MISSOURI COMMENTARY: SYMBOL OF GREATNESS, AND FAILURE

Washington, D.C., is simultaneously a symbol of our nation's greatness as a democracy and a frightening example of the failure of local governance. Those who fervently believe that turning our social problems over to governors and mayors is a panacea might take a closer look at Washington's flirtation with bankruptcy.

For a hundred years after the Civil War, the District of Columbia government was a presidential and congressional play toy. Presidents picked political hacks to serve as overlord commissioners of the nation's capital, and Congress voted enough extra money (beyond the local property and sales taxes) to keep it all afloat. The cradle of democracy was inherently undemocratic in its own local politics.

In the early 1970s, the decision was made to put the district's finances on sound footing and institute home rule so Washington could elect its own mayor and city council. Congress would continue a decent federal payment designed both to offset taxes lost from the plethora of federally owned property and to defray the increase in costly services related to being the nation's capital.

Several major public accounting firms poured over the district's books and put them in working order by the time the transfer to home rule was completed in 1974. It all appeared to be a worthy exercise in good government: the transfer of power to the people. It was, one could argue, a precursor of the Contract With America.

It hasn't worked. It's easy but fallacious to pin all of the blame for the District of Columbia's troubles on the last two mayors. To be sure, the 12 years of spoilsman Mayor Marion Berry and the four years of reform-bungler Mayor Sharon Pratt Kelly contributed something to today's $722 million deficit (an incredible 22.6 percent of the district's $3.2 billion budget). But other factors played a role as well.

Municipal labor unions helped pad the public payrolls so that today there are 45,000 public employees in a city of 570,000 people. General Hospital was allowed to run out of control as in no other major city.

The city government decided to create a university and then tried to expand it into all disciplines, even to the point of building a law school to serve dropouts from other area law schools. The city was stuck with responsibilities -- corrections, judicial administration and welfare -- that are normally handled by a state but were dumped on the stateless district.

More than any other factor contributing to the financial woes of the District of Columbia was its changing demographic character. To a visitor, the district is the White House, Capitol Hill, the monuments, the Smithsonian and the embassies. It's Washington the beautiful.

The larger, but unseen, side is Washington the impoverished. As is true in practically all the older cities, there has been enormous white flight to the suburbs. In the district there has even been black flight -- the exodus of well paid African-American professionals and governmental employees.

There has been an explosion of the district's Medicaid and welfare rolls. Three years ago there were 60,750 district residents receiving Aid to Families with Dependent Children. Today, the number is 74,544, an increase of 20 percent. The 100,000 level is in sight by the end of the decade. Over one fourth of the residents of Washington, 150,000, are on Medicaid.

The number of district residents who work -- and, thus, pay taxes -- fell to 250,000 in 1993 from 320,000 in 1985, a drop of more than 20 percent. Of all the poor people in the Washington metropolitan area, 60 percent live in the district. Every major economic development proposal up for consideration in the district contains a tax abatement provision.

These trends are being replicated across America in the older cities of the East and Midwest, as well as in Western cities like Los Angeles that have large minority populations. No wonder some governors and big city mayors are wondering about the joys of unfettered local decision-making. The suspicion is that the federal government will shift responsibilities to the localities and then cut the federal budget in the very programs they unload on the state and cities.

Discredited Mayor Barry, once a vocal advocate of home rule, now finds it "unworkable." "We were so anxious to show we could take care of ourselves. We were thirsty for freedom. We never should have taken on all these responsibilities."

People in the state capitols and old city halls are beginning to wonder about their forthcoming blessing-to-be in local control.

~Tom Eagleton is a former U.S. senator from Missouri and a columnist for the Pulitzer Publishing Co.