Norton Office Reveals Unusually High Rate of Bills Signed into Law

Press Release

Today the Office of Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) released results showing that the 110th Congress has been one of her most productive legislative sessions, with 37% of the 55 bills she introduced becoming law. That's 20 of her bills signed into law by the President. She also saw 13 of her bills pass or have a hearing in the House, with most likely to become law in the next Congress. This rate for signing into law, as well as of House passage of a member's bills is very rare and helps explain why Norton is ranked 19th "most influential" and 16th in "legislative power" among the 440 members of the House by an outside organization, Power Rankings. Among the bills that passed the House was the D.C. Voting Rights Act, which fell three votes short of 60 required by the Senate.

Norton's Year-End Comprehensive Report on Accomplishments and Goals is scheduled for late December. That release will detail more of Norton's work as a new subcommittee chair of the Subcommittee on Economic Development, Public Buildings, and Emergency Management. In addition, the information in this release does not account for Norton's major work on many bills that she co-sponsored with other members. Among them was the $1.5 billion WMATA bill for infrastructure and capital costs, on which she was an original co-sponsor with then Oversight and Government Reform former chair, Tom Davis. The first time that the bill passed the House, Norton was in the minority and it failed to get Republican support, but Norton's work with Democratic colleagues pulled the bill through to House passage.

The D.C. economy, health care, education and home rule, were areas where Norton achieved bills of major importance. Norton's emphasis on the D.C. economy paid off as the recession set in. Her unique $5,000 home buyer tax incentive, credited with stabilizing the District's population, should help they city again during the current mortgage crisis, and she hopes her business tax credits will assist in moving development in the city's neighborhoods, which has sharply slowed here and nationally.

The District economy will benefit for years to come from her efforts, which, this year, got the first funding for the Department of Homeland Security headquarters, a compound of several agencies to be built on the St. Elizabeths West campus, beginning this spring and she is also seeking authorization for one building she wants to place on the East campus to help achieve Norton's goal of bringing quality retail to Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue. The headquarters marks the first federal agency to be placed east of the Anacostia River and will be the largest federal development project since the Pentagon was built in 1943. Expected to be in continuous construction over a period of up to 20 years, the compound will give the District and Ward 8 an economic boost during what may be a lengthy recession.

Norton's work as the subcommittee chair brought a $2 million federal grant and a $131,000 congressional earmark to restore Eastern Market. Her bill to achieve a long sought effort to develop the Old Post Office on Pennsylvania Avenue also is now law and a Request for Proposals is expected soon.

Both of Norton's major bills to improve health care in D.C. are now law. She got D.C. added as a designated area where primary health care professionals can serve for two years in wards 7 and 8 and other underserved areas in exchange for student loan forgiveness. The bill also incorporates H.R. 2168, the Dedicated Dental Services Act. Norton had earlier sought loan forgiveness for dentists, in part because routine dental examinations enable dentists to spot early signs of HIV/AIDS, a Norton priority. The Congresswoman also achieved the removal of a longstanding rider banning the use of city funds on needle exchange programs and got lifted another harmful rider barring the District from using its own funds to lobby for its voting rights. The needle exchange ban has been directly responsible for D.C.'s standing as the jurisdiction with the highest HIV/AIDS rate in the country.

Norton continued her success with higher education bills for the city. She got reauthorization of the popular D.C. Tuition Access Grants (TAG), which has increased college attendance by 60%. The bill provides higher education opportunities for D.C. students by granting to any local high school graduate up to $10,000 annually to attend any U.S. public college or $2,500 to attend private colleges in the city or region.

Norton also convinced two committees to add the University of the District of Columbia for permanent federal funding -- her bill for UDC food, nutrition and related programs and another for the UDC Law School. For the first time, UDC, the only urban land grant institution in the country, now qualifies in the Agriculture bill, for grants that range from nutrition programs to capacity building facilities and include pesticide and safety training and licensing for professionals; water quality education and monitoring, gardening assistance for D.C. homeowners and resources for classroom teachers.

Norton also managed to get UDC's David A. Clarke Law School added to the Higher Education Reauthorization Act to receive annual Historically Black Colleges and University funding. With the law school now added to Norton's work that previously got HBCU funding for the undergraduate school, all eligible UDC programs now automatically qualify for yearly HBCU funding.

In addition, Congresswoman Norton's D.C. Charter amendment bill, which was necessary for the District's D.C. public school system reform to become law, passed the House, and Norton fought off four "holds" on the bill to achieve final passage in the Senate.

The Congresswoman continued to give special attention to the justice system. In getting her bill signed into law that increases the number of Superior Court judges from 58 to 61, she said that the rapid processing of criminal cases in particular is an important part of deterring crime.

Norton used her subcommittee to ensure the safety and security of residents, federal workers and visitors to the Nation's Capital with passage of the Federal Protective Service Guard Contracting Reform Act, which protects federal employees and sites from private security contractors with serious felony records.

The Congresswoman was able to close the case on a bill that District residents have long desired. She secured passage of the D.C. Coin bill which allows the District of Columbia to participate in the State Quarters program, and the quarter with Duke Ellington, will be in public circulation early in 2009.

Source