District Nullius II

By Eliot Gabriel Graham

April 30, 2025

L'Enfant's Angles

It bears emphasis that Washington, D.C. is a federal district. The footprint the federal government creates on the landscape comprises daubs of ostentatiousness and streaks of inconspicuousness. It’s a deceptive balance, that of the obvious and the subtle, one which lulls the observer into conceited familiarity. Who couldn’t recognize the White House if shown a picture of it? The Capitol? But how about Dupont Circle? The National Park Service is in charge of that. Lincoln Park as well. Similar to the myriad embassy properties, federal concerns are planted throughout the district, with varying degrees of classification and oversight. Land used, managed, occupied, and or maintained by the federal government generally clumps into four categories: appropriations, reservations, GSA, and District-managed property. Appropriations include the more or less postcard-worthy, mentioned supra, and there are 17 of them. There are 939 reservations in the District, virtually all under the jurisdiction of the National Park Service. The Government Services Agency (GSA) manages 237 properties, including the brutal headquarters of cabinet-level departments (e.g. J. Edgar Hoover Building), as well as very non-descript residential lots. District-managed property includes land it or the US government owns solely, or jointly between them, so, obvious things like local public schools are in this category. But then localities like Franklin Park / Square, which is owned by the US but managed by the District are as well. It doesn’t take but coin-toss imagination or superficial historical eyesight to recognize the logistical nightmare in all of this. Indeed, it’s a jurisdictional mosh pit. Accordingly, there are 32 federal law enforcement agencies operating in the District.

Dissevering administrative layers so as to reach authority’s end for any given institution is a painstaking process. (The Open Data DC website, sorry to say, is not the most user-friendly.) A simple maths framework can serve as scaffolding to this labor. Currently there exists a sub-district of federal buildings, Pierre L’Enfant’s magnificent Federal Triangle. So why not use the concept of triangulation to conceptualize the District’s institutional landscape? Utilizing L’Enfant’s delineating angles, a larger triangle can be imposed. Starting with Constitution Avenue NW as the base, 15 Street NW as the height, and Pennsylvania Avenue as the hypotenuse, the larger acute angle works out to be 70 degrees and the smaller 20. Zooming out from these angles, then, down to Independence Ave SW and over to 16th Street NW, a robust United States Government triangle forms, with the White House sitting at the 70-degree angle and the Capitol and the 20; these angles will be referred as the Executive and Legislative, respectively.

A like federal enclave (as the current House and Senate bills propose, perennially) would be a good first step for the District to begin its topographical audit. The triangulation concept, though, can also bring into better relief some structural design flaws District government is boxed within. The administrative limits represented by the angles hamstring the District’s ability to govern effectively. On a 180-degree apportionment diagram, think in terms of the District government with 90 degrees of authority, the Executive with 70, and Legislative with 20. Since a majority isn’t possible without the approval of one of the federal branches, the District functions without sincere autonomy.

In reality, District government is a subcontractor, a modern Roman Aedilis, a custodian who jealously guards its own authority, and exercises it with such demeanor. Most duties of critical governance are initiated from above. Instances abound. Firstly, District government doesn’t command its own National Guard: the President does. As well, the Executive holds dominion over District land through relevant cabinet-control, the National Park Service in particular. As mentioned, the National Capital Planning Commission has minority District representation, and the Commission of Fine Arts (CFA) none at all. At most D.C. holds explicit jurisdiction over 70 percent of the area within its limits (25% to the federal government; at least 5% extraterritorial--based on Graecostasis estimates of the previous issue). But the Executive Angle implicitly cuts into this bit as well; the White House is effectively in charge of the District’s plat, is the long and the short of it. (For what other reason, then, would D.C. government not have a permanent zoning/building/property liaison office inside of the White House?) More Executive authority is exercised through United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia (USADC), which prosecutes the serious crimes committed in the District, leaving juvenile offences, lesser misdemeanors, and code violations to the Office of the Attorney General for the District of Columbia (OIG). (An arrangement that all but guarantees discontinuity and recidivism). The District’s local law enforcement, the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) is obliged to accommodate, as mentioned, a panoply of federal police agencies (the Government Printing Office Police being one exceptional example). As far as the Legislative Angle, budgetary concerns are vetted and overseen by Congress, and all promulgated laws are subject to its review (and disapproved with presidential confirmation). With scrambled authority comes jurisdictional incompetence.

