Responding to a persistently high unemployment rate and vanishing tax revenue, the D.C. Council Tuesday is expected to make it much more difficult for non-District residents to net a job with the D.C. government.
As of December 2006, there were more Marylanders working for the District than D.C. residents – 11,657 vs. 10,043, according to the D.C. Office of Payroll and Retirement Service. Another 2,127 were from Virginia.
Meanwhile, unemployment in the District, pegged at 6 percent in July, remains well above that of the rest of the region. In July, unemployment was at or below 2.2 percent in Fairfax, Arlington and Alexandria while in August it was 3.7 percent in Prince George’s County and 2.7 in Montgomery County.
Nonresidents also pay no income tax to the District, said Ward 8 Council Member Marion Barry, so the “money train” is crossing the border.
“I criticize the private sector for not hiring enough D.C. residents, but yet we won’t do it ourselves,” Barry said during a June committee hearing on a bill he co-introduced. “These numbers are staggering. To me, they’re disgusting.”
The legislation, preliminarily approved in July, would double the number of preference points given to all qualified District resident applicants over qualified non-District residents. It requires annual proof of residency certification for the first seven years of employment for those people who claim to live in D.C. It mandates that agencies issue quarterly reports on their new employees and explain why nonresidents were hired.
And it calls for annual audits of the residency program by the Department of Human Resources, a provision that is expected to cost $982,789 over four years.
Between 2002 and 2007, the percentage of D.C. residents employed by the city government fell from 47 percent to 41.8 percent. Several council members said it would be their preference to exclude all outsiders from D.C. jobs, though they recognized such a move wasn’t feasible.
“Why this government is employing so many Maryland and Virginia residents who don’t have the kind of unemployment rate we have in the District of Columbia is certainly beyond me,” Council Member Carol Schwartz said during the hearing. “It’s really beyond all of us.”
