Most D.C. residents would have little choice but to accept license plates with the District’s “Taxation without Representation” motto under legislation introduced Tuesday by the D.C. Council.
The measure, offered by Ward 1 Councilman Jim Graham and co-sponsored by seven of his colleagues, would require all plates issued by the Department of Motor Vehicles to bear the city’s rallying cry for congressional voting rights. The only exemptions would be for organizational and vintage plates.
“We will eliminate the option to have the D.C. government Web site instead on the plates,” Graham said during the council’s first legislative meeting of 2009.
All vehicle registrants receive “Taxation Without Representation” plates automatically. The DMV will provide a “www.dc.gov” plate upon request, but there are only 3,567 dc.gov tags active today. Graham said he was inspired to draft the bill after seeing “Metro vehicle after Metro vehicle” with the dc.gov tags.
“Taxation without Representation” should be the standard plate, said Mark Plotkin, WTOP political analyst and die-hard voting rights advocate. It’s not like residents had a choice, he said, between “Celebrate and Discover,” the preceding slogan, and something else.
“This is a statement of fact, a statement of condition, irrefutable,” Plotkin said. “If it said ‘No Taxation Without Representation,’ it would be a point of view. ‘No,’ that’s a statement of opinion.”
He added: “The major thing is, will [President-elect Barack] Obama, in his first executive act, put that on the presidential limousine?”
The first meeting of council session 18 was dominated by legislative introductions. There were bills to encourage more youth mentoring, to broaden lead abatement requirements, to amend residential permit parking rules, and to increase revenue for mental health needs, among others.
Ward 3 Councilwoman Mary Cheh, a constitutional law professor, proposed barring “unwanted targeted picketing” outside a home “with the intent to intimidate, threaten, abuse, annoy, or harass the individual.” The “Residential Tranquility Act,” Cheh has said, was provoked by an animal rights extremist group targeting homes in Northwest Washington.
“We would argue that the bill certainly violates First Amendment values,” said Stephen Block, legislative counsel to the American Civil Liberties Union – National Capital Area. “Picketing is a quintessential form of First Amendment expression.”
Those who argue the legislation restricts First Amendment rights are “demonstrably wrong,” Cheh said, as the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled time and again that reasonable time, place and manner restrictions on protests are allowed.
