Congress and the Governance of the Nation's Capital

Taxation without representation is a fact of life for the residents of Washington, D.C., who have neither a voting representative in Congress nor local autonomy. In this book, Charles Wesley Harris argues that it should not be necessary to sacrifice basic American rights and democratic ideals in order to achieve appropriate development of the nation's capital. Harris analyzes the conflicts between Congress and the District of Columbia government during the last twenty years and...
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Taxation without representation is a fact of life for the residents of Washington, D.C., who have neither a voting representative in Congress nor local autonomy. In this book, Charles Wesley Harris argues that it should not be necessary to sacrifice basic American rights and democratic ideals in order to achieve appropriate development of the nation's capital. Harris analyzes the conflicts between Congress and the District of Columbia government during the last twenty years and identifies the issues behind the frequent clashes. He finds that the points of contention have encompassed a very wide range of public policy issues, including public safety, land use, revenue, public works and transportation, general government and personnel, education, human services, and civil liberties. Moreover, the repeated federal interventions in local matters have been used, for the most part, not to protect legitimate national interests but rather to assert parochial concerns, the moral views of particular groups of legislators, or their propensity for exercising power through micromanagement. Federal officials' mistrust of the ability of the District government to act in the best interest of its own citizens, some of it racially based mistrust, has also been a contributing factor. Harris evaluates statehood and other self-determination options and makes recommendations for restructuring the government of the nation's capital. This comprehensive and clearly reasoned analysis of the politics of District governance will provide the information needed to understand this complex and vital question of democracy.