By avoiding reference to a fair federal payment, the three plans lack the necessary moral or economic justice dimension required by a definitive solution to the present crisis. When this issue is not addressed and resolved, the federal inclination to micro-manage District affairs is unrestrained. Although creatures of recent Congressional legislation, neither the Control Board nor the Chief Financial Officer have a clear sense of their boundaries in the law. Chaotic and shifting assertions of legislative authority have characterized their actions in the District. Clarifying instructions from Congress have not been forthcoming.
Governance is therefore another key to the resolution of the current crisis.
Currently, no definitive solution can be fashioned with discrete assignments of federal and local responsibilities that may not be repealed or discontinued at the whim of Congress. Confronting us are more than budgetary challenges. To date, only statehood has been proposed as a solution to the combination of budgetary and governance deficiencies found in the District's precarious fiscal and political condition.