Washington, DC, delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton (D) wants an end to Congressional oversight of the District of Columbia, and she’s moving to revive earlier legislation that would to do so.

The congressional review period for DC bills is onerous for the District, and rarely even used by Congress, causing DC bills to be unnecessarily ensnared in congressional bureaucracy for months[.]

It’s already the case, though, that the oversight is so rarely used—only twice in the last 30 years has Congress moved to overrule a DC-passed ordinance—that the district already is, functionally, self-ruling.

However.

The move, even were it a good idea, would require an Amendment to our Constitution. Here’s Art I, Sect 8 on governance of the District of Columbia:

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

Holmes has a beef, in that there are too many bureaucrats involved, and it is much to slow to get anything done. Those 60 days to review an ordinance proposal are patently excessive, especially in this day of computers and Congressional staffs so bloated that staffers are scratching for things to do. I’ll go out on a limb: it shouldn’t take more than a week (Sundays excepted) to do the review and either approve or reject the ordinance.

Those interferences, those delays, badly want reduction.