D.C. could soon find itself free from a federal law that restricts city workers’ participation in partisan political activity, constraints that have seriously confused the election process for hundreds of potential candidates.
The Hatch Act bars federal and D.C. employees from running for partisan public office, from soliciting or receiving political contributions, or from engaging in political activity while on the job. The mayor and D.C. Council are explicitly exempt, but elected advisory neighborhood commissioners and members of the State Board of Education are not, according to the U.S. Office of Special Counsel.
“Should the District have its own Hatch Act, and the federal Hatch Act not apply? Yes,” said at-large Councilman Phil Mendelson, who jumped directly from an ANC seat to the council. “Is it correct that the Hatch Act precludes ANC commissioners from running for another office and raising money? No, and the special counsel’s crazy.”
The House unanimously agreed last week to let the District draft its own version of the Hatch Act, as each of the 50 states has done. The D.C. law, presumably, would spare all elected officials while still limiting the partisan activities of government employees.
“This is nothing more or nothing less than a holdover from the old pre-Home Rule days in the District of Columbia,” D.C. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton, who introduced the bill, said on the House floor.
Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., said the Hatch requirement for D.C. was an “inequity.” The measure is now in the hands of the Senate.
ANC positions, all 286 of them, are often jumping-off points for a council slot. But commissioners are technically barred from campaigning for the council without first resigning their seats, the special counsel has opined. The same goes for members of the nonpartisan State Board of Education. The OSC has reviewed numerous complaints, including one against Ward 6 Councilman Tommy Wells, who held an elected Board of Education seat while running for council in 2006. But it has never started a formal investigation.
“It is certainly past time,” Cathy Wiss, an advisory neighborhood commissioner who ran for the Ward 3 seat in 2006 without resigning first, said of Norton’s bill. “We’re not employees. We don’t make any money. We get no benefits. We have no regular hours. We’re elected. We run for other offices.”
Ex-ANC commissioners
- Mayor Adrian Fenty
- Councilman Phil Mendelson, at-large
- Councilman Michael Brown, at-large
- Councilman Jack Evans, Ward 2
- Councilwoman Muriel Bowser, Ward 4
