The observation I want to make here is one that has brought a great deal of amazement to me and all of us who have participated in this struggle for the right to vote in the District of Columbia for the past decade or more. The 1960 Census showed there were 840-odd thousand people living in the District of Columbia, and it is estimated today the population has risen to close to approximately one million. The people who live here have the same desires and aspirations as the people who live in Pennsylvania, California, South Carolina, Virginia, or any other place among the great cities of this country. We want the right to vote and we would like to have the right of the franchise. The District of Columbia being the democratic capital of the world, we think the President of the United States has been handicapped because a large portion of his time is spent explaining to the heads of foreign governments who come here why the people in the Capital of the United States cannot use the franchise to vote as they do in all the other capitals of the world. It has been an amazement to us why the District Committee has been the graveyard of the right to vote in the District of Columbia; why the United States Senate, the great, august body has passed a bill giving the citizens of the District of Columbia the right to vote six times without equivocation, without hesitation, and every time the bill leaves the Senate it comes here and dies in this committee-five times, and one time the Sisk bill was substituted. When the Muse of History writes the story of the struggle to get the vote in the District of Columbia for its citizens, this will be one of the questions that the historians will want answered: Why did the House of Representatives refuse to allow the people in the District of Columbia the right to the ballot when the Senate always gave its consent? There used to be the oldtime bugaboo questions, that we won't pass the bill because of the ethnic background of the people who live here, the large number of Negroes and the large number of religious people who live in the District. These two questions were used as means of killing the bill. Now it has Mr. MCMILLAN. Just a minute. I was a member of this committee 30 years ago, and at that time the population of the District of Columbia was just about 10 percent colored. Today it is much more than that. I was just as much against local government at that time as I am today because the Constitution, in my thinking, forbids having local government here. It gives the Congress of the United States the exclusive jurisdiction over all legislation. Mr. THORNTON. Mr. McMillan, I assume you have only one vote in the House, and there are 435 Members in the House of Representatives. Mr. MCMILLAN. I was giving my opinion. Mr. THORNTON. I accept your explanation. But there are 435 Members in the House of Representatives, and we want somebody to tell us-we think we have the right to know from this committee and from the House of Representatives why it is that we are not allowed to get a bill out of this committee establishing the right of the franchise in the District of Columbia. The President's Reorganization Plan No. 3 is here for one reason and one reason only, according to our information that we got from the White House, and that reason is that there cannot be gotten out of this committee a bill establishing the right to vote. So, the President submitted this plan in order to streamline the government that has been in effect here since 1874, about 8 or 9 years after the death of Abraham Lincoln, while Andrew Johnson was in office. The District Committee wants to hold onto this type of relic of government for the District of Columbia. Everything else has changed except the government of the District of Columbia. This is why the reorganization plan was submitted in the first instance. This is the reason we submitted it. The people in the District of Columbia support it because we do not believe we can get a bill out of this committee. I think it is a matter of record that there is no enlargement of powers given to a single Commissioner under the President's plan. There is no enlargement of powers given to a 9-man council appointed by the President. The Congress and this committee has control of all the money, all of the legislation. The President has the right of veto. The one-man Commission and 9-man Council have the same authority as the 3-man Commission has, except that it would be speedier and act more efficiently. This is the reason we support the reorganization plan. Our government over here is about to fall apart. Gentlemen, something will have to be done about it. We live here in the District of Columbia, the Capital of our Nation, and we are proud of it and we love this city as much as anyone else. We hope that you would please give us the chance to have an effective, fast-moving government. You cannot do it by having a 3-headed government. This is archaic. This is a relic of the past. We must have a mayor and a 9-man city council established the same as the 2000 other cities across the country have established in your States, in the North as well as the South of this country. We deserve the same right to have it here and to have it elected by the people. Mr. MCMILLAN. Does that conclude your statement? Mr. CARLINER. That completes my statement, Mr. Chairman. If any members of the committee have