Word: districts
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...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...
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...
...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...
...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...