The D.C. Council gets back to business today after a long summer break, but as the lame-duck legislative session moves forward, certain consequential issues might be pushed to the back burner — at least until the new council and mayor take power.
“I think there may be one or two things that because there’s such turnover you wouldn’t want to vote on if they can wait,” said Adrian Fenty, the Ward 4 council member and Democratic nominee for mayor. “Those will come up.”
“I think the running of the government is plenty enough for council members who are on the way out or on the way in, just doing the oversight,” he said.
First up will be consideration of the revised Comprehensive Plan, the District’s long-term land use guide and planning document. While the council has a hearing on the draft proposal scheduled for next week, the matter is unlikely to go any further before the new year.
“It has been past experience that lame-duck members can be very capricious and that is not a good context in which to debate and adopt the long-term plan,” Council Member Phil Mendelson said.
Mendelson, chairman of the judiciary committee, has a number of big-issue bills still on his docket, from a comprehensive Homeland Security measure to medical malpractice reform. Those bills will likely be moved out of committee, he said. Whether they’ll be heard by the full council is another matter.
“I’d want to take it on a case-by-case basis,” said Ward 7 Council Member Vincent Gray, the incoming council chair. “But certainly anything of real import should have the benefit of at least consultation with the new folks coming in.”
But Gray said legislating will not come to a halt in the next three-plus months. The transfer of power doesn’t occur until Jan. 2.
“I don’t think the city would either expect or would benefit from that kind of paralysis,” he said.
