Word: statehooder
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...Statehood proponents argue that the Amendment may not be the best method. "With the Voting Rights Amendment, we only get representation in Congress," Hilda Mason, city council member and chairman of the Statehood Initiative Committee, says. "With statehood, we get this and local autonomy," she adds...
...Statehood proponents say their plan includes a crucial feature. "A state has complete home rule rights," Allen Grip, a spokesman for Mayor Marion S. Barry Jr., explains. Currently, Congress holds a legislative veto over District laws, controlling D.C's budget and judicial process, including the appointment of judges. The District, moreover, has no voting representatives on Capitol Hill. "No one that is in favor of home rule," Grip says, "could be against the initiative...
...some District leaders don't fully agree. "There is no evidence that Congress will grant D.C. statehood," Eldridge Spearman, press aide to Rep. William E. Fauntroy (D-D.C.), a nonvoting delegate who helped author the Voting Rights Amendment, contends. "In fact, all indications are that Congress would reject it. Congress would not relinquish the authority it has had over D.C.," he adds...
Barry's spokesman agrees, saying that under the Amendment, Congress still controls the District. Because statehood would not have to go through the state legislatures, moreover, it is an easier process. "There is no constitutional provision for unstating a state, but Congress can take away home rule any time," Mason says...
Proponents also argue that if Congress was sincere when it approved the Voting Rights Amendment two years ago, it will support statehood. Yet opponents of the initiative such as Fauntroy and the District chapter of the League of Women Voters, point out that it took Alaska and Hawaii 50 years to obtain statehood. They note that those two states, one Democratic and one Republican, balanced each other politically; the heavily Black District, on the other hand, would be an overwhelmingly Democratic state. For that reason alone, Congressional conservatives might oppose the measure...