I am in one of those low-paying jobs and do it because I choose it. I feel a sense of freedom that people making $25,000 and $30,000 cannot have. I think part of the issue being that the District of Columbia, if its budget is so high, its demands are so great that it cannot. meet them, then it will have to learn to do one of two things: either find ways to meet those or reduce its needs. Now, I support a more conservative approach to the answer and that is that the real problem for home rule in the District, is that 35 cents out of a dollar is now the Federal payment. It would seem to make a lot more sense in creating responsibility to yield the 30 cents and to tighten our belts and do thre job as necessary.

However, I can't conceive of the Congress, after 100 years of taking and not giving, that it could even think, in any form, to cut from the District the needed responses in terms of finances that are here.

I do want to make it quite clear, however, that as a citizen involved at the grass roots every day, that we cannot long endure continued harassment to the dignity of the people that live here. The young people are growing up with no sense of respect for law and order and no sense of respect for constitutional rights and no sense of respect for this Congress. I think part of it is because they have no one participating in Government and they cannot see the participation of their parents they cannot see the way of bringing about solutions to the problems that override us.

So, I stand almost like a stranger in the wilderness, saying you have no choice. You really must grant home rule in some style to the District. If that is statehood, then we understand what that means.

If it is home rule, it must be home rule with real power, where you have the right to levy taxes and to move in a manner that creates the best government.

So, it would seem to me that you have an opportunity to do something now that has never been done before in a Federal city like ours and that is to establish an interim government-one that woud operate for let's say 4 years.

That this could be a charter like the one you have. Inside of that process allow, create, and make possible, all of those aspects of democracy that create responsibility. That means that we could have a constitutional convention say by 1975 and in that convention people be elected from very small segments of this city, sent there to write and develop the kind of charter, the kind of commission, and the kind of constitution that would govern this city.

Later in that same year have a referendum to either accept or reject it. If it is rejected-that creates another constitutional convention. But let's say it was accepted and the people then could elect and could support their own form of government. I think that, in itself, would be the kind of celebration that would make all Americans proud to look at democracy in action.

I thank you for your time.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you for your very well-chosen words. You are a very articulate person.

It is a bad thing, in this kind of area, to oversimplify but I am going to admittedly oversimplify. I want you to tell me what your preference is. We have three basic approaches before us. There are important variations within those approaches. One is the statehood approach; another is the Channing Phillips approach-the charter com

mission where Congress has the right to veto; and the third will be the Mathias approach.

If those three were on the table-which would you choose?

Mr. GIPSON. Without a doubt-statehood.

Let me say that that is the considered opinion of the chairman of the home rule committee, with the reservation that home rule itself is divided between those three alternatives, all of which are committed to home rule with power.

Now, the Channing Phillips approach, which would have the charter commission, means that Congress then would legislate for us our form of government and we would be stuck with it or have to fight it through Congress again.

Meaning, with the understanding that the Nelsen Commission of study, would have given a lot of time and energy to it so the chance of getting that changed would be very slim for a long time. So, we would be saddled with that form of government for a long time.

The idea of home rule, through both your approach and Senator Mathias' approach with the veto, makes that a little bit unacceptable. The CHAIRMAN. Let's take the Presidential veto out, does that make it a little better?

Mr. GIPSON. That really means that if we had disagreement or if we found that the number of councilmen were too small, and that we had 11 now and we wanted 29, that would mean that we would have to come back, lobby it through Congress again and get that changed.

The statehood route provides once and for all the opportunity for change. Tacked on with it is the right that the people of the District would have to make whatever changes were necessary according to what they had agreed to.

So, that you have the longer period of getting to the precise form but you also have the added advantage of citizens who would have participated in its formation, that all of these elements are now present, could present, lobby, and make an input into that constitutional convention. It would be up to them to convince the rest of the delegates, there and voting, of the validity of which of these three they should have.

So, I think that the fact that we do not have to come back to Congress, which I find is a very tedious task to try to convince this Congress of what is best for the District when we ought to really try to get that power out in the hands of the people and let the people decide what is best for the District. I think that we could have then the kind of responsibile government, the kind of respect for government that really would be an asset.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much. Senator Mathias?

