Every now and then Washington the city--as opposed to Washington the Nation's Capital--gets attention in the national press. A handful people realize that the Twenty-third Amendment to the Constitution, adopted in 1961, finally gave District of Columbia residents the right to vote in Presidential elections. And many people who know nothing else about District affairs know that rioting broke out at Glen Echo amusement park on Easter Monday.

But it isn't often that District affairs achieve national prominence. Nevertheless, the fact is that Washington affairs, from the most important to the most minute, are national matters. Action by both houses of Congress is required to set District teachers' salaries and to establish dog license fees. During the Kennedy Administration, with the civil rights and tax cut bills pending, Congress had to take time off to repeal laws forbidding kite-flying and icecream cones Washington.

This situation has been institutionalized in what are known as "District Days"--the second fourth Mondays of each month, which are set aside for the Congress of the United States to act as city council for Washington, D.C. And the result is a nuisance to Congress, it is worse than a nuisance to District residents. Of District bills which have been sent to Capital Hill during the 89th Congress, only two major bills and a few routine housekeeping measures have been enacted.

This is nothing new, either. A few years ago school classrooms designed to accomodate people had to handle as many as a hundred time because Congress failed to appropriate money for teachers' salaries until late in the semester. Washington workers are excluded from coverage under the national minimum wage law. Yet a minimum wage bill which still would leave them below the Administration-defined poverty line is currently stalled in conferences. Washington children whose parents are unemployed are not entitled to Federal payments available to children of unemployed parents in the states.

Washington government, in short, is a shambles, and it is hard to see how it could be anything else. The three commissioners appointed by the President, while ostensibly the heads of the government, have little real power. Not only are they forced into extreme caution by the need to propitiate their Congressional bosses; but they also can be undercut at any time by a department of the city government which appeals to the House or Senate District Committees over their heads. The Police Department, for instance, has a much more powerful voice on Capitol Hill than the D.C. Board of Commissioners. Add to all this the fact that the House District Committee is controlled by Southern Democrats who are hostile to Washington's Negro majority and it is easy to see why the demand for home rule in Washington is becoming more and more intense.

In the period since World War II the struggle of Washingtonians to regain the right of self-government has gained in intensity and sophistication, and has at least one victory--the Twenty-third Amendment--to its credit. Finally in the 89th Congress, thanks to Goldwater's landslide defeat, home rule advocates found themselves in a more favorable position than ever before.

Five times since 1948 they had succeeded in getting home rule bills through the Senate. Each time the House District Committee had prevented the full House from voting in the bills.

But last September it appeared that things might be different. White House influence had secured the 218 signatures for a discharge petition. Home rule advocates, who had learned from years of experience to expect nothing allowed themselves to become hopeful. They had always been convinced that, once the bill got to the House floor, the rest would be simple.

The Administration bill, which the Senate passed and which most Washingtonians wanted, provided for an elected mayor and 19-member partisan city council, and a 14-member nonpartisan school board. The heart of the measure, in many people's estimation, was the automatic Federal payment: each year Congress would automatically appropriate for the District a Federal payment based on the amount the District government could expect to receive if Federal property--ocupying over 50 per cent of the District's land area--were taxable.

In addition to the Senate-Administration version of home rule there were twenty-odd others before the House District Committee. Among these were such curiosities as the Broyhill Bill, proposing that the District of Columbia be given back to Maryland, and the Sisk Bill.

The Sisk Bill called for a referendum to select a 15-member charter-writing board. The charter written by the board would be submitted to a second referendum. If approved, the charter would proceed to Congress, which could veto the whole charter if it objected to anything in it. Should Congress veto the charter, the whole process would have to begin again with a new referendum to select a charter-writing board.

The House of Representatives made it apparent fairly early that it found the automatic Federal payment formula in the Administration bill unacceptable. Administration forces finally worked out the compromise Multer Bill, which was essentially the Senate bill without the automatic Federal payment. It was less than home rule advocates wanted, but it seemed likely to pass and differences over the Federal payment could be worked out in conference.

But the Multer Bill did not pass. Instead, the House voted to amend the Multer bill by adoption of the Sisk substitute, and once more a Senate-passed Administration home rule bill was removed from consideration on the House floor.

Representative B. F. Sisk (D-Calif.) maintains that he is not opposed to home rule, and claims his bill was a sincere effort to present home rule in a form that the House would accept. The fact remains, however, that his bill was widely supported by opponents of home rule, while home rule advocates never took the bill seriously and were very much surprised when the House passed it.

Pressure Tactics