Everything you need to know about D.C. home rule

It’s easy to visit Washington and come away inspired by the monuments and memorials to democracy and freedom. But it’s also true that if you live in D.C., many of those same high-minded proclamations fall short. As progressive D.C. reporter Sam Smith wrote in the early 1970s, “Washington does not participate in the Union, it waits on it. It stages a pageant of democracy without sharing the democracy that is portrayed.”

That’s because D.C. residents – who pay taxes, serve on juries, and fight in wars – remain without voting representation in Congress, and prior to the 1960s, couldn’t even vote for president. But for much of the city’s history they were also denied direct control of their local affairs, relying instead on whatever attention Congress and the White House might pay to  city matters.

That changed 50 years ago with the advent of home rule, or the ability for residents to elect a mayor and D.C. Council and have a more direct say in municipal issues. But that home rule remains limited and often threatened – even more so with increasing numbers of Republican legislators weighing in on how the city operates, most often to suggest the necessity of federal intervention.

What exactly is home rule?

At its most basic, it just means local control. For D.C., that means a mayor and legislative body (the D.C. Council) that are elected by residents and charged with enacting policies, programs, and budgets for everything from education and recreation to policing and transportation. Before D.C. got home rule, most of those functions were managed and funded directly by Congress and presidentially appointed commissioners. The city was, in effect, just another federal agency – except one where people lived.

When did D.C. get home rule?

The system that D.C. has today is just over 50 years old. It was in 1973 that Congress approved a bill granting D.C. limited home rule, and in January 1975 that the first elected mayor and council actually took office. (It was President Richard Nixon who supported the home rule bill, saying that “it is particularly appropriate to assure those persons who live in our Capital City rights and privileges which have long been enjoyed by most of their countrymen.”)

But even before that, D.C. had moments when elements of home rule were granted and repealed. From the city’s founding in the early 1800s to 1871, D.C. had a mayor who was initially appointed by the president, later chosen by an elected council, and ultimately elected by residents. For three years thereafter, D.C. was a territory with a presidentially appointed governor. That system was later replaced by presidentially appointed commissioners, who lasted all the way until home rule was granted in the 1970s. 

Much of the city’s history of limited democracy is directly linked to race. After the Civil War, white residents pushed back on an elected mayor and council altogether because Black residents had been given the right to vote in those elections – and were winning council seats. And during the 1950s and 60s, it was actually Black civil rights activists who pushed for the home rule bill that Congress ultimately passed, using their historic ties to southern states like North Carolina to cajole and ultimately oust members of Congress who were opposed.

Great, D.C. got home rule! That means we’re free from Congress, right?

Well, not really. The Home Rule Act that Congress passed was, at best, a compromise. D.C. did get an elected mayor and council, but Congress – where D.C. residents still have no voting representation – and the president maintained plenty of influence and avenues to interfere when they deemed it necessary. 

All legislation the council passes, for one, heads to Capitol Hill for a required 30- or 60-day review (anything changing the city’s criminal code gets a longer look), during which members of the House and Senate can raise objections to bills and ultimately vote to reject them. (This has only happened a few times over the last five decades, most recently in 2023 with a massive rewrite of the city’s criminal code.) Congress can also legislate directly for D.C., and can use the power of the federal budget to tell the city what it can and cannot spend its own money on. (This happens pretty frequently.)

And there’s more. 

The president has the power to take control of the Metropolitan Police Department in case of an emergency, and retains sole control over whether and when to call out the D.C. National Guard. There are two At-Large seats on the council that are set aside for members of the non-majority political party, i.e. anyone but Democrats. This was engineered by congressional Republicans concerned that Democrats would dominate the city’s politics (which ended up happening regardless). The city can’t tax the income of non-residents who work here, foregoing billions of dollars in revenue on a yearly basis. (For that, you can thank Maryland and Virginia’s senators and representatives, who wanted to head off any possibility of a commuter tax.) And though D.C. does have local courts, all of its judges are nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate, a convoluted system that frequently results in shortages of jurists for the bench.

How has Congress messed with D.C. over the years?

There’s plenty of examples, many of them dealing with hot-button social and cultural issues where Republicans see D.C. as an easy means to score political points with like-minded voters in their districts. 

