12/05/2016
If DC residents were hired to government jobs, it would allow more money to remain in the DC budget due to Congress prohibiting the city taxing the incomes of suburban workers. This would mean the money could be allocated to our s**tty, overcrowded public school system, or fixing the water lines in our communities with higher chemical levels than Flint, Michigan. However, as we know, our city has no interest in the allocation of funds for the betterment of its residents. Instead, it routinely spends money on displays for tourists, bells and whistles on the metro that we don’t give a s**t about, or festivals that seem to “coincidentally” contribute to the gentrification of our city. We’ve seen them spend $30,000 on a WW2 plane flyover on the National Mall, a 10 minute impromptu-ish fixation for the tourists, and in the same year come up $8,000 short in the education budget. We’ve seen them order 428 shiny new cars for the metro from Kawasaki, ordering 100 more spur-the-moment to even the price tag out from an $886 million one to a 1.46 billion one, while we saw no increase in the education budget or public service. To top it off, only 8 were on the track. In short, the people that run our city have no interest in what’s best for the People, and this is explained largely by the fact that most of them don’t even live in the city!
Mayor Bowser has said that those who wish to run this city should live in it. However, no change under her administration has been made, spare her hiring her personal staff from DC (city rules require her direct subordinates to be from DC or provide proof of residence within 180 days of hiring). Besides, many agencies outside her control look the other way to DC government offering jobs almost exclusively to non-DC residents. This means that they are complicit in DC dollars circulating beyond city limits. As Colbert King of the Washington Post said, “city leaders have been all talk and little action. Despite a fairly useless “residency preference” added to the employment system in DC, nonresidents constitute 35,302 employees in several agencies of the DC government. This extends to the DC governing body itself, of course, with 16,103 Maryland residents, 3,579 Virginia residents, and 429 residents from elsewhere versus barely 15,000 DC residents. Kevin Donahue, a high ranking member of DC government, states that Mayor Bowser launched a program to connect DC residents to government jobs. However, we’re unsatisfied, as these are entry-level jobs, while the nonresidents in DC government jobs have far higher salaries and are generally found in higher-paying jobs. The “Pathway to the Middle Class” initiatives by Bowser have been serving nonresident employee prospects far more as well.
So now, on the subject of the hiring process: what accounts for nonresidents filling most of the city’s jobs? Are Marylanders, Virginians and other nonresidents getting hired because they are more qualified? No. Do DC residents lack the skill to serve higher levels of public service? No. So what we see is that we are UNREPRESENTED. The People of DC have NO VOICE. Now we come to the subject of statehood. Think about this, after all the information you’ve just read: do you really think statehood will solve our problem? Will help it?
If we got statehood tomorrow, nonresidents would still dominate our government.
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Side note: for lower paying jobs given to Maryland and Virginia residents, we appreciate the truth that gentrification has pushed many residents of DC into the suburban cities in Silver Spring, Alexandria, Bowie, Arlington, Largo, etc. But what we’re seeing here is the actual decision makers of our city government being from outside the city. Not just suburbs of the city in the same state, like many other metropolitan cities may see, but actually over state limits. How fu**ed up is that?
For Further Reading: http://pocket.co/sMdBD3
