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	A BAD Day for D.C. democracy (Published October 6, 2003) By BILL MOSLEY

I am writing my maiden column for The Common Denominator a little over an hour after being released from jail.

As I write, it is the evening of Oct. 1 – the first day of the D.C. and federal fiscal years. On "Fiscal New Year," the budget for fiscal 2003 expired and the budget for 2004 is supposed to kick in – except that it didn’t. Although the D.C. government enacted its budget months ago, its spending plan for the new year remains in limbo because Congress has not yet granted its approval.

Among all U.S. states, cities, counties and territories, only the District must submit its budget to Congress for approval – not even Puerto Rico or Guam are subject to this requirement – stemming from a provision of the U.S. Constitution granting Congress the power to legislate for the District.

This situation is not only undemocratic; it harms the District in numerous ways. Whenever Congress fails to approve the District’s budget on time – and it fails much more often than it succeeds – the District cannot spend new funds on critical programs such as schools, public safety and health care. This delay also hurts the marketability of D.C. bonds, which means that a higher portion of the D.C. budget goes to paying interest.

In addition, while the District’s budget crawls through the appropriations process, members frequently attach "riders" – additions that mandate or prohibit social policy – without the consent of D.C. voters and that may have little or nothing to do with the budget. Needle exchange programs are one example; these programs have proven effective around the country in preventing AIDS, but Congress has forbidden the D.C. government from funding them. This year, the school voucher program and a proposal to overturn the District’s gun control laws have appeared as riders on our budget.

So this Oct. 1, a group calling itself the Budget Autonomy for the District (BAD) Coalition – led by members of the Stand Up! for Democracy in D.C. Coalition and the D.C. Statehood Green Party – held a spirited "BAD Day" rally on Capitol Hill to demand that Congress get out of the business of controlling the District’s budget. Several of the participants dressed in 1776-style garb to underscore the point that 227 years after the American Revolution, the District is very much still a colony of the federal government.

After the rally, many of the participants visited congressional offices to plead the case for a budget free of federal interference. Most of the visits featured friendly conversations that afforded an opportunity to deliver copies of petitions – containing more than 1,000 signatures – supporting budget autonomy. At the last office visited, however – the office of House Speaker Dennis Hastert – seven of the activists decided that something more than a polite appeal was needed for the man who sets the House agenda and has failed to respond to requests for a meeting on an issue that has festered for years.

David Barrows, Jill Blankespoor, Adam Eidinger, Anise Jenkins, Zoe Mitchell, Karen Szulgit and I perched in Hastert’s office and filled the space with chanting and singing until we were removed by U.S. Capitol police, taken to jail and charged with unlawful entry and unlawful conduct.

D.C. Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton has introduced a bill to provide the District partial budget autonomy, based on the argument that Congress’ constitutional oversight of D.C. laws doesn’t require it to micromanage the District’s affairs. The bill would take D.C.’s budget out of the congressional appropriations process and allow the District to spend its locally raised revenue – about 75 percent of its budget – at the beginning of the fiscal year without prior congressional approval. Congress would retain the ability to review and alter the District’s budget and appropriate the remaining portion of the city’s spending. The message of BAD Day: The Norton bill would be a step forward – but the D.C. democracy movement must pressure Congress to completely remove itself from the business of legislating for the District.

In the struggle for full democracy for the District, the issue of budget autonomy has often been overshadowed by that of voting representation in Congress. But the BAD Day rally and sit-in in Speaker Hastert’s office delivered a powerful message that local control over local spending is no less critical a part of the full democratic rights that all other Americans enjoy – and that advocates of budget autonomy will not be silenced until the battle is won.

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Bill Mosley is a member of the Stand Up! for Democracy in D.C. Coalition.

Copyright 2003, The Common Denominator