Norton Secures More than Half a Billion Dollars, a Major Land Transfer, and Removes all Riders Today

Norton Secures More than Half a Billion Dollars, a Major Land Transfer, and Removes All Riders Today as D.C. Appropriations Passes

December 10, 2009

WASHINGTON, DC - In addition to making history by removing all riders from the D.C. Appropriations bill, which passed the House today, Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) also secured $752 million, in federal funds, much of it authorized by her D.C. Revitalization Act, which now funds certain D.C. law enforcement functions, an increase over last year's federal funding. Norton scored a major land transfer for the District, the old Naval Hospital, which she has long sought for the city. The long-dilapidated building in the 900 block of Pennsylvania Ave., SE, along one of the District's major thoroughfares, is slated for a mixed-use community center for seniors.

The Congresswoman said, "Today the House took historic steps to ensure greater democracy in the nation's capital by finally allowing the District to spend its own funds to save the lives of its residents by removing the bans on local funds for needle exchange programs, as well as for abortions for low-income women, and by allowing the city to decide whether to implement a referendum to permit the use of medicinal marijuana. We will never make up for the HIV/AIDS epidemic that has besieged this city because needle exchange was banned for a decade or make up for the resulting loss of lives. There is no way to make poor women, forced to carry pregnancies to term, believe that their reproductive choice was guaranteed in the decades during the longest of the bans, on using local funds for abortions for poor women. But, today we start a new chapter in democracy in the District of Columbia with the first D.C. appropriations in memory free of all un-democratic, anti-home rule riders."

The $752 million in federal funds that Norton secured for D.C. in this conference report includes $35 million for the D.C. Tuition Assistance Grant program (T.A.G.), which allows D.C. students up to $10,000 to attend public out-of-state colleges or $2,500 to attend private colleges and universities; more than $250 million for D.C. courts; over $75 million for D.C. schools, including $42 million for D.C. public schools, and $20 million for D.C. public charter schools, and $13 million for the private school voucher program. The Congresswoman also got funds for D.C. organizations offering education programs and health services. She struggled especially for the $1 million for the Children's National Medical Center to expand pediatric care, and for $200,000 for the Whitman Walker Clinic, a major Norton priority in fighting the city's HIV/AIDS epidemic; $150,000 for the National Building Museum for its education programs and exhibitions; $125,000 for Safe Kids USA for its services for families in need; $100,000 for Samaritan Ministry of Greater Washington; as well as funds for other D.C. organizations.

The funds approved today are federal funds for the District. The District's budget for its locally raised funds was approved in Congress and enacted in time for the beginning of the fiscal year, thanks to an agreement that Norton has developed with appropriators so that the District would not have to wait months past its October 1 fiscal year to being spending at the next fiscal year's budget level.