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The D.C. budget has hit Capitol Hill, where our congressional overlords will once again hijack local D.C. tax dollars through an Appropriations Bill. With no voting representation, D.C. residents remain shut out of the Congressional proceedings that directly impact our lives. The District's budget takes months to assemble at the local level, with Council hearings, public testimony, negotiations, deal making, and occasional political grandstanding. The end result is a 'consensus' budget, based on compromise, put forth by the elected officials who are directly accountable to the voters. It may never be a perfect budget, but at least it's our budget, developed through a democratic process.

Then an un-elected Financial Authority--the Control Board--takes over. Chair Alice Rivlin, though less dictatorial in style than her predecessor, Andrew Brimmer, still manages to cause harm. With an easy stroke of the pen, Rivlin this year dangerously eliminated the 'fifth person' from the Fire Department's ladder trucks.

Things get even worse once the budget leaves the Control Board. Then Congress gets its dirty hands on our local government funding, and the D.C. Budget becomes the D.C. Appropriations Bill, beginning a complicated, outdated process hazardous to the health of District residents. Any member of Congress can add an amendment to the D.C. Appropriations Bill, dictating how the District of Columbia's citizens can spend locally-raised taxdollars.

And they do. The sponsors of these amendments tend to be socially conservative Republicans (though not exclusively), representing rural areas, who want to score political points with their constituents thousands of miles away from the District of Columbia. Congressional restrictions on D.C. funding have nothing to do with financial oversight of the City. These anti-democratic 'social riders' are designed to impose conservative ideologies on District residents, overruling local, democratically-approved policies. Recent riders have included:

• capping attorneys fees for special education litigation
• blocking access to abortion services for low/no-income women
• prohibiting the implementation of D.C.'s domestic partners law
• barring adoption for unmarried (i.e. Gay and Lesbian) couples
• restricting public participation in a 'voting rights lawsuit' to win congressional representation
• banning the use of local, public, and even some private funds for D.C.'s clean needle-exchange program to reduce new HIV infections

Last year, D.C.'s ongoing battle with Congressional interference gained national attention when Representative Bob Barr (R-GA) blocked the District from spending an estimated $1.64 to count the ballots for D.C.'s medical marijuana Initiative 59. It took a federal court case by the ACLU of the National Capital Area to finally release the results of D.C.'s voter initiative¯which passed by 69%, winning in all 8 wards, and in every precinct. Barr returned with a new amendment which prevents the District from implementing protections for seriously ill patients using medical marijuana. Though California, Oregon, Alaska, Maine, Arizona, Hawaii, Nevada, and Washington State have all passed and are implementing similar measures, democracy does not apply to the District of Columbia.

Certain members of the Republican majority are expected to once again add anti-democratic riders to our local government spending. As one of fourteen appropriations bills passed by Congress annually, the D.C. Bill is first sent to the two sub-committees for D.C. Appropriations for 'mark-up,' in both the House and the Senate (chaired by Representative Ernest Istook (R-OK) and Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) respectively). 'Mark-up' means that the committee chair can go ahead and write into the bill whatever he or she wants. The chairs almost always get their own way in sub-committee. The D.C. Appropriations sub-committee meetings are usually held in a very small room that limits public attendence and scrutiny. No local residents are allowed to speak, not even the District's non-voting Delegate, Eleanor Holmes Norton. She can only present written testimony, whisper concerns to those with a place at the table and, of course, berate them in the hallways.

The next stop is the full Appropriations Committee, where D.C. residents have had some successes. The Full Committee of the House of Representatives actually voted to remove the medical marijuana, needle exchange, and 'voting rights' amendments last year.

After the Appropriations Committee votes, an acrimonious floor fight begins, where many of the riders are brought back, and generally passed on a party-line vote.

Closed door meetings follow, between Congressional leadership and the White House Office of Management and Budget, making deals and trade-offs for District residents, in a House-Senate Conference Committee. The White House deserves credit for vetoing the D.C. Appropriations Bill because of the riders. If no bill is agreed upon by the start of the fiscal year on October 1, the result is weeks of temporary spending measures, called 'continuing resolutions,' to fund the District government. The District's budget usually winds up buried, as part of an Omnibus Spending package funding large portions of the federal government, when it is signed into law by the President, despite the riders.

Community activists are increasingly involved in the Appropriations process, ranging from 'Free D.C.' marches to citizen-lobbying, demanding a clean bill with no riders. Last year, three inspiring activists-- Anise Jenkins, Karen Szulgit, and Ben Armfield--actually stood up for our rights in the House gallery. The D.C. Democracy 'Trio' were arrested, but never alone. A handful of supporters, beginning with late-night police station vigils, grew into rallies and packed court rooms that ultimately celebrated the acquittal of our Democracy activists in two jury trials.

The District's long-time fight for Democracy requires more than voting representation in Congress: it means budgetary autonomy, and legislative autonomy to end this obscene appropriations process, and congressional review of our laws. Without continued local activism and support from our allies, the confederate flag waving members of Congress will continue to impose their ultra-right wing agenda on the District, targeting our most vulnerable residents: poor women, minorities, Gays, people with HIV/AIDS, and the terminally ill.

D.C. Democracy is, if anything, a health issue. Men, women, and children in the District are becoming infected with a deadly virus because Congress blocks a proven HIV prevention program. Our loved ones bravely fighting terminal illness are denied access to a medication that could ease their suffering, while Bob Barr glowers in victory. After inflicting so much damage, these members of Congress return to their homes in Texas, Georgia, Oklahoma and elsewhere, leaving us, the residents of the District of Columbia, to comfort the sick, and bury our dead.

Wayne Turner is a co-founder of ACT UP/D.C., www.actupdc.org, and active in the Stand Up For Democracy in D.C. Coalition

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