Senator MATHIAS. To classify what you said, the conditions of life in the District, the effect that these conditions of life have on young people, what does this mean for the future?

At the same time we are up against difficult problems which we need to work on together. Because they are difficult we need to understand them from both sides of the coin as to exactly what it is that you are attempting.

When we talk about total congressional control, there is another side of that coin and that is the side of the coin which delivers the Federal Government into the physical custody of a State. And this is the side of the coin which was found to be unacceptable, as a practical

matter, in the case of the city of New York and the city of Philadelphia.

In saying this, it does not infringe in any way on the validity of what you have said. The validity of your argument is perhaps

underscored.

The fact that whereas the people of the whole country were not willing to have the Federal Government in the custody of the city of Philadelphia-that they were not willing to have the study of another totally autonomous political entity.

That would present for Senator Eagleton and for me problems of an entirely different dimension in trying to get more self-government and more participation for the citizens of the District of Columbia.

I think that when you begin to think in terms of self-government through statehood, the constitutional change, which will be required, is going to be extremely difficult.

Now, if you think in terms of evolution, that is something else again.

Just as I welcome the creation of the office of Delegate for the District of Columbia-and it is an evolutionary step-it is not a very big step but what it can mean is that we can go from a nonvoting representative to full representation which I favor in both the House and the Senate. By the same token we can take other steps in other areas of home rule which may lead to something comparable to the status of a State.

It is only commonsense to recognize that there are many strong historical and political obstacles which stand in the way and also there are some practical obstacles which stand in the way. We must approach it from the knowledge that those obstacles do exist.

Mr. GIPSON. I would accept your rendering of the political situation as sound. I would say that if the approaches were all lying on the table and I could take one of them-statehood is the one I would take. They are not really on the table because I think what Senator Mathias is saying is that only two of those alternatives are on the table.

Either the commission approach or the charter approach or one of these two bills. The Eagleton-Mathias approach could be a step forward in advancing to some type of full self-determination for the District of Columbia.

That makes more sense than the others but I want to make it clear that electing our delegate to the Congress did not satisfy those young people. It made them feel a lot more hostile with the realization that the same amount of energy that it took to elect a nonvoting delegate to Congress could have been used to elect a voting member to Congress. And what has been used is a stalling tactic by men with power to keep men without power from expressing themselves clearly. I find more dismay now, after the election, among the young people because they know that Mr. Fauntroy has no power apart from the power granted him by his colleagues to persuade them.

Senator MATHIAS. I have to agree with that and I would have to agree with Mr. Aronica who said the same thing earlier. That it is distasteful to call Walter Fauntroy a Congressman when he is really a Delegate; and to call Walter Washington the Mayor when he is really a Commissioner appointed by the President like other com

missioners.

But the Delegate has the opportunity for a growth capacity and

Senator Inouye is an illustration. The representative of Hawaii used to be a Delegate and now they have full representation.

But I would be inclined not to call people by names which they aren't necessarily and I think it tends to distort the picture even worse than it is.

It would be better to say look, this is what they are, they are considerable positions, there is great growth potential, but don't say that they are something else when they aren't because people will only become more suspicious.

Mr. GIPSON. They are now. There is no more important point I can make here than to understand that Fauntroy is the Delegate and if we understand that he is a Delegate, we can move toward a seat in the Congress. But to call him a Congressman, when he is a Delegate, gives the appearance that we have really gone where we want to go and there is not much further we can go besides adding another Congressman which only population would determine.

There is already a lot of difficulty preventing us from making the kinds of changes we need. I want to say again that given the kind of complex situation, the social situation that we have in our city, where people have been too long neglected, we really have to begin to take giant steps instead of baby steps.

We have to begin to lift up real hope instead of the possibility of hope. I think that we can accomplish this. We can eliminate a lot of hostility and reduce frustration by moving us far as we can in home rule. That is why, probably, these two bills, taking out the bad parts of each of them and making them a little more sound, could begin to move in that direction if we interpret that as to be motion toward self-government which would grant total self-determination to the people, and I think that is the position that makes the most sense

to me.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, sir.