any questions, we would be glad to try to answer them. Mr. MCMILLAN. Are there any questions? Mr. FRASER, I would just like to inquire, Mr. Carliner, about the Executive Manager function under the three Commissioners. You touched on it. Is it your view that this cannot be made into a sufficiently unified decision-making arrangement so we will continue to have some of the problems of the past? Mr. CARLINER. Mr. Fraser, the bill by Mr. McMillan and Mr. Nelsen provides that the could be centralized responsibility and authority, because under the terms of H.R. 11872 the Manager shall be subject to the supervision of the Board of Commissioners. If the Board of Commissioners is to supervise the function of this person, he will constantly be having to look over his shoulder to see whether they approve or do not approve what he is doing. At the present time the Board of Commissioners distributes its functions among three Commissioners. As you know, one Commissioner is in charge generally of police and fire matters, another Commissioner is in charge of welfare, health, and education matters, and the third Commissioner is in charge of highway, engineering, building, and that type of matter. 80-903-67—15 The bill by Mr. McMillan and Mr. Nelsen does not specify whether the individual Commissioners will continue to have individual responsibilities for these areas. Mr. FRASER. What about the proposal to have a School Board made up of members who are elected from the wards? One bill provides 15 and the other 9. The concept is to have essentially ward representation on the School Board. Do you have any views about that as contrasted with the possibility of election or a combination? Mr. CARLINER. No, Mr. Fraser, I do not. Our organizations have as a group no position on it. I know some of the organizations which are included in our body have one view on the kind of Board of Education there should be, and some have others. In my role here as cochairman of the committee representing all those organizations, it would be inappropriate for me to give any views as to the kind of Board of Education there should be. All I would like to do is to emphasize that this particular problem has no relevance to the kind of government which we should have in the District Building. Whether we have an elected or nonelected Board of Education, or whether it has 15 members or 9 members, or whether chosen by wards or the city as a whole, will not meet the problem. Whatever the reasons may be for including it in a package bill dealing with the reorganization plan, I am not able to speculate upon. Some people have attributed, as Mr. Broyhill has indicated, invidious motives to the sponsors of it. I do not associate myself with judging the motives of persons who introduce legislation. All I can say is that it is not relevant to the reorganization, and it seems to me this committee, since it is operating under something of a deadline, could just as easily consider the Board of Education after August 11 as it can now. Mr. FRASER. That may me, but in reorganizing the city government, the question of whether those who exercise any authority are to be elected or appointed is a relevant consideration. If this bill becomes law, I personally would like to see an enlargement of the right of the people to have some hand in the decisions which are made, and the School Board is one such area. I am only saying this bill has a rocky road ahead, having to go through the Senate, and it seems to me the way the School Board is composed is of interest. I recognize its powers are not enlarged or diminished. The present School Board, obviously, has substantial power over educational policy in the District. I know they have limited authority, practically no authority, in the fiscal area. If you have some views on those questions, I would very much appreciate receiving them. Mr. CARLINER. I do agree with you the Board of Education has substantial powers over the educational policy of the District of Columbia, and this has been emphasized and underscored and demonstrated by the events of the last few months. I personally would agree with you, also, that that Board is better to be elected rather than to be appointed. I have said I would be glad if this committee and the Congress were to give up the right to be dogcatcher if only for symbolic reasons, and I would certainly favor the election of any responsible governmental agency, and I think the Board of Education is one. However, if you elect the Board of Education, this is only one of our concerns. We are concerned with adequate housing for the District of Columbia. We are concerned with welfare and police. I do not know whether we should fragment all of these things. Mr. FRASER. The School Board should be elected, whether at large, by wards, or by combination. Those kinds of questions are relevant to that provision, even though it obviously does not go as far as you and I would like. Mr. CARLINER. I would suggest there is no compelling urgency as to time on this. Under the bills which have been introduced, the Board of Education would not be elected until November 1968. They would not take office until 1969. There are organizations which have studied this. One of our supporting organizations, the District of Columbia Citizens for Better Education, I know have made an intensive study of the question whether there should be an elected Board