BUDGET REQUIREMENTS OF THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA WEDNESDAY, MARCH 26, 1947 JOINT SUBCOMMITTE ON FISCAL AFFAIRS OF THE UNITED STATES SENATE, Washington. D. C. The joint subcommittee met at 10: 05 a. m., pursuant to adjournment, in the Senate District Committee Room, the Capitol, Washington, D. C., Senator Harry P. Cain (chairman of the joint subcommittee) presiding. Present: Senator Cain, Representatives Bates (cochairman of the joint subcommittee), and Klein. Present also: Parker L. Jackson, Special Adviser to the House Committee on the District of Columbia. Senator CAIN. Come to order, please, gentlemen. Mr. Bates has returned to act as cochairman with me, representing the House, on their fiscal subcommittee of the District Committee. We are privileged to have with us this morning, Mr. Walt Horan, who is chairman of the Fiscal Subcommittee of the District of Columbia Appropriations Committee of the House. He, through Mr. Booch, has been cooperating since the hearings began, for Mr. Booch has been with us every day, and we are delighted to have Mr. Horan this morning, and I think, Walt, you would like to make some comments prior to the time we begin. Mr. HORAN. Yes, I would. Senator CAIN. Would you be kind enough to come over and sit on this side of the table so that you may be seen by those who are here. STATEMENT OF HON. WALT HORAN, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF WASHINGTON Mr. HORAN. Mr. Chairman, I have naturally been following your proceedings over here with a great deal of interest. I am very proud of the Nation's capital and want it adequately treated. I said in a news release last Sunday that I felt that a Federal budget of $100,000,000 or $200,000,000 for the Nation's capital running expenses was not out of order. I see here a statement on school teachers' salaries which, I think, are subject to adjustment. I have to drive through the District on my way to the Capitol every morning and I know that Engineer Commissioner Gordon Young's plans for the District have a good deal of merit in them. 99538-47--18 But I do not think that merely pulling a Jimmy Valentine on the Federal Treasury is the solution. I think that is a lazy man's approach to solving the problems of the District. We could give you $50,000,000 out of the Federal Treasury and it would not solve anything unless certain fundamental corrections are made first. Personally, I would like to vote for home rule for the District, but I do not think the District is ready for citizenship under the indeterminate political pattern existing. I do not think there is enough feeling of responsibility on the part of the people that live in the District of Columbia. I mean it. I think we have a conglomeration of authorities and prerogatives and conflicts here that have got to be looked at realistically and solved before we can have the kind of government we should have. In spite of what the Assessor said, I do not think property taxes are high enough. I do not think there is enough responsibility felt in the spending of money. I want to cite a little incident. It is very, very small, but it will illustrate what I mean. Several weeks ago we considered a deficiency appropriation. Among other things, there was an item for $3,500, to replace a floor in a sea food restaurant down on the wharf upon which the District collects rentals. The item was for $3,500, and, having had some experience in that sort of thing, I questioned the item immediately. I took a member of the Architect of the Capitol's staff with me down to the restaurant and looked at it. Following that, I asked the responsible member of the District government to send me a sketch of that restaurant so that we could figure out what a floor for that restaurant should cost, with a drain, so that it would pass the Health Department's specifications. When I called up the responsible office in the District government he did not have a sketch, and yet they had come up here and asked for a deficiency of $3,500. They did draw one, and I sent it down to the Architect of the Capitol and got a letter back from him stating that for $1,425 a 34-inch magnesite flooring could be laid in that district, and for $270 additional a coping around the edges could be laid, for a total cost of $1,695 to replace the floor in this property out of which the District government gets $1,800 a year rental. At my urging that item was allowed in the deficiency appropriation which we wrote up last Saturday morning. It was allowed with a provision that the history of the rentals of that property be reviewed. And the total cost of renovation of that property that had been done by the lessee should be listed, looking toward a readjustment of rentals on that and what other the District owns and collects rent. I think that should be done throughout the District. I think the solution of the District's problem, and I mean this, because I did read this little pamphlet here listing some of the teachers' problems as put out by the Superintendent of Schools, and I am sympathetic; I think these solutions will have to be had because it is going to cost more to run the District government. I think the lay-out of the District, as I have already indicated, may have been fine when L'Enfant, or whoever it was who laid out this town, planned Washington, but I think the age of the atomic bomb rules out the barricading circles, and so forth, which congests our traffic in some respects. So if we are going to look forward to the things the District needs we have got to do two things. First, we have got to have a responsible government. I want to read for the record right here something that perhaps is only tangent, but here is a list of a few of the parts of the District government that are not even under the Commissioners, according to my understanding, and yet they are part of the District budget. The Washington Aqueduct. National