House lawmakers looking to restore congressional oversight over the District of Columbia passed a bill Wednesday that would give Congress more control over public safety in the city.
The D.C. CRIMES Act, introduced by Florida Republican Byron Donalds, passed the House on a 225-181 bipartisan vote, with 18 Democrats supporting the legislation.
The proposed legislation would strip the District’s authority to determine its own sentencing guidelines, as well as remove some protections for young offenders written into criminal codes by local city leaders.
The bill faces long odds in the Democrat-controlled Senate.
House opponents like Maryland Democrat Jamie Raskin, characterized the bill as an election-year stunt that hampers the District’s ability to respond to crime surges. He pointed to local legislation passed quickly and unanimously earlier this year that contributed to a sharp decline in street crime.
But Mr. Donalds said the D.C. Council’s recent history of soft-on-crime legislation — including last year’s rewrite to the criminal code that was shot down by Congress for being too offender-friendly — laid the groundwork for the District’s 2023 crime wave.
These were signs that Congress must step in to clean up the mess created by city leaders, according to the Florida Republican.
“The D.C. City Council has had ample opportunity to fix these issues in D.C., and they have refused until very recently,” Mr. Donalds said. “So it’s just a matter of just simple logic, that unless Congress actually decides to use its authority, what would it make us think that the D.C. City Council will actually act in the interests of the citizens of the District?”
The bill’s stipulation about criminal sentences was largely in response to the now-defunct criminal code, which lowered penalties for most violent crimes.
Proponents further argued that removing protections for adults in their late teens and early twenties would hold a key group of offenders accountable in a way that D.C. law currently does not.
Mr. Donalds mentioned how his own colleagues were victimized during the District’s most violent year this century.
Rep. Angie Craig, Minnesota Democrat, was assaulted inside her own apartment building by a man who had 12 prior arrests.
Rep. Henry Cuellar, Texas Democrat, has his car stolen at gunpoint by his Navy Yard apartment building less than a mile from the U.S. Capitol.
Congressional staffers were also victims. That included an aide for Sen. Rand Paul who was stabbed at random by a man recently released from a lengthy prison sentence, and a member of Sen. Katie Britt’s staff who had her car keys stolen by armed assailants.
Last year ended with a 26-year-high in killings, a record-high number of carjackings and a number of ambush-style robberies on city streets.
Young adults were major players in the year-long crime wave, which is why bill proponents argued that removing protections for them was key to putting the crime wave in the past.
Current law allows convicts who are younger than 25 to be considered “youth offenders,” giving judges the option to hand them lighter sentences.
Mr. Donalds’ bill removes those protections for anyone over 18 — a move supporters said aligns the District with the rest of the country.
“It seems the Washington city council believes something magical happens on someone’s 25th birthday,” said Rep. Tim Burchett, Tennessee Republican. “They seem to believe that one day, dad-gummit, you’re a child who cannot be fully accountable for your actions, and the next day you can serve in Congress. They are trying to be politically correct as always, but not prosecuting criminals and the city is suffering because of it.”
The legislation also calls on D.C.’s attorney general, who oversees the prosecution of youth offenders, to operate a public database on juvenile crime in the city.
The bill has been universally opposed by District leaders from Mayor Muriel Bowser and D.C. Council Chair Phil Mendelson to Attorney General Brian Schwalb and Council member Brooke Pinto, the public safety chair who authored the city’s Secure D.C. Omnibus legislation in March.
Eleanor Holmes Norton, the District’s nonvoting congressional representative, also lambasted the legislation as “radical, undemocratic and paternalistic.”
“This bill would be the biggest rollback of D.C. self-government in a generation,” she said.
Ms. Norton argued the proposal’s language could be interpreted as preventing the city from creating any new criminal statutes going forward.
Mr. Raskin, the Maryland Democrat, said such open-ended wording could have prevented the city from creating new laws against organized retail theft or carrying a gun with a tampered serial number.
He said the Secure D.C. package passed this spring did just that and more with multiple other new laws and tougher penalties. Mr. Raskin credited city leaders with helping produce a 26% drop in violent crime and a 14% drop in total crime so far this year.
If Mr. Donalds’ bill had been law at the time, the Maryland Democrat said, city leaders couldn’t have responded to the crime spikes as nimbly as they did.
“Now, amazingly, the gentleman proposes this naked power grab against Washington, denying them the crime-fighting tools they need, despite the fact that they’ve done a good job,” Mr. Raskin said.
Some Republicans disputed that the bill would prevent new criminal laws from being made, but the issue wasn’t clarified during the floor debate.
Mr. Donalds also swatted away accusations that he was trying to boost the Republican Party’s profile ahead of this fall’s presidential election.
“These are not political talking points,” Mr. Donalds said. “This is real life, and it’s easy for the members to come in and out of this building — we have a security apparatus around us every single day — but not take seriously what is happening in the streets of the nation’s capital. This legislation takes that seriously.”