WASHINGTON — On the same day a bill was reintroduced in the U.S. Senate that would turn most of D.C. into the State of New Columbia, statehood for the District was the topic of a panel discussion.
“Yes we want statehood,” D.C. Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton told the audience at the National Archives Thursday night. But Holmes said she thinks statehood is “far off.”
She’s been pushing the issue for years, and has introduced numerous statehood bills in the U.S. House of Representatives. In the city where even the license plates complain of “Taxation Without Representation,” Norton said per capita, residents have big federal income tax bills.
“It is $12,000 per resident. That is more than the taxes paid by any residents of any state in the Union.”
Former Virginia Congressman Jim Moran, a Democrat and another supporter of statehood, doesn’t think it will happen. He said political attitudes of the past toward the city’s large black population are part of the reason the District of Columbia is not yet a state.
“There’s no question that some of this has been racist,” he said.
Moran said in theory, a new, 51st state could be created that’s even larger than D.C. is now.
“I think you can make a case for the Washington metropolitan area to be a state because it has Northern Virginia. For example — Alexandria, Arlington, Falls Church — has more in common culturally and I think to some extent economically with the District of Columbia than does Richmond,” said Moran.
Former New York Congressman Jim Walsh, a Republican, feels differently about statehood.
“I think many people would agree that taxation without representation is the wrong thing, but I think also many of those same people would say we don’t need statehood for a plot of land that’s 68 square miles,” he said.
He suggests another solution: “Create a much smaller federal city, treat it like a national park, many people think it’s a park anyway, and then cede the rest back to Maryland who gave it to us in the first place.”
When the moderator asked panelists whether D.C. residents should be allowed to stop paying federal income taxes, Walsh spoke up.
“I think it would be the largest city in the world very quickly if that were to happen. I might even give up my voting rights in New York,” he joked. “If everybody feels that that’s fair, then I wouldn’t oppose that.”
