Thanks to Matt Yglesias well-written and thoughtful book on zoning restrictions, “The Rent Is too Damn High,” a lot of liberals are talking these days about scrapping D.C.’s cap on building heights. While I think D.C. shrinking dramatically would be the best thing for the country, I agree that property owners should be allowed to build buildings basically as high as they like, and I welcome liberals like Yglesias seeing how regulation is used to protect incumbents and harm would-be new entrants.
But one backdrop to this debate is D.C. homerule and its lack of a vote in Congress — it’s a congressional statute that caps building height, and D.C. residents have no vote in Congress.
The thing is, they missed a great opportunity last decade. D.C. Democrats blew up a bipartisan deal to give the District a vote in Congress. They blew it up because it would also scrap D.C.’s draconian gun ban. Now they might never have that opportunity again.
Why?
Because never again will the Census work out so perfectly so as to convince the GOP to create a permanently-Democratic House seat.
The old deal was that two new seats would be added to the House. One, under the law, would go to D.C., and been a certain Democratic seat. The other one would have gone to Utah, and been a near-certain GOP seat. The balance of power unchanged.
Why Utah? That wasn’t some corrupt bargain based on Utah being so darn Republican. It was because Utah was next in line for a seat last decade.
What does “next in line” mean? It means that Utah was so close to getting a fourth seat from the 2010 Census. It means that if we had 436 seats, Utah would have gotten a 4th seat.
So why is that opportunity past? Because after the new Census, Utah easily got its 4th seat. In fact, Utah would have gotten a 4th seat even if you shrunk Congress by 45 seats.
Who’s the new # 436? North Carolina’s 14th District.
So adding a DC seat and one more seat wouldn’t create balance — there’s a good chance it would create two extra Dem seats (at least this Daily Kos blogger thinks a 14th NC district would mean a Dem pickup). The point is a 4th Utah seat meant a guaranteed GOP pickup. A 14th NC seat is a mystery.
