D.C. Statehood Senator Michael D. Brown presented his Pop Quiz on D.C. Politics 101 to the Federation delegates. The quiz was that was developed for a breakout session on D.C. politics at the National Council for the Social Studies' conference which was held in Atlanta last November. Unlike the social studies teachers, Federation delegates scored well on the quiz.

The delegates heard from three experts on different aspects of the statehood issues. Lawrence Mirel, founder of the Committee for a Capital City, and former Counsel to the D.C. Council and former Commissioner of the D.C. Department of Insurance, Securities and Banking, discussed several variations on retrocession to the State of Maryland.  Mr. Mirel  supported all approaches to giving District residents equal representation in Congress, but felt that  politically retrocession might be easier to achieve than statehood.  He suggested a form of "retrocession light" that would give us voting representation in the House and a vote for Maryland's senators, but not really make us part of the state of Maryland, as the entire District would remain a federal enclave, so we would have no vote for governor or for the Maryland legislature.  Unlike full statehood, D.C. would still be a colony. He agreed with Mr. Barnes that the pending legislation to give D.C.'s delegate a vote in the House would likely be challenged constitutionally.

Johnny Barnes, Executive Director of the ACLU for the National Capital  and a former legislative aide to D.C.'s former Delegate Walter Fauntroy, made the case to admit D.C. as the 51st state.  He disagreed with Mr. Mirel on the political likelihood of getting Congress to admit D.C. as a state, recounting his successful efforts in the 1970's to get two thirds of both the Senate and the House to approve a constitutional amendment giving D.C. full representation in both the House and Senate and full, unrestricted representation in the electoral college. In that effort the bill received the support of both Republicans and Democrats, including votes in favor from Senators Goldwater, Baker, Thurmond, and Dole.  He also discussed the financial impacts of statehood and how statehood would benefit D.C. by removing the many limitations on our taxing authority and ability to budget and manage our own funds.  He noted that the bonding agencies penalize D.C. in their ratings for the lack of stability in our funding due to Congressional review requirements and the unusually long time period required to approve the D.C. appropriations bill (18 months). Mr. Barnes will soon be publishing a law review article on statehood in the UDC law review.

Timothy Cooper, of Worldrights, is an international and D.C. voting rights activist who has protested the colonial status of DC before the U.N. Human Rights Commission, the Organization of American States and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. Mr. Cooper discussed the efforts he has made to bring our lack of representation in our national legislature before various human rights organizations around the world.  The United States is unique in denying the citizens of its national capital representation in their national legislature.  He also discussed a law review article he writing that will deal with the legal theory of having the District Government sue the legislatures of the 50 states under customary international law and bring the case directly before the Supreme Court.  [Articles concerning his efforts before these international agencies can be found on this website.]