For example, D.C. was long prohibited from using any funds whatsoever to run needle-exchange programs for drug users. Congress has also forbidden the city from using any money to pay for or subsidize abortions for low-income women. In the late 1990s, after D.C. residents voted for a ballot initiative to legalize the use of marijuana for medical purposes, Congress initially prohibited the city from even counting the votes – and later banned the use of any money to actually implement the initiative. Similarly, over the last decade Congress has told D.C. it can’t legalize the sale of recreational marijuana, even as states across the U.S. do exactly that.  

In the early 1990s, Congress blocked a D.C. law allowing domestic partnerships between gay couples and required that the city hold a public referendum on whether to reinstate the death penalty. (It ultimately failed.) At different times Congress also mandated minimum staffing levels for the police department, prohibited the use of affirmative action policies in the hiring of police officers and firefighters, and even told the city it could not use municipal trucks to collect trash and refuse at apartment buildings (the latter restriction remains in place). 

Some of the interventions, though, have been much more significant. In the midst of D.C.’s financial crisis in the 1990s, Congress turned over much of the city’s functioning to a federal control board. While many credit the control board for helping stabilize D.C.’s finances and setting the foundation for the growth the city has seen in recent decades, critics point out that some of the financial problems that prompted the imposition of the control board actually came from federal restrictions on the city itself. (Such as its inability to tax income at its source.) 

What can be done to strengthen D.C. home rule?

The shortest answer is for D.C. to be made a state, as many local officials and residents have been fighting for for years. But given the political challenges inherent to that effort, there have been other attempts to shore up the city’s limited ability to govern itself.

Back in 2013, D.C. residents approved a ballot initiative that gives the city what’s known as budget autonomy. Before that, every annual budget passed by the D.C. Council had to be sent to Congress to be wrapped into the federal budget. That didn’t always happen on time, though, leaving the city with unpredictable finances from year to year. But under the budget autonomy initiative, the city’s annual budgets are instead treated like normal legislation – they simply become law after a 30-day congressional review. 

D.C. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton has also attempted to do away with the congressional review of D.C. bills altogether, and to make the process of sending bills to Congress for review easier. (That bill would literally just allow the use of email.) In fact, in 2022 Norton introduced almost two-dozen bills she said would give D.C. more control over its own affairs, covering everything from letting the city set its own dates for special elections to allowing it to take over control of the local court system. (The bills did not advance out of the House.)

What can we expect will happen to D.C. home rule once Republicans take control in Washington?

As we wrote last week, that’s the million-dollar question. There’s certainly no shortage of possible threats to the city – ranging from broader bans on local programs and policies to threats of a possible repeal of home rule – but it remains to be seen if and when Republicans will start taking their shots. 

In the meantime, Mayor Muriel Bowser is doing her best to steer every conversation toward topics she thinks can be points of agreement between the city and its new GOP overlords. Speaking earlier this week, Bowser mentioned two key issues: getting federal workers back into the office on a more full time basis, and redeveloping underutilized federal parks and buildings. (The latter point speaks to President-elect Donald Trump’s pledge to beautify D.C.)

Bowser also said she is pushing to open lines of communication with new congressional Republicans, some of whom may have a dismal view of the city they will temporarily reside in and hold extraordinary power over. “We actually have to tell them about ourselves. We tell them we’re a city, we take care of ourselves, we raise and spend our money. We tell them who we are, and this is what you can do [to help us]. And this is the conversation we'll have very soon,” she said.

Bowser’s cautious and somewhat optimistic approach isn’t without precedent. Back in 2012, when Republicans controlled the House of Representatives, then-mayor Vincent Gray struck up an improbably friendly relationship with Rep. Darrell Issa (R-California), who at the time chaired the committee that oversaw the city. And that friendship largely paid off, with Issa supporting Gray’s advocacy for changes to the federal law that restricts building heights in D.C. 

I want to know more. What else should I read?

If there’s one book that should be mandatory reading for anyone looking to understand D.C.’s history and politics, it’s Dream City by Tom Sherwood and Harry Jaffe. But allow us to similarly plug the fantastic Chocolate City: A History of Race and Democracy in the Nation’s Capital by Chris Myers Asch and George Derek Musgrove, Home Rule or House Rule: Congress and the Erosion of Local Governance in Washington, D.C. by Michael K. Fauntroy, and Captive Capital: Colonial Life in Modern Washington by Sam Smith.