RIDING D.C.'S BUDGET

IN A NEAR party-line vote, the House decided this week that anti-home rule
riders can be added to the District's fiscal 2000 budget when it is debated
on the floor today.

The 227 to 201 tally undercuts the spirit of cooperation developed earlier
this year between the city's new mayor, Anthony Williams, and House
Republican leaders. The vote also signals open season on local
self-determination. Floor debate rules now permit the addition of four
"social" riders: a prohibition against the use of District or federal funds
on a needle-exchange program; a ban on joint adoptions by people unrelated
by blood or marriage; a prohibition against a minor's possessing tobacco
products; and a ban on the use of funds to legalize or reduce penalties for
the use or distribution of marijuana. If adopted, those riders would join
other provisions already tucked into the committee bill that also undermine
D.C. self-government: bans against using city funds to support abortions,
domestic partnership laws, voting representation claims and ballot
initiatives.

District officials are rightly upset with this turn. They are not alone.
This week the Office of Management and Budget told the House Republican
leadership that the social riders are intrusive and objectionable. Include
them in a D.C. budget bill sent to the president, said OMB, and "his senior
advisers would recommend that the president veto the bill."

Plenty of hard work by the mayor, council and financial control board went
into fashioning the balanced budget now on the Hill. To the delight of city
leaders, House D.C. appropriations subcommittee chairman Ernest Istook
(R-Okla.) and ranking member James Moran (D-Va.) delivered on the GOP
leadership's promise to bring the District budget to the floor early this
year. These riders now threaten months of productive labor by District
leaders and Congress. It isn't fair and it isn't right. D.C. Del. Eleanor
Holmes Norton said the riders are anathema to the District. They should be
stricken.