Congress must intervene to restore DC citizens' rights

District of Columbia Mayor Muriel Bowser has been silencing opponents all over the city. They are furious but helpless.

Advisory Neighborhood Commissions (ANCs) were set up under the city’s Home Rule Act as open forums to serve the needs of citizens and neighborhoods. That was Congress’s intent. Bowser is now shoving through some new rules that encourage ANCs to cut back or even eliminate the right of public comment.

Something comparable has been happening with the D.C. Zoning Commission. New rules have made it harder for anyone to challenge its rulings.

These smash-and-grab power-play maneuvers go beyond mere autocracy. There is a deeper agenda: a shadow movement whose intent is to convert the D.C. government into a vending machine for developers.

The scheme involves cramming dense, new construction into every nook and cranny of the District, whether nearby residents want it or not. Bowser says she is encouraging development to pay for things the people need. But this invites the embarrassing question of whether or not she is using the resources that she already has efficiently.

Sure enough, more development will broaden the tax base and bring more people.  But the larger population will require more services, and so development — presto! —requires even more development. This is a self-reinforcing perpetual-motion racket that developers love.

For them, it is a very profitable game.

Bowser is pushing a “Comeback Plan” to bring the downtown back from its slow COVID-related death.  There is no denying that the COVID lock-downs dealt the city’s economy a heavy blow, as they did throughout the nation. But there are other ways to bring urban vitality without pushing dense high-rise development, which Bowser says she has to have.

Look at Georgetown and Adams Morgan — swinging scenes whose vibrancy does not require high-rise development.

Decades ago, I was active in the D.C. historic preservation movement.  We saved historic buildings, not only to bequeath a rich heritage to future generations, but also in response to people who treasured the traditions of their neighborhoods.

They loved the old streetscapes that lined commercial blocks along corridors like Connecticut Avenue — human-scale shops in the quaint old buildings that have been around for generations. So the city’s Historic Preservation Review Board gave them protection:  historic districts where new construction would be very carefully controlled.

Now, Bowser has packed the Preservation Review Board with hacks who see their primary mission as facilitating development.  The Office of Planning has given them new marching orders:  a set of “Connecticut Avenue Development Guidelines,” whose purpose is to cram dense development on top of the small-scale buildings.  What is currently an urban oasis is to become an urban canyon, hemmed in by towering cliffs.

The Office of Planning is pushing the same sort of battering ram into the largely Black neighborhood of Ivy City.

Only Congress can come to the rescue and restore the public's right to object, comment, and appeal.

Congress should not terminate the city’s home rule, but it must modify it, to give the people back the basic rights that the original Home Rule Act sought to establish.

In other parts of America, victims of corrupt city halls can go over the heads of the political bosses for relief. New York City provides some good examples. Back in the Gilded Age, “Boss Tweed” of Tammany Hall was toppled in part due to action by New York’s governor, Samuel Tilden.

But Congress is the only higher authority to whom the citizens of Washington can turn.

And there is more to this issue — much more. Bowser is calling for repeal of the D.C. Height of Buildings Act, which Congress passed in 1910. She wants to build skyscrapers.

Her current mouthpiece, Andrew Trueblood, claims that the mayor only advocates “modest” increases in building height. But this is just the camel’s nose inside the tent.

What other major city in America lacks a skyscraper profile? Such a future is inevitable for Washington, unless Congress continues to forbid it.

Should we destroy the open vistas that make Washington the “Paris of America” — the open vistas of the L’Enfant Plan that was commissioned by George Washington, the man for whom the city is named?

Do you want to see immense skyscrapers throwing their dark shadows over the National Mall?

This should not be an issue that divides conservatives and liberals. Liberals should defend their long tradition of grassroots empowerment.  Conservatives should vow to defend the great heritage that came with the founding of Washington — a capital city with vistas that inspire both residents and visitors.

It is time for Congress to protect both the federal city that belongs to us all and the residents of Washington, whose mayor is becoming a tyrant. Congress needs to amend the Home Rule Act of 1973 so as to give the people of Washington the power to protect what they love.

Richard Striner, author of Ike in Love and War: How Dwight D. Eisenhower Sacrificed Himself to Keep the Peace, taught history for over 30 years at Washington College in Chestertown, Md.