In planning for the January 6th Capitol attack, coordination between the law enforcement agencies with jurisdiction in the Mall area -- Capitol Police, National Park Police, Secret Service, Supreme Court Police, MPD -- District Mayor Muriel Bowser asked a representative of the Capitol Police where the perimeter of their agency would begin. She was effectively asking them where their line of jurisdiction lay. The fact that she even had to ask is symptomatic of a systemic problem. (If you’ve ever traversed the Capitol grounds on the way to Union Station you’ll understand how willy-nilly the ad hoc perimeters can feel.) Rather than initiating authority, which is the provenance of effective governance, more often than not the District is compelled into reaction from extraneous sources of it.

Speculative estimation is the essence of triangulation. District government is put in the position of triangulating between branches of federal government and their remits, which include the foreign missions discussed above. Ambiguity creates inefficiency. Freeriding becomes an index of this inefficiency. As well as the tax exempt plenipotentiaries and international NGO workers mentioned previously, some 140,000 (191,300 total minus 48,859 District residents) federal workers who commute in from the surrounding states, living off the reservation, as it were, don’t contribute to the District income tax roll. The Home Rule Act of 1973 bars the District from imposing income tax on commuters. Same for nonresident professional service providers, whose personal incomes are federally barred from D.C. income tax. Profits from these entities have also found their way into exemption as well, through pass-through mechanisms. As reported by the DC Fiscal Policy Institute: “[A]bout one third of mid-sized and large DC businesses with gross receipts over $5 million are exempt from the UB [unincorporated business] franchise tax”. The business activity tax (BAT) they propound does make sense. A good deal of federal worker activity in the District is also exempt from District sales tax. As well, the parlor of Congress benefits from more than a few sales tax exemptions, the most curious of which being for cigarettes. And vehicles registered outside of the District before establishing local residency are exempt from motor vehicle excise tax on certificate of title. (D.C. Code § 50-2201.03(j)(3)(H).) As with chancery buildings, federal bureaux serve as a drag on the area when operations within are suspended, like they were, fiercely so, during Covid. Federal buildings (counted at 2,958) are exempt from property tax, amounting to approximately $610 million in forgone tax revenue in 2024. (It’s terribly suspicious that the $1 billion 2025 budget deficit the District finds itself in, matches almost perfectly the total amount of property taxes forgone in TY 2024.) Included in this are 929 properties under the label of “Miscellaneous Exemption”. (Give that a think.)

The District is a ghost town. The preponderance of the population isn’t vested in the area. Compound the international shadow class with that of the federal class (White House Staff, Congress) and there’s a massive collegiate vibe maintained in the District, a kind of collegiate ghetto, a pulsing void eddied out by the turnstiles turbines of perennial waves of sojourners. The federal employees who do live in the District represent the real estate middle class, with their own flavor of disassociation -- that stodgy, tenured vibe. (The subject of nonprofit class privileges is reserved for a future Machine issue.) The District of Columbia is blocked from controlling its land, and its purse, perpetually stuck at sixes and sevens. So many inextricable lithospheric layers of administration, pinning the dull-witted functionaries, and tempering, even, those few capable and well-intentioned ones. Only the most skilled administrators this country can produce could govern the District of Columbia effectively. And they should.

The greatest clue of civic failure is public micturition. People pee, exhibitively, on the streets of Washington, D.C., in the brazen daytime. Your correspondent has witnessed every sort of DCer doing this openly. On Capitol Expressway NW; by the Jefferson Memorial; on Rhode Island NE; Jefferson Field; and a security guard, in fact, at a derelict federal building across from the Wharf. These miscreants are providing florescence to the jurisdictional fissures created by peat-bogged-bad institutional design, and showcasing the District as a dumping ground for its surrounding states. When one peers back through the history of this place, though, from its genesis on, a subtle aroma of disingenuousness wafts from the pages: there’s a consistent incompleteness to nearly every aspect of the District’s administrative past. A persistent history, as it were, whose memes are detected on virtually every contemporary policy report one reads, with its inexhaustibly long list of contributors, and an even more soporifically long list of board members.

