jonetta rose barras: Livin’ la Vida Conundrum in DC

There is no escaping this reality: The midterm elections are months away and even if the Democrats win the U.S. House of Representatives, as many predict, they won’t take control until January 2027. During the interim period, District elected officials will undoubtedly continue to experience political bruising and governance crises, heightening the anxiety of DC residents who have increasingly had to rely on the juggling, dancing and strategic maneuvers of Mayor Muriel Bowser and the DC Council to protect them from a hostile national Republican Party and its Mad Hatter leader. 

That fact was on full display Tuesday during a breakfast meeting prior to the council’s legislative session. Members discussed two controversial public safety proposals: the Body-Worn Camera Transparency for Use of Force Emergency Amendment Act of 2026, introduced by Ward 2 Councilmember Brooke Pinto, and the Full Accountability in Arrest Reporting Emergency Amendment Act of 2026, introduced by at-large Councilmember Robert White. 

Those bills, as written, may direct and mandate certain actions by the city’s Metropolitan Police Department when there has been a death or serious use of force. However, local lawmakers’ aim was essentially to rein in federal law enforcement officers, particularly those with Immigration and Customs Enforcement within the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. ICE agents, along with the National Guard, have been in District neighborhoods since August when President Donald Trump declared a DC crime emergency as subterfuge for his massive deportation pogrom against undocumented residents and people of color, even American citizens.

After the council’s public safety discussion, members went into a private, closed-door session to consider their next step in the fight over the congressional disapproval resolution, viewed by some as a repeal, of the city’s DC Income and Franchise Tax Conformity and Revision Temporary Amendment Act of 2025. That law, passed initially on an emergency basis, decoupled the city’s local tax code from sections of the federal One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) — one of Trump’s signature funding bills. 

DC Attorney General Brian Schwalb recently released a legal opinion asserting that, among other things, the Senate had missed the deadline for such action. He argued that, therefore, the law had not been repealed. Still, DC Chief Financial Officer Glen Lee did not include anticipated revenues from the tax decoupling in his February revenue estimate. 

Unable to reach agreement among themselves, legislators left their private huddle without a forward-facing plan. 

On Wednesday, Lee sent a letter to Bowser and DC Council Chair Phil Mendelson regarding the decoupling matter, including his decision not to include decoupling revenue in his fiscal calculations. He accepted the AG’s conclusion that “the tax liabilities created by the emergency law survive its expiration on March 3, 2026.”

“Therefore, without legislative action to repeal the emergency law, the Office of Tax and Revenue (OTR) will continue to process tax returns for tax year 2025 on the basis of that law,” continued Lee.

Additionally, Lee said that because the emergency law only affects last year’s tax obligations, his office will “administer the District’s taxes for tax years 2026 and beyond consistent with the OBBBA.”

The likely annoyance for the mayor and the council is that Lee isn’t straying from his plans to “defer” decoupling revenue from any revