John Matthews
WMAL.com

WASHINGTON — (WMAL) Sweeping change in Washington in 2017 is not limited to the Trump administration.

The House panel that oversees the District is planning to take a more aggressive role than in recent years to shape the city’s laws and budget, a move that city leaders are already calling an affront to Home Rule.

The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform is expected to formalize its intentions Tuesday when the panel adopts its two-year agenda.

Committee chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) provided a preview of his plans in an op-ed piece in Saturday’s Washington Post, when he laid out his intentions to override the District’s “Death With Dignity” physician-assisted suicide law.

Chaffetz called the D.C. Council’s passage of the law a “serious error”, and wrote, “the awesome responsibility of acting as the state for the citizens of the District lies not in the hands of a local government, but with Congress.”

Chaffetz is also taking aim at the city budget. In a letter written last week to Mayor Muriel Bowser, Chaffetz warned that the use of tax dollars to defend illegal immigrants from deportation could be a violation of federal law.

D.C. Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton says the GOP-led Congress could soon be taking its most active role in city politics in decades.

“It is truly remarkable that instead of using the Committee’s time to conduct appropriate oversight on federal matters, including the new administration, Republicans have chosen to abuse the Committee’s authority over the District of Columbia and meddle with our city’s purely local affairs,” Norton said. “There are occasions for oversight committee action on federal matters affecting the District, but this wholesale provision ignores the Home Rule Act, which granted the American citizens living in the District a mayor and Council to have jurisdiction over the city’s local affairs,” she added.

The 115th Congress is already considering other legislation that impacts the District, including a House bill to prohibit of the use of local funds to provide abortion services, and a Senate bill that would strip the city of most of its local gun safety laws.

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