District at Large: It's not a Diamond

The physical location of the District of Columbia was born of a border dispute between Virginia and Maryland. Overlapping charters granted by English kings (James I, and Charles I, respectively) meant that both states laid claims to the Potomac River, with Maryland holding sole jurisdiction of it until the 1785 Mount Vernon Conference. Establishing a federal district between them somewhat mollified that issue, and was in the interest, certainly, of its proposal’s two most effective advocates, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. (And also quite congenial to another notable resident of the area, George Washington.) The messiness of the District in its current form makes all the perfect sense when one understands that blurry delineators and the subsequent contest they produced are significant aspects of its origin story. To this day, federal government agencies administer almost the entirety of the region’s Potomac shoreline. As well, the hastiness with which the federal city was thrown up, going through a spastic succession of chief surveyors/planners after Pierre L’Enfant was dismissed, is felt in all present institutional dimensions. Less than ten years, really, from concept to initial occupation, was the timespan of project federal city’s initial phase of construction.

The Constitution, certified in 1788, was the birth certificate of a capital, but not yet Washington, D.C. as said capital.

Article I, Section 8, Clause 17:
To exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten Miles square) as may, by Cession of particular States, and the Acceptance of Congress, become the Seat of the Government of the United States, and to exercise like Authority over all Places purchased by the Consent of the Legislature of the State in which the Same shall be, for the Erection of Forts, Magazines, Arsenals, dock-Yards and other needful Buildings;…

By the end of the year 1800, Congress would hold its first session at the Capitol building, and President and First Lady Adams occupied the President’s House, although these buildings weren’t quite finished. The Organic Act of 1801 put District of Columbia territory under the control of Congress, and stripped its residents of the right to vote in presidential elections. The District was divided into two counties, Washington on the Maryland side, and Alexandria on the Virginia, each under their respective state’s laws. The mayor of the city of Washington was appointed by the President. But the mayors of Alexandria and Georgetown were popularly elected. The Virginia tranche retroceded in 1846-7, in the interest of maintaining its coffle economy, a practice which was fast approaching banishment in the District proper (1850 as part of that year’s Compromise).

The population tripled between 1850 and 1870 (the Civil War boom contributing substantially to the increase), filling in the empty spaces between the area’s municipalities. The Metropolitan Police Department was established during this time (1861) to replace the existing municipal forces. The Organic Act of 1871 repealed the individual charters of the cities of Washington and Georgetown, creating a single government for the federal district. There was a brief stint of Congressional representation brought upon by the so-called Radical Republicans (1871-1875), but this proved precipitous, as a local polity wasn’t developed enough to handle the weight of federal interest; 96 years would pass before such representation was reestablished, in 1970, as the non-voting delegate to the House that exists today. The XXIII Amendment to the Constitution, ratified in 1961, granted District residents the right to vote in presidential elections. A school board investiture followed in 1968. Direct rule by Congress lasted until the Home Rule Act of 1973, which devolved quotidian authority to the newly-created District of Columbia government, albeit with the straight-jacket restrictions that massively limit the District’s ability to govern itself effectively.

The District Charter established the Office of Mayor and the Council of the District of Columbia. The latter consisting of a chair elected at large, one member for each of the District’s eight wards, and four general at-large members. The Act prohibits District government from: lending public credit for private projects; imposing a commuter tax on those who work in the District; making any changes to the Heights of Buildings Act of 1910; passing any law changing the composition or jurisdiction of local courts; enacting a local budget that is not balanced, and; gaining any additional authority over the National Planning Commission, Washington Aqueduct, or the District of Columbia National Guard. Congress reviews all legislation passed by the Council before it can become law, and retains authority of the District’s budget. Any legislation passed by the District Council may be reversed by Congress or the President.

An institutional arrangement like this dooms local government officials into everlasting perplexity. They are tasked heavily with discerning negative from positive governance, that is, deference administration rather than actual governing. Are we in charge of this, or is…? An unnecessary and ponderous in-tray is the result. Only the most skilled public administrator could navigate such denim-weaved institutional Byzantium. Anyone with less than superlative competence will be irresistibly sucked into corruption, to ease the burdenous workload. Such are the pratfalls of bad institutional design. Devolved District governance has been synonymous with graft and venality, since the beginning.

