Norton Goals for Voting Rights and Complete Home Rule Challenge New Democratic Congress to Act on Promises

Norton Goals for Voting Rights and Complete Home Rule Challenge New Democratic Congress to Act on Promises

The Office of Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) today released the Congresswoman's annual review and goals report to her constituents, detailing her accomplishments for the two-year 109th session of Congress which ended this month, and her major goals for the 110th Congress. Topping the list of victories was a strong vote supporting the D.C. voting rights bill in one committee, and mid-year budget autonomy. With Democrats set to take control of both houses, Norton will press early passage of the D.C. vote bill and will seek to complete the city's limited home rule begun 32 years ago, beginning with budget and legislative autonomy, and wholesale reform of the D.C. Charter.

Following four years of negotiation, the Congresswoman achieved a breakthrough on the House vote bill cosponsored with Congressman Tom Davis (R-VA), when the bill passed in the Government Reform Committee 29 to 4. Norton's lengthy negotiations on the key measures she secured were necessary to get floor consideration, including agreement by the Judiciary Committee, the committee of jurisdiction, to allow a vote there, and to assure bipartisan support. Although the Republican leadership declined to move the bill, the two Republican Utah Senators wrote Republican and Democratic leaders seeking passage on the Senate floor as soon as the House passed the bill, brightening prospects for passage in 2007.

Approval of Norton's Mid-year Budget Autonomy bill, offering the first freedom from the federal supplemental appropriations process, is the most important structural change for the city since passage of the Home Rule Act 32 years ago. The District can now spend its local funds annually without congressional approval, instead of returning mid-year as part of the federal appropriations supplement. Residents were relieved to get a two-year extension of Norton's $5,000 homebuyer and business tax credits, as home prices continued to make affordable housing scarce and businesses delayed improvements, awaiting the credits. Passage of Norton's land bill transferring valuable federal land to D.C. to partially compensate for the costs created by the federally-imposed structural imbalance allows the city to build housing and other revenue generating facilities. Following passage of Norton's William B. Bryant U.S. Court Annex bill, the Congresswoman helped dedicate the new addition, named for the first African American Chief Judge of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, who graduated from the D.C. Public Schools and went on to break racial barriers after practicing law in segregated D.C., where the professional bar excluded him because of race.

In addition to a House vote for D.C., Norton's top goals for the 110th Congress focus on completing the unfinished work of D.C.'s partial home rule that leaves significant self governing decisions still under Congress, with budget and legislative autonomy as her highest priorities. With Democrats in power in the House and Senate for the first time in 12 years, Norton will begin a complete overhaul of the D.C. Charter to remove the many matters that should not be in a chartering document and can only be changed by the Congress. Many provisions are redundant, obsolete, no longer necessary, or are ordinary legislative matters. Others violate home rule, some of them now found in the "Free and Equal D.C. Series," introduced in the 109th Congress and before.

Congresswoman Norton's deep concern that D.C. has the nation's highest HIV/AIDS rate has led her to make 2007 a year to raise awareness and mobilize residents for prevention and testing for HIV and AIDS, which have gripped the African American community here and nationally. She began in November with a D.C. Clergy Town Meeting on HIV/AIDS and will continue throughout 2007 with town meetings addressed to other major groups, focusing in turn on Black men, women and teens, and ending with an All-City Town Meeting on eliminating HIV/AIDS in D.C.

http://www.norton.house.gov/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=474