There were two other witnesses scheduled to appear and because they were unsure of the length of these hearings they are elsewhere. But this will apply to any and all individuals who wish to contribute to these hearings. The record on this matter will remain open until May 11, 1971, and we will receive statements from any other individual, groups, or organizations, et cetera, who wish to contribute to the record.

This has been a very useful and educational day. I have heard many, many persuasive arguments for improvement in both my bill and Senator Mathias' bill. I am looking forward with interest to Delegate Fauntroy's bill which he said he would introduce in 2 or 3 weeks after he held some neighborhood meetings where he is going to distribute our bills for comment and this will be helpful to us. We hope that out of all of this that Senator Mathias, myself, and my colleagues, on this committee and Mr. Fauntroy and others that we could agree on a useful and viable approach.

I will yield to the Senator from Maryland.

Senator MATHIAS. I just would add that I want to thank the chairman for moving promptly in this Congress in this area. The witnesses, this afternoon, have pointed out that the spirit may fail if we don't move promptly. I hope this committee, within a reasonably short period of time, would create a bill and take it to the Senate floor. I think it is very necessary that this kind of dedication to the cause

of home rule be shown and that the people of the District can have a program to which they can rally.

That the people of the country can have a program for home rule that they can understand and support. I think the chairman is moving forward reasonably to that end.

I want to thank him for it.

The CHAIRMAN. I order printed at this point in the hearing the additional written statements we have received.

(The material referred to follows:)

PREPARED STATEMENT OF WILLIAM LUCY, EXECUTIVE ASSISTANT TO THE PRESIDENT, AMERICAN FEDERATION OF STATE, COUNTY, AND MUNICIPAL EMPLOYEES, AFL-CIO

Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee, my name is William Lucy, and I appear before you on behalf of the 500,000 member American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees and the over 6,000 members of our Council 20 in the District of Columbia in support of home rule legislation for the District.

Our Union has long advocated total self-government for the citizens of the District of Columbia, including full voting representation in the United States Senate and House of Representatives.

In recent years, a number of important steps have been taken by the Congress toward that goal. We have welcomed these past actions by the Congress to provide the residents of the District with some voice in their government. We recognize that although these actions have been extremely limited in terms of effective representative government, they have had the desirable effect of further encouraging the people of the District to seek full citizenship and self-government. We believe that this is particularly true of the recent election of Walter Fauntroy as the District's Non-Voting Delegate in the House of Representatives.

However, let us not forget that despite these gains, the District of Columbia remains, in fact, America's "last colony"-its residents subjected to the indignities of second-class citizenship, a half-million voters denied their right to choose elected representatives, taxpayers with no representation, American citizens denied an effective voice in governing their lives.

Our Union firmly believes that it is time, therefore, that the Congress take a major step toward fulfilling the promise of representative government for all the people of the District of Columbia. The time for elected government in this city is long overdue.

The principle of local self-government for the District of Columbia is no longer an area of controversy and I do not think it is necessary to belabor this question. However, I would like to focus on two issues which have been cited against home rule.

It is often heard that home rule cannot be granted to the District of Columbia because the residents of the District are incapable of governing themselves and that home rule would lead to scandal, bankruptcy, or worse. This is a ridiculous statement at best and we find its racist implications intolerable. For anyone to say that since home rule for the District of Columbia in 1874 proved to be a disastrous experience is a valid, logical reason for not having home rule in 1971 is pure nonsense. If one follows this reasoning, I would like to point out to the Members of this Committee, the record of government in many states and cities from 1874 to the present would lead one to seriously question the capability of the citizens of those areas to effectively govern themselves. I cannot recall any Member of Congress demanding the revocation of the right of those citizens to choose their own representatives and govern themselves.

There is also the issue of the District of Columbia as the Federal city and the fear that self-government for the District would have a disastrous effect on the ability of the Federal government to function. Those who defend the concept of the Federal city ignore the fact that all modern governments in the free world manage to function without denying the citizens of their capitals the same righs of all other citizens. However, if there were any doubt in one's mind, the legislation which you will be considering provides adequate safeguards to protect the interests of the Federal government. It is our understanding that no action could be taken by the District of Columbia government which would in any way run counter to the best interest of the Federal government. We find no reason for the Congress to delay any further the enactment of legis60-560 0-71-18