman Mary Treadwell, a former wife of Mayor Marion Barry. "There were really only two or three (ANCs) that were problematic."

Reports that some commissions failed to file quarterly financial reports can be misread , said Deborah Nichols, interim D.C. auditor.

"The ANCs are being painted with too broad a brush," she said. "Failing to file is not the same as stealing."

According to D.C. law, funding is withheld from ANCs that fail to file quarterly reports. ANCs also are prohibited from directly funding community festivals or from appropriating money to individuals.

What ANC commissioners do most is advocate, lobby, network and haggle. Commissioners, who are unpaid, spend hours on the phone managing the endless details of urban neighborhood life that city council members staffs sometimes overlook in providing constituent service. They fight loud nightclubs, clean up parks, organize neighborhood watches and help replace trash cans that disappear. They debate the regulation of liquor licenses, haggle over zoning exceptions and hash out compromises with local bars on hours of operation and number of outdoor seats.

It’s a slow process, run by parliamentary procedures. Even commissioners sometimes find the meetings tiresome.

"We are kind of boring," acknowledged Phil Mendelson, chairman of ANC 3B and a Democratic candidate for an at-large council seat. "But ANC meetings are important. ANCs allow local residents some control over the character of the neighborhood in which they live."

Commissioner Grant led ANC 7B in a recent fight to stop a church-sponsored 45-unit townhouse development, which a residential neighborhood considered disruptive. His ANC also helped get funding for the crumbling O Street Wall and keeps in regular contact with the White House.

In church basements and after-hours conference rooms, ANCs give away free smoke detectors and bring community members face-to-face with the police officers who patrol their streets.

"Being a good ANC commissioner is about knowing how to extract services from the government," Grant said. "It’s about building relationships and not necessarily with the director of the department. You have to get to know the people who deliver the services. The director isn’t going to pick up your trash; it’s the truck driver."

Eighty residents, many of them senior citizens, attended a recent monthly meeting of ANC 5A, at which commissioners dealt with neighborhood complaints by matching up complainants on-the-spot with staff members from various city departments who also were in attendance.

ANCs often are where the political network begins for D.C. residents, as well, providing a training ground for seeking higher elective office. At-large Councilman David Catania got his start as an ANC commissioner in Ward 1.

Elimination of the ANC system would be a substantial blow to the already crippled civic life of the city, said Mendelson, an ANC commissioner for nearly 20 years.

"To take away the money for ANCs is to say community participation isn’t important," he said. "That’s atrocious."

Elimination of ANCs fits well into "The Plan," a belief widely held in some sections of the city that an organized movement is working to take all power away from the majority black elected leadership, said Ruth Goodwin, 75, a registered nurse and minister who has lived in the District for more than 50 years.

The Senate version of the D.C. fiscal 1999 budget, approved earlier this month, preserves ANC funding. A compromise version of the bill will be worked out in conference committee when Congress returns from its recess. President Clinton has threatened to veto the D.C. budget bill if it includes a school voucher provision and he supports restoration of ANC funding, according to the White House press office.

The 37 ANCs vary widely in style and substance. One has only two commissioners, while another has 14. Some meetings run smoothly according to Roberts Rules of Order; others are a collection of neighbors simply chewing the fat, while most are something in between. A few are crippled by personality conflicts and racial tension. Some meet twice a month, others not at all.

Few city leaders contest the suggestion that ANCs need more oversight and reform. They say what is really needed is better training of commissioners, which previously existed, and more reasonable mechanisms for enforcement.

In recent years, ANC’s have received few city resources. According to the D.C. auditor’s office, the position of ANC coordinator was abolished in 1995. The full-time ANC auditor position was abolished in 1996. That means there is no one with full-time responsibility for overseeing, guiding and directing ANC commissioners and their expenditures. ANC funding was halved across the board about two years ago and an orientation program for newly elected commissioners was dropped.

"If someone had trained and guided these commissioners when they first came in, we wouldn’t be in this trouble now," Grant said. "A lot of commissioners were never really taught how to do their jobs. Some are afraid to spend money because they don’t want to violate the rules."

The job of an ANC is to be the annoying needle that finally gets things done, said Ann Renshaw, chairman of ANC 3G said.

"We are a conduit to city hall," said Renshaw, who has served on the ANC for eight years. "People call us with problems and we get the questions answered. We get the residents satisfied."

ANC 3G got a badly needed ladder for a local fire station, brought city agencies and the National Park Service together to resolve a drainage problem at Little Forest Park on Military Road that had dragged on for five years. In the end all it took was a new manhole, Renshaw said, but it took ANC maneuvering to get it done.

"You have to be determined to go out and get an answer," she said. "We don’t let up. A lot of city agencies don’t answer your letters."

Copyright 1998, The Common Denominator