of Education. The D.C. Congress of Parents and Teachers has also been concerned with this problem. Mr. FRASER. Maybe we should get their views on this question. Mr. CARLINER. I think it would be, frankly, a more fitting legislative function to have separate hearings on this particular problem, not necessarily at a leisurely pace, but at a time when the District Committee is not under pressure to report out a bill to be an alternative to the reorganization plan. Mr. FRASER. Thank you. Mr. MCMILLAN. Mr. Jacobs? Mr. JACOBS. Mr. Carliner, I would like to take a minute to see if I get the meaning of your testimony before this committee. Would it be fair to interpert your testimony as saying that throughout the organizational life of our country, whether it is the Lions Club or the organization of the Federal Government or the city, State or county government in between, the individual executive with responsibility and authority and power to act on executive decisions without veto except through the ballot box or the end of the term, has proved to be the most efficient form of executive, and that there is nothing peculiar about your hometown or the Federal Government interest in your hometown that would make that kind of efficiency undesirable? Is that a fair summation? Mr. CARLINER. That is a very effective summation, Mr. Jacobs. Mr. JACOBS. I have no further questions. I thank the gentlemen for appearing. You have presented very eloquent testimony. Mr. MCMILLAN. Mr. Adams, have you any questions? Mr. ADAMS. I do not have any questions. I would like to thank the gentleman. I was very much interested in his statement. Mr. MCMILLAN. Mr. Winn? Mr. WINN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Carliner, I would like to ask one question. I got the idea from your statement that if the President's reorganization plan were adopted, you felt this would cure the crime problem in Washington, D.C. Mr. CARLINER. No, Mr. Winn, I wouldn't pretend that any simple reorganization of the Government could cure the crime problem, but if the reorganization plan were adopted with specific regard to the problem of the treatment of alcoholics Mr. WINN. With regard to the treatment of alcoholics, another subcommittee is currently considering a very broad and generous bill designed to meet this problem. Subcommittee number 3 has recently completed hearings on a very positive bill, H.R. 6143. Mr. CARLINER. This is part of the crime problem. The alcoholic has been treated as part of the crime problem. There could be centralized responsibility in the office of the Commissioner who would be the executive head of the District of Columbia, and he, without having to divide his administrative responsibilities in three different areas, could make everyone under him accountable to him for the development of a plan to deal with alcoholics. With regard to the problem of crime, I must defer to a better authority than I. As you undoubtedly are aware, the Police Chief of the District of Columbia, Chief Layton, has specifically endorsed the reorganization plan because, in his opinion, as he has stated, it provides for a more efficient government in terms of getting decisions and eliminating problems. I do not wish to belabor the issue, but there is a problem affecting the matter of the treatment of arrests in the District of Columbia, whether the arrest records, which are records of the Police Department, should be treated as privileged and confidential or whether they should be used to be distributed to employers in the city. The matter has been before the Board of Commissioners for more than a year, of the inability of people who have had arrests but not convictions I wish to emphasize if a person has been convicted, there is a judicial record as a matter of public notice, and if a man has been convicted of larceny, burglary, murder, or rape, obviously he has been judged by a court to be guilty of the offense, and we are entitled to know it, because you don't want to hire a rapist to be a janitor in an apartment building or an embezzler to be a teller in a bank. A person who has been arrested and has had no conviction has not been proved guilty of anything. Nonetheless, one of the critical social problems in Washington is that many persons who have been arrested cannot get jobs because of their arrest records. This is a Police Department problem. It is a Commissioner problem because of the responsibility they have, because of the control they have over the Corporation Counsel. Yet, in a period of more than a year, there has been no definitive solution of this problem, although the U.S. Employment Service is concerned about it and the welfare agencies are concerned about it, because the man who is arrested and cannot get a job becomes a candidate for welfare support. Mr. WINN. You are talking about a bookkeeping system, are you not, not the fact whether there is to be a reorganization accomplished through two or three types of reorganization bills? Mr. CARLINER. No, sir, it is not bookeeping. It is a question of where the responsibility lies. The responsibility is now fragmented between three Commissioners. The bills which have been proposed by the chairman of this committee and by Mr. Brown still retain the three Commissioners as having responsibility, and they give them not only responsibility for the legislative role, but responsibility for the executive role. |