The first attempt at semi-autonomous rule was the territorial government initiated as part of the 1871 Organic Act. Headed by a President-appointed governor and legislative assembly, it also included a locally-elected 22-member house of delegates. Alas, the run of governors lasted but two terms, ending in dramatic bankruptcy, taking the newly-created District government with it. The President-appointed Board of Commissioners ran the District for the nearly a century thereafter, until the restructuring initiated by President Lyndon Johnson created the mayor-commissioner role, installing Walter Washington to the post. Mayor Washington would go on to be the first elected mayor (1975) of the modern Home Rule era, though only serving a single term.

It didn’t take long for things to go from really bad, to really worse. In 1989 the Washington Monthly accused the District of having the “worst city government in America,” a period which culminated in the mayor being caught on camera smoking crack. And if that doesn’t give you a start, how about that same mayor, after serving time for said offence, being reelected four years later. (As a venerated champion of the civil rights movement, Marion Barry’s legacy is complicated.) Insolvency befell the District almost immediately henceforth, resulting in a Congressional takeover of budgetary concerns, vis-à-vis the District of Columbia Financial Control Board from 1995 until 2001. In 1997, the National Capital Revitalization and Self-Government Improvement Act was required to shakeup D.C.’s criminal justice system. It federalized the District of Columbia Board of Parole, established direct funding of its court system, and launched more than a few oversight entities that stripped the mayor of most of his effectual portfolios.

The District of Columbia criminal justice system of today is hemispheric. On one side, the United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia handles the serious stuff, federal crimes as well as local felonies and severe misdemeanors. Like all other federal attorneys of the United States, these are, indeed, appointed by the president. All District judges are selected by the president as well. On the local side, the District of Columbia Office of Attorney General (OAG) prosecutes juvenile crimes and some adult misdemeanors--traffic and regulatory offences, and infractions of District ordinances. Since 2014 the OAG has been a popularly elected position. Bifurcated by design, obvious issues of informational asymmetry between the systems is the inevitable result. For example if the criminal’s career begins as a youth (which it generally does), then tracking it into adulthood becomes a problem, and, if the problem persists, a moral hazard pushes through the cracks, stalking daylight the chasm provides (npi). The District of Columbia is rife with juvenile crime. Only recently has the juvenile carjacking issue been pulled back from the abyss. Jacket snatchings, Metro train bullying, assaults, robberies: google: “robbed by teens in D.C.” and see how many hits you get. ATVs still terrorize the streets. (The Sunday ATV parade on Florida Avenue is more regular and punctual than the Metro.)

The Washington Post reported, “2023 was District’s deadliest year in more than two decades”. Their article profiles the 274 District homicides of that year. Somber reading, it makes for, particular for the empathetic and intellectual; unsurprisingly stunning as well for those of us residents who were about town that year. For perspective, Seattle, with a city-proper population comparable to D.C.’s, recorded an historical-high 73 homicides in 2023. Miami, a metropolitan statistical area (MSA) similar in population had 31. The District’s homicide rate (per 100,000) ranked fourth highest in the country at 40.4, a 37.4 per cent increase from the previous year. And these figures are even more staggering when considered how localized they are.

Crime in the District is a salient example of a dysfunctional policy flow. Since District cadaster-communicating is either too obtuse or too acute, it’s hard to pinpoint further data, as the quadrant/ward overlap shuffle mess demonstrates (try for yourself to find a satisfactory current population estimate for one of the eastern quadrants.) As touched on at the outset of this essay, District government is bloated and inefficient, with too much of too little being done, too many office inefficients more occupied with transcribing office drama than getting on with the product of governance. (This notion long precedes the DOGE drama of late.) The D.C. Crime Bill of 2022 is a perfect example of government sclerosis. With a crowded tap of input, local government creates bills which are nearly impossible to communicate politically. Reaching consensus on an issue like public safety, particularly among a governing body comprised almost solely of Democrats (the only two who are not are Independent at-large council members) ought to be simple. But the mayor vetoed the bill, which was subsequently overridden by the council, and then congressionally disapproved through Republican sponsorship that found easy impetus from the mayor’s veto. Doesn’t sound like local government, does it?

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III

D.C.’s Agency Problem

The Decline and Fall Line

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