Guard, which functions here. National Capital Parks, as we all know. The National Capital Park and Planning Commission. National Zoological Park. Register of Wills and Recorder of Deeds. We talk about a responsible District government, and yet we do not give them control over the very things that make up at least a portion of the District life. I think some pattern has got to be had here, perhaps with reservations, if we have to salve the arrogance and the pride of some of the subdivisions of government that we find here, but I think some pattern has got to be had so that somebody in the District government is absolutely responsible. Somebody should have checked on that $3,500 item, small as it is, and yet nobody did. Suppose that we allowed it. Presumably, $1,700 would have been covered back into the Treasury by the District, but the District would have been charged with appropriating more than they had to. Secondly, I think we are going to have to have more property taxes here in the District, and I am happy to see this committee going into that. By property taxes, that is not going to solve the thing, when about only 88,000 people, as I understand it, out of a total population of nine-hundred-some-thousand in the District pay property taxes.. Mr. FOWLER. Income taxes. Mr. HORAN. How many pay property taxes? Mr. FOWLER. About 150,000 parcels and lots and you can figure a little over 100,000 people are paying real-estate taxes. Mr. HORAN. I do not think an income tax is going to work here in the District. You have got one, but it is not adequate. I do not see how you are going to escape a sales tax in the name of justice. I do not call it iniquitous. It is equitable in that all pay. I think people should pay their way. They do not ride free on the streetcars and I do not think they should ride free on the District govern ment. I do not know how we are going to have that $200,000,000 budget that you might need in the future without some people here paying their pro rata share and not merely looking to the Federal Budget, with a national debt of $260,000,000,000 at the time when it, alone, of all the four subdivisions of our National Government is in debt. Bearing in mind that we have Federal Government and State govern ment and municipal government, then we have county or township or district government, they are all three listed in purely local governments of those four, the one that is in debt is the Federal Government and the Federal Treasury is its weakest point. And, as I said in opening, merely looking at the Federal contribution is not the solution nor would it be the solution if we were to in But I do not think that merely pulling a Jimmy Valentine on the Federal Treasury is the solution. I think that is a lazy man's approach to solving the problems of the District. We could give you $50,000,000 out of the Federal Treasury and it would not solve anything unless certain fundamental corrections are made first. Personally, I would like to vote for home rule for the District, but I do not think the District is ready for citizenship under the indeterminate political pattern existing. I do not think there is enough feeling of responsibility on the part of the people that live in the District of Columbia. I mean it. I think we have a conglomeration of authorities and prerogatives and conflicts here that have got to be looked at realistically and solved before we can have the kind of government we should have. In spite of what the Assessor said, I do not think property taxes are high enough. I do not think there is enough responsibility felt in the spending of money. I want to cite a little incident. It is very, very small, but it will illustrate what I mean. Several weeks ago we considered a deficiency appropriation. Among other things, there was an item for $3,500, to replace a floor in a sea food restaurant down on the wharf upon which the District collects rentals. The item was for $3,500, and, having had some experience in that sort of thing, I questioned the item immediately. I took a member of the Architect of the Capitol's staff with me down to the restaurant and looked at it. Following that, I asked the responsible member of the District government to send me a sketch of that restaurant so that we could figure out what a floor for that restaurant should cost, with a drain, so that it would pass the Health Department's specifications. When I called up the responsible office in the District government he did not have a sketch, and yet they had come up here and asked for a deficiency of $3,500. They did draw one, and I sent it down to the Architect of the Capitol and got a letter back from him stating that for $1,425 a 34-inch magnesite flooring could be laid in that district, and for $270 additional a coping around the edges could be laid, for a total cost of $1,695 to replace the floor in this property out of which the District government gets $1,800 a year rental. At my urging that item was allowed in the deficiency appropriation which we wrote up last Saturday morning. It was allowed with a provision that the history of the rentals of that property be reviewed. And the total cost of renovation of that property that had been done by the lessee should be listed, looking toward a readjustment of rentals on that and what other the District owns and collects rent. I think that should be done throughout the District. I think the solution of the District's problem, and I mean this, because I did read this little pamphlet here listing some of the teachers' problems as put out by the Superintendent of Schools, and I am sympathetic; I think these solutions will have to be had because it is going to cost more to run the District government. I think the lay-out of the District, as I have already indicated, may have been fine when L'Enfant, or whoever it was who laid out this town, planned Washington, but I think the age of the atomic bomb. |