Congresswoman Eleanor Norton

Norton Sees Few Losses, Surprising Gains in 2011 and Optimistic Predictions for 2012

Washington, DC – Although the first session of the 112th Congress ended without passage of any major or memorable national legislation, the intensity of its mostly failed campaign against the democratic prerogatives of a local jurisdiction, the District of Columbia, will not soon be forgotten. Moreover, federal spending cuts, the dominant issue of the session, will register in federal programs here as elsewhere, but Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) secured funding for the city’s top priorities in jobs, economic development and education. Judged by the unprecedented local focus of the House Republican majority on overturning local D.C. laws, coupled with its national fixation on cutting federal programs, the District ended the first session of the 112th Congress in surprisingly good shape. The Congresswoman will pursue an ambitious agenda in the second session.

Throughout this unprecedented year, dominated by House Tea Party Republicans, both the city’s home rule and every District funding priority were at risk. The first act of the House Republicans in the 112th Congress, eliminating the District’s vote in the Committee of the Whole, portended a year of attacks on D.C. democracy, but with little yield at year’s end. The relentless attacks only increased the determination of Norton, city officials and D.C. residents to fight back. In the end, despite a House bill to eliminate the District’s gun safety laws, sponsored by 160 members, a promise by the chair of the 170-member Republican Study Committee to overturn the city’s marriage equality law, and two attempts to re-impose the D.C. needle exchange ban, House Republicans were able to add only one D.C. prohibition. The ban on local D.C. funds for abortion services for low-income women, re-imposed in fiscal years 2011 and 2012, was a heartbreaking blow, but it was not nearly as harmful as making the abortion rider permanent, as H.R. 3 provided. Norton’s goal in 2012 is to take the next steps with Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA), whose surprising budget autonomy bill could end anti-home-rule riders.

The District’s Top Priorities Funded

As with the anti-home-rule attachments, Norton prevented House Republicans from gutting District funding priorities. Instead of the House’s proposed means testing for the D.C. Tuition Assistance Grant (DCTAG) program, which would have virtually destroyed the program, Congress fully funded DCTAG, which has doubled college attendance here and helped staunch population loss. Instead of defunding the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) headquarters construction in Ward 8, as the House did, Congress funded it, ensuring completion of the Coast Guard headquarters and its occupancy in 2013. Instead of rejecting the $5 million in President Obama’s budget for HIV/AIDS prevention in the District, as the House did, Congress provided the funding.

A Good Economic Development Year

Norton, a senior member of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee and the ranking member of its economic development subcommittee, had a long list of economic development priorities that went well beyond simply renewing the funding she had secured in the past. She got another big development bill, her Southwest Waterfront Redevelopment bill, through the House and ready for the Senate floor in quick succession in December, and expects Senate passage in early 2012. This 2.5 million square foot mixed-use project will create a new community on the Southwest Waterfront, matching the mixed-use Yards development, also made possible by a Norton law, which continues to transform the Southeast waterfront.

Norton’s goal for the seven federal American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, or stimulus bill, projects under her subcommittee jurisdiction and scheduled for major work in D.C. in 2012 is to match or improve upon the 2011 record of the DHS headquarters, where 25 percent of the workers were D.C. residents, including 20 percent from Ward 8, and 53 D.C. small businesses, including 22 from Ward 8, won contracts. Federal law prohibits hiring set-asides for local jurisdictions on federal projects, but Norton’s vigorous outreach and oversight produced a record number of jobs and contracts for D.C. residents and businesses at DHS.

The Congresswoman’s ambitious plan to transform Union Station into a first-class intermodal transportation center brought the first major transportation change there since its reopening in 1988, with the launch of a Union Station bus station providing intercity bus service, now with five companies. Norton’s goal for 2012 is completion of the Columbus Circle renovation surrounding Union Station, followed in the coming years by revitalized retail space, expanded commuter rail service and Amtrak waiting areas, and ultimately Burnham Place, a mixed-use development over the rail tracks. To ensure that all the moving pieces work together smoothly and that Union Station, an engine for the local economy, is well managed and financed, Norton introduced legislation requiring the first independent audit of its management and finances. However, because Congress passed few bills during the first session, Norton has written directly to the Department of Transportation Inspector General to request that this audit is completed in 2012.

Next year, two other critical Norton economic development projects will become visible. A request for proposals, required by a Norton bill, to redevelop the Old Post Office Pavilion on Pennsylvania Avenue, one of the premier historic properties in the country, was issued this year, and a developer will be selected in 2012. This year, Norton also pressed for federal environmental remediation of the Walter Reed property, in Ward 4, to ensure that her goal of transferring this federal property to the District in 2012 is met.

In 2012, Norton expects the first significant progress toward reopening the South Capitol Street Heliport in the District, the only jurisdiction where private helicopter service has been suspended since 9/11. This year, Norton for the first time found federal agencies willing to work with her on her 10-year mission to end the suspension of helicopter service, which has hurt the city’s economy.

The financial problems of the U.S. Postal Service this year put saving post office service and jobs in D.C. on Norton’s economic development agenda. Her 2012 goal is to add to the eight post offices removed this year from the list of 19 District post offices up for possible closure, so that no District post offices are closed, as she succeeded in achieving two years ago. Norton is a senior member of the subcommittee of jurisdiction.

To aid the District’s tourism economy and the environment here, Norton pressed for green, multimodal transportation around the National Mall and for public meetings on a new Mall transportation plan. Norton’s Parks Town Meeting with National Park Service (NPS) leaders produced a new commitment from NPS, which owns most of the parks here, to be more flexible and responsive to neighborhoods. Shortly after the meeting, NPS proposed five Capital Bikeshare stations on the Mall, reversing its earlier opposition.

The Congresswoman broke ground on another office building in NoMa, a new mixed-used community that Norton’s leadership sparked by bringing federal agencies and the New York Avenue subway to the area between Massachusetts and New York Avenues.

Norton, who fought hard in the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee for the stimulus dollars that funded the DHS construction and many other D.C. projects, continued to attend groundbreakings, undermining the Republican claim that the stimulus bill failed to save or create jobs. Among the completed or ongoing stimulus-bill funded projects here are the rehabilitation of more than a dozen federal buildings, completion of the first phase of the 11th Street Bridge construction, Unity Health Care’s Upper Cardozo Health Center, multifamily housing at Sheridan Station, 6.5 lane miles of Pennsylvania Avenue, and many others. Norton also got another $68 million installment for a new South Capitol Street Bridge, a request she makes annually for this expensive construction.  

Odds-Defying Year Encourages an Active D.C. Agenda Next Year

Norton expects that the second session will be as contentious as the first, leaving intact the “do-nothing Congress” moniker Congress earned in 2011. Nevertheless, the failure of House Republicans to re-impose several anti-home-rule bans, as had been feared, as well as passage and funding of her D.C. jobs, economic development, and education priorities, makes Norton optimistic about the District’s prospects in Congress next year.  

Norton kept her home-rule agenda at the forefront even as the first session lived up to predictions that this Congress would be hostile to D.C. self-governance and to its funding priorities. The District’s unprecedented civil disobedience in April in response to the 2011 spending deal helped Norton fight off all but one anti-home-rule ban, but moving her statehood or voting rights bills was not possible in the Republican-controlled House. Nevertheless, to keep these issues alive in the Congress and in the District, Norton introduced three bills residents have supported in the past and have indicated they still support – for statehood, for votes in the House and Senate, and for a House vote. She spoke at the reopening of the rehabilitated D.C. World War I Memorial, and was able to keep bills from moving in the House and Senate to rededicate the memorial to all World War I veterans, even though it was built for D.C. veterans with funds from D.C. residents. The most important manifestation of the city’s equality with other jurisdictions was the confirmation of two federal district court judges here, the U.S. Marshal for the Superior Court, and the director of the D.C. Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency, all recommended by Norton, with the assistance of residents, to the president, who has granted her senatorial courtesy.

Congress forced three needless, serious shutdown threats on the District government over federal spending fights, but ended the year with a Republican bill that would eliminate District shutdowns. Issa introduced a budget autonomy bill, which mirrored much of Norton’s pending bill, bringing the District the closest it has ever been to budget autonomy. Impressed by a hearing that showed the District’s finances to be in good shape, but marked down by Wall Street because of entanglement with the congressional budget process and set back by the opening of D.C. schools before the start of the fiscal year, Issa pledged to press for budget autonomy “until it becomes law.” Issa’s determined pledge recalls the efforts of former Representative Tom Davis (R-VA), an Issa mentor, who chaired the same committee and whose leadership was vital to the efforts that almost secured D.C. its first House vote. Issa’s production of an actual bill this year encourages Norton to believe that budget autonomy could come next year.

The Congresswoman believes that 2012 will be an even better year for economic development than 2011, when action on her top economic development priorities – the Southwest Waterfront bill and funding for new DHS construction – were initially regarded as unlikely. She is now working in committee on the new surface transportation bill, which many believe will be passed in an election year. Another top 2012 economic priority, her D.C. tax incentives, including the $5,000 homebuyer tax credit and $3,000 wage and business credits, are part of a larger tax incentive package that she and her allies also believe can pass in 2012. Her bill to provide a new income stream for D.C. by making catastrophic insurance reserves held here tax-exempt is scheduled for a bipartisan congressional briefing in 2012.

Despite its well-deserved rock-bottom national rating, when it came to the District, the first session of the 112th Congress did little more harm than in past sessions, and a fair amount of economic good. Norton, who enters the second session as a senior member of the House and of two committees vital to the District, said she long ago shifted her focus from the many obstacles the District inevitably meets in Congress to strategies for overcoming them.