Norton Makes Ready After Seeing Signs of Anti-Home-Rule Action in Upcoming Continuing Resolution

Norton Makes Ready After Seeing Early Signs of Anti-Home-Rule Action in Upcoming Continuing Resolution

January 31, 2011

Washington, DC - The Office of Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) said that the Congresswoman is taking preliminary steps for the distinct possibility that Republicans may try to use the upcoming Continuing Resolution to begin to re-impose one or more of the anti-home- rule attachments that Norton got removed during the past four years. Norton's negotiations with a prior Republican Congress succeeded again this year, as in prior years, in getting the city's annual local budget out by September 30th, including a unique provision that allows the city to spend at next year's funding levels. However, some of D.C.'s law enforcement functions, including the courts, are federally funded, and a Continuing Resolution to fund the federal government for fiscal year 2011 must be enacted by March 4, 2011.

"The new House majority began the 112th Congress by taking D.C.'s Committee of the Whole vote, even though it has been approved by the federal courts," Norton said. "We will not stand by while they invade the District's right to spend our own money in keeping with the needs of our residents. Otherwise, there will be no end to it."

There have been early signs of ignoring or trampling on D.C.'s home-rule choices, such as last week's introduction of a bill to make permanent the annual Hyde appropriations amendment that bars federal funds for abortions, but also includes a bar on the District's local funds for this purpose, as well as another seeking to override a compromise reached on private school vouchers for D.C. and instead would make the program permanent, despite urgently needed funds for D.C.'s home-rule public charter schools, which have long waiting lists and do not receive funds equal to money received by the D.C. public schools.