Using DC ‘as an example’: House, Senate bills tackle home rule with abortion, elections riders

As the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate look to appropriations and administrative committee bills, representatives and senators highlight the District as a place to test wide-ranging legislation.

As bills move toward a floor vote, local leaders are pushing back, calling emphasized Congressional control of Washington, D.C. a move to undercut home rule.

The House and Senate bills began moving out of committee just a day after DC Council Chairman Phil Mendelson, Attorney General Brian Schwalb and Mayor Muriel Bowser penned a letter on the damage that portions of the House bill could do to the city.

“If enacted, this bill would undermine public safety in the District and imperil our long history of sound budgeting,” the letter read. “We respectfully request that you and your Committee colleagues support efforts to remove language in the bill that interferes with local affairs in the District and oppose reporting it to the House floor unless it is significantly amended.”

Some hours later, Mendelson said that, while he was glad no new riders appeared on Senate legislation, the bill reported to the Senate floor continues a trend of “the national whims of House Republicans negatively impacting the District.”

“I’m especially outraged at the last-minute amendment to require D.C. [to] recognize concealed carry permits from other states,” he said. “Thank you, Congress, for making the District less safe while defunding the police.”

Meanwhile, D.C.’s nonvoting Congressional Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton was outraged at the appropriations bills and a House bill reported out of committee Friday: the American Confidence in Elections Act.

The bill, Norton said, undermines home rule and challenges D.C. voting legislation by “requiring D.C., which Congress controls, to implement election integrity and voter confidence measures.”

“It is ironic that Republicans in Congress, who do not represent D.C., are abusing their undemocratic power over D.C. in an attempt to make voting more difficult in a jurisdiction that is already denied voting representation in Congress,” Norton said.

Here’s a look at some of the policy riders that would have an immediate impact on D.C., a city that highlights “taxation without representation” on its license plates, and whose local officials continue a decadeslong push toward statehood and self governance.

Driving in the District

House appropriations legislation is set to have a significant impact on how people drive in D.C. and how the city keeps road users safe.

The bill contains policies impacting two key traffic enforcement policies in the District. The bill challenges the District’s ongoing implementation of “no right on red” laws, which Mendelson said will result in “dangerous right turns on red lights.” The bill also puts a limitation on automatic traffic enforcement, or speed cameras, throughout D.C., which “will unbalance the District’s Budget,” Mendelson said.

“In addition, the pending House bill is dangerous for its failure to support public safety and law enforcement in the District. MPD had requested $48 million to support its work on behalf of Federal security. The House is proposing over 40% less,” Mendelson said.

In a joint letter, Mendelson, Mayor Bowser and Attorney General Schwalb reemphasized the impact that limitations on automatic traffic enforcement efforts could have, leading to “more death on our roads” and a growing financial hole.

“Over the next four years, we would need to close a nearly $1 billion hole in the District budget,” they wrote.

Bills coming out of the Democratic-controlled Senate did not include restrictions on traffic enforcement in the District. Previous reports indicated likely opposition to House bills impacting how D.C. enforces its new and old traffic laws.

Voting in the District

While a similar Senate bill has not been reported out of committee, the American Confidence in Elections (ACE) Act looks to use “Washington, D.C. as an example to implement election reforms.” These reforms include the prohibition of noncitizen and ranked choice voting methods in local District elections and a number of voter roll and ID requirements.

“We are one step closer to passing the most conservative, transformative election integrity bill in the House in over 20 years,” said House administration committee chairman Bryan Steil. “The ACE Act will ensure states have the tools to implement common-sense measures that will strengthen voter confidence and participation.”

The bill — which was reported out of committee Thursday in an 8-4 vote — would limit recently passed bills allowing noncitizens to vote in local elections while shifting the process by which elections are carried out.

Noncitizens and local elections

The ACE Act’s noncitizen provisions come two months after a suit attempting to defang the DC Council’s Local Resident Voting Rights Amendment which moved to federal court. The law in question would allow green-card holders and those residing in the area without legal permission to vote in local races where they live.

DC Council member Charles Allen defended the decision to pass a local voting rights amendment, allowing residents and workers who pay taxes and make local economic contributions to participate in elections.

“This committee has focused on removing barriers to voting and lifting the voices of all District voters, particularly those in historically underrepresented communities,” Allen said during a judiciary and public safety committee meeting.

Norton said this House legislation would undo this law, along with any other bills allowing noncitizen residents the right to vote.

“Yesterday’s markup demonstrated the Republican commitment to meddling in local D.C. affairs and making voting as difficult as possible for D.C. residents,” she said.

Though the impact of this election bill may be felt nationwide if passed — forcing states to keep separate federal, state and local voting rolls depending on if jurisdictions allow noncitizen voting, thus limiting federal funds and grants — the impact on local elections is much more pronounced.

D.C. residents would need a voter ID with a photo to vote in-person or to request a ballot. Additionally, passage of the ACE Act would have the following impacts in the District:

• ban noncitizen voting at the local level
• ban unrequested ballots for mail-in ballots
• ban a change from traditional voting methods to ranked choice voting
• ban counting provisional ballots submitted outside of the voter’s precinct
• ban a participation in “ballot harvesting,” or the unauthorized collection and submission of another person or person’s ballot
• ban same-day registration for voters

Reshaping the election process

The bill also makes changes to how the District’s election officials go about counting, processing and auditing ballots in local and federal elections.

Before getting to the voting booth, the bill would require D.C. voter rolls to include photos in poll books while placing certain restrictions on how ballot drop boxes can be used. These drop boxes would also need to be located within a D.C. government building under constant remote and electronic surveillance.

Officials say the ACE Act would also require annual roll list maintenance, dropping those deemed “inactive registrants” and creating an increasingly tight turnaround on District elections.

Election officials would need to have mail-in ballots (excluding military and overseas ballots) by poll closing in order for them to be counted, and ballot counters would need to have a preliminary result announced by no later than 10 a.m. the following day. D.C. elections would also need to complete an audit after each election before the time to contest results expires.

Delegate Norton took aim at the decision federal legislators made to continue reducing access to voting by interfering with D.C. home rule, taking special aim at partisan poll-watching policies that she said would give “virtually unfettered access to polling sites,” allowing those observers to “challenge ballots and tabulations.”

“The markup was the latest form of the wide-ranging anti-home rule attacks D.C. continues to suffer at the hands of Republicans in Congress,” Norton said.

Conservative think tanks like the America First Policy Institute have taken a different stance on the bill, saying that the measures implemented would help to keep funding of elections and voting limited to American citizens.

“Polling shows the vast majority of Americans have concerns about how elections are conducted in this country, and policymakers cannot afford to ignore the American people’s desire for voter protection measures,” said Ken Blackwell and Hogan Gidley, chair and vice chair for the organization’s election integrity center.

While this bill has been introduced and reported out to the wider House, it has yet to enter a Democrat-controlled Senate committee.

Learning in the District

Both the Senate and House bills share changes to D.C. policies and funding with regard to education, albeit differing in size and scope.

While most of these moves center around incidents and conversations of parents and children’s engagement with school districts, some directly impact how local schools receive funding, which schools have access to federal dollars and how that money can be used.

Parents’ rights and suing schools

The House bill heading to the floor for a vote will have a serious impact on schools looking to avoid strategic lawsuits against public participation amid growing tensions in school board meetings.

Currently, laws exempt the D.C. government, and specifically public charter schools, from filing suit under the city’s Anti-Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation. House Republicans claim the change was made “so that pro-life protesters are treated fairly and equally under D.C. law.”

The lower chamber’s appropriations bill, while reflective of increasing space for filing lawsuits against the government, did not see this particular policy mirrored in Senate legislation.

Funding local education

Senators voted to include an increase to the D.C. Tuition Assistance Grant program’s award limit as part of the markup appropriations bills, raising the amount from $10,000 to $15,000.

According to the bill, D.C. grant recipients looking to pay the difference between in-state and out-of-state tuition at U.S. public institutions would see their total lifetime award limit increased by half to roughly $75,000.

Funding under the House bill would stay at $40 million for the more than 6,000 students participating in the grant program. The bill also includes $600,000 for the D.C. National Guard’s retention and college access program.

While the majority of funding levels are at or near previous appropriations, Delegate Norton took issue with a policy that would allow new students into the D.C. private school voucher program, saying this program “does not deserve federal funding because, among other things, it has failed to meet its own goal of improving academic achievement.”

“Congress imposed the voucher program on the District,” Norton’s office said, “which is the only federally funded or created voucher program, even though Congress has rejected a national voucher program.

If it is not amended, the House legislation will also include a rejection of compliance proposals that limit access to Scholarships for Opportunity and Results grants, according to a summary drafted by House Republicans on the appropriations committee.

Health care and prohibitions in the District

While both Senate and House bills maintain limitations to D.C. using local funds to assist low-income women in accessing abortions and bar commercial sale of marijuana, the House appropriations bill tackles a broad set of health and wellness issues for the District.

The current House appropriations bill would:

• Prohibit funding for D.C.’s Reproductive Health Nondiscrimination Act intended to, for example, protect people from being fired for making health care decisions an employer disagrees with
• Require D.C. to report compliance with the partial birth abortion ban and maternity care access
• Ban D.C.’s needle exchange program
• Repeal D.C.’s Death with Dignity Act
• Reject funding for a new FBI headquarters

“No new funds for an enormous, new FBI headquarters building in the D.C. region,” House Republicans on the Appropriations Committee said in a summary rejecting the $3.5 billion proposal.

The bill also provides $4 million for combating HIV/AIDS in D.C., continues D.C.’s exemption from federal government shutdowns, provides $8 million for D.C. Water projects and gives $28 million to the city’s Emergency Planning and Security Fund.

Outraged by the vast majority of riders suggested by representatives in the federal government, Delegate Norton, who continues to fight for D.C. Statehood, said she would fight to remove these riders.

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