While the issue of D.C. Statehood is an old and well debated one, it’s somewhat fresh now because a series of news outlets (particularly the Washington Post) have started renewed writing on the issue because of the recent political push among the District’s leadership for statehood, and particularly for economic independence from Congress.
Some of the recent articles:
The Atlantic: The State of New Columbia
WaPo: The District is about to declare independence
My position is there should not, and cannot be, statehood for the district. I’d say in the “here and now”, I’d be quite fine with financial independence for the district. Namely, their budgeting process and ability to spend money they raise should go into effect immediately upon the D.C. council’s approving it, it can be sent to Congress which with a majority of both houses can block it from taking effect and propose revisions, but if they do nothing it just remains in effect. This way the district isn’t prevented from spending its own revenue during government shut downs and other things of that nature, and it will take an active majority in both parties to actually strike down D.C. budgets and change them.
Long term–I agree it’s a “problem” that district residents have no Senate or House representation (meaningful–the D.C. House member cannot participate in the real/final roll call vote, although she can vote in committee.) However I’ll note it’s not a problem unique to D.C.–all of the non-State territories of the country share this problem, and Puerto Rico has a larger population and arguably more of an argument that it should be represented, and it doesn’t even get to participate in the electoral college (D.C. does.) So to me I don’t view it as a major issue, but I concede it is an issue.
My solution would not be statehood, though. I for one, do not really think we should introduce a state that would be so geographically small, we’d essentially be making a single city a state, with two Senators and a House member. Yes, D.C. has more people than both Vermont and Wyoming, but theoretically that situation will probably not persist. Due to D.C.'s zoning laws and the Height of Buildings Act of 1910 there is a realistic “hard limit” to how much D.C. itself can really grow. Whereas Wyoming and Vermont both have few residents and aren’t growing particularly fast, they have far more land (especially Wyoming, but even Vermont is many times the size of Rhode Island which is the smallest state and which itself is many times the size of the District) and could and likely will eventually be larger than the District can grow to be.
While geography may seem unimportant, I argue that there’s some good sense to having states be at least a certain size. I’d also argue there’s some sense in them being a certain population, too–and while I recognize there’s nothing to be done for it in some cases, arguably we probably shouldn’t have made Wyoming a separate state given its very sparse population. But there are management issues that can arise for State governments overseeing vast stretches of underpopulated land, I suppose.
Additionally, I would likewise argue that setting the precedent of a “city” being a state, seems bad to me. Now, I do not really think D.C. statehood would dramatically increase the chance of say, New York or Chicago seceding from their respective states to become their own states–particularly since the constitution requires the consent of the state legislature and the Congress to handle such split ups, I think it does create the groundwork for the idea of a “single city as a state, with full privileges of a state.”
I think the biggest argument for me is one of simple constitutional principle. We have a precedent set in 1846–the original district was 100 sq. miles with 31 sq. miles being on the Virginia side of the Potomac, the Virginia General Assembly passed legislation stating it would accept the Virginia cession back from the Federal government if the Federal government made such a retrocession. The Federal government passed such a law, contingent on the results of a referendum of voters on the Virginia side of the Potomac, a majority voted to go back to Virginia, and thus we have the District borders we have today.
I would argue the constitutionally proper solution would be to emulate this for Maryland. To establish around the capitol building, supreme court and White House a “special extraterritorial Federal District” which would have very few residents (and I’d argue for a general plan to try and relocate them and use any residential zoned areas caught up in the new Federal District reappropriated over time) and the rest of the city would simply become Washington, Maryland. The special Federal District would be considered to be in Washington, DC still, but DC would be a very small area mostly with only government buildings in it. Thus District residents would now have two Senators representing their interests and Maryland would get at least one new congressional seat in the next reapportionment due to the increase in its population and likely a congressional district would be drawn largely encompassing the current city.
An alternative that is also workable would be to just consider the District residents Maryland residents for certain purposes. There is actually precedent for this–in the early days of the 100 sq. mi. district (into the early 19th century) residents voted in Virginia or Maryland elections, respectively. So they effectively were represented in Congress. It was solely a congressional act–the Organic Act of 1801, which clarified that the Federal District was wholly outside of Maryland and Virginia (as opposed to being land inside those States that had just been administratively ceded to the Federal District), since this wasn’t the result of a constitutional amendment but just a simple law, that law could be partially repealed to restore voting rights, with no need to create an unnecessary and undesirable new state.
The only wrinkle would be the D.C. Presidential election voting amendment (23rd) if it was not repealed along with the cession of the district back to Maryland then it’s conceivable the small Vatican-City esque rump administrative area would still be allowed to send 3 electors to the electoral college, which would be undesirable.