Problem Postponed

The House of Representatives is apparently going to allow the 800,000 citizens of the District of Columbia a mayor, a city council, and a non-voting delegate in the House. Victories on procedural votes Monday indicate a home rule bill will pass. But its guts will be gone. Congress will retain the power of the purse, without which "self-government" may turn out a sham.

Under a bill passed by the Senate July 22, the Treasury would have paid the city the equivalent of what it would pay in taxes if it were a private business. Faced with possible defeat in the House, however, backers of home rule eliminated the automatic Federal payment. The Appropriations Committees will continue to review the city's budget--and rule on its policies.

A Federal payment per se is nothing new. Congress has made one to the District for 85 years now. Government is much the largest industry in Washington. Much of the most valuable land is Federal property. As in other areas where the government has a major impact--Oak Ridge is an example--Congress has accepted its responsibility to pay its share for the services the local government provides.

What bothered people was making the payment automatic. Opponents said this would amount to taxation of the U.S. government. They said the District government would be able to milk the U.S. taxpayers. They suggested it might be unconstitutional for Congress to abandon its control of government expenditures.

The Justice Department assured Congress that basing the payment on a tax loss would not be taxation. The formula, said a Department memo, "merely represents a Congressional judgment that this is a practical, efficient, and just method of computing the federal payment."

Supporters of the automatic payment also pointed out that the Administrator of General Services, a Federal officer, would have to approve the city's assessment of Federal property. The President would have an absolute veto of city council measures. And since the Congress can review or revamp local operations at any time, it would not be abandoning control, merely delegating it.

Under the existing system, Congress approves the payment each year. This year the payment is $43 million--12 per cent of the total District budget. But the Appropriations Committees review the entire budget. As a result some Congressmen have consistently blocked expenditures the District wanted to make. The classic example is the action of Rep. Andrew Natcher (D-Tenn.), chairman of the House District appropriations subcommittee, whose resistance has prevented replacement of the dilapidated Shaw Junior High School. Sen Robert Byrd (D-W. Va.), head of the corresponding Senate subcommittee, has made welfare payments--particularly to parents of illegitimate children--his special target.

It was this sort of personal control of city operations by men not responsible to the people whose lives they influence that backers of an automatic payment hoped to eliminate. But the opposition was too strong on this point and home rule strategists were forced to compromise. Byrd and Natcher will retain their power. The Capitol, and not the District Building, will continue to be Washington's city hall--and Congress will inevitably continue to spend valuable time on local matters.

This was not the only compromise the supporters of home rule made. Another was on participation of Federal employees--one third of the voters in Washington--in local elections. The Senate bill waived the Hatch Act, which bars civil servants from partisan political activity. Republicans in the House objected. They claimed that the record of clean government in Washington was partially a result of the Hatch Act. The Republicans won. The House bill allows participation only in non-partisan elections. And in a city where four out of five registered voters are Democrats, the Democratic Congress insists on partisan elections.

Even under the Senate bill the Democrats will not have a monopoly on local office. Of the 19 city councilmen, five are to be elected at large, and no party may nominate more than three candidates for those seats.

The provision for 14 elections on a ward basis was similarly designed to insure that some white councilmen would be elected. In a city nearly 60 per cent Negro, it was feared, at large elections would produce an all-Negro council.

And this statistic, of course, is why Washington had to wait so long for home rule in the first place. A white cab driver expressed the feelings of many this summer when he said, "I can't see out Nation's capital being controlled by colored people." This opinion explains the strong Southern opposition to the home rule bill. This feeling, in a rather irrational form, underlies the compromise provision that left to the President ultimate control of the Metropolitan Police.

And unless the Congress takes seriously the proposition that it is, indeed, self-government that it has granted the citizens of the District, racial prejudice may serve as stickum for a series of future coalitions and ungentlemanly agreements to frustrate what will be a largely Negro city administration. Those in Congress who fought for home rule will have to continue to fight. Without the automatic payment the District is only half free.