Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1918-12-11
District Legislative Needs.

ton bill with a provision for a slid
ing scale meeting of District expenses,
without warning and without investi-
CATION, the House committee suggests
in effect that there is urgent need of
haste to overturn the fundamental
principle of the organic act. There is,
however, no such urgency for the re-
peal of the half -and-half provision.
The joint committee which investi-
gated the whole question short time
ago found this provision unnecessary,
because, first, the population and tax
able resources of the District have so
increased that it can put up its half
without compulsion; and because, sec
ond, the national holdings in Wash
ington and the national pride in the
nations capital city have so increased
that the nation does not need to prom
Use in order to do more than it is now
doing for capital upbuilding. But the
joint committee also found that the
half -and-half provision is fair and does
not require the doing by any one of
anything which ought not to be done
voluntarily. if the legal requirement of
this provision ceased to exist. It's con-
tinued existence, until all the equities
to be affected by its death have been
safeguarded, can consequently harm no
one, and the necessity for hasty and
inconsiderate repeal of this fair and
wise law disappears.
The immediate legislation urgently
needed by Washington was disclosed
in the hearings before the joint COM
mittee CD The law arbitrarily limit
ing the Commissioners annual esti
mates should be quickly repealed. It
is desired and approved or defended
by nobody. 1t prohibits the state
ment by the Comm ssioners and the
satisfaction by Congress of the actual
needs of the District. 1t prevents the
nation, inevitably, from meeting fully
its capital obligation. 1t automatically
insures an unexpendcd surplus of Dis
trict tax-money. 1t aceomplishes, as
Congress applies it. no good purpose
whatsoever. The Commissioners es-
Inmates, in accordance with the spirit
of the joint committees report, should
disnlose to Congress Washington's
genuine municipal needs. both for cur
rent maintenance and for permanent
improvements; and the responsibility
for appropriating all or only part of
these estimates should Gas it does) rest
solely on Congress.
(2) The effect of the report of the
joint committee was to vindicate in
principle the treatment of the half
and-half provision as not necessarily
applying arbitrarily and separately to
each year, considered alone, but to the
average Of series of years. The joint
committee pointed out that District
expenditures since 1878 have been in
the aggregate, though not in every
year viewed separately, on the half
and half basis. The committee ex-
pressed the belief that this fact is evil
dence of design, not an accident, and
that the nation thus not only intended
to carry out, but did carry out, its
half-and-half promise.
Under the present practice which
puts local taxation before congress
sional appropriation the half-and-half
provision is not and cannot be arbi-
trarily enforced and literally obeyed
in any one year. But in the long run,
in the future as in the past, this pro-
vision can be enforced and obeyed.
Why not 60 ahead in the future in
general conformity with this practice,
thus indicated in principle by the
joint committee! The only legislation
necessary will be provision to put
the surplus of District tax money in
any year into the Treasury, not as
miscellaneous receipts, to be merged
with national money and lost to the
District, but, as the joint committees
report described it, as "a trust fund
for the benefit of the District of Co.
lumbia to be expended in
the government of the District of Co.
lumbia and for no other purpose"
Repeal of the law limiting the Com
missioners' estimates will permit Con-
gress to consider in appropriations the
full needs of the District, and the sur
plus in any year of unexpended Dis
trict tax money will thus be reduced to
q minimum. But any SURPRISES, even
though large, which under the proposed
legislation will 60 into the Districts
trust fund will clearly be needed in
tho future Is . reserve fund ~ to pay
District Indebtedness, fictitious or gen.
uine; including the alleged ancient
rcsurrected debts. based on the blum
ders or negleets of government officials
in the seventies of the last century,
which have been conjured up in the
House and which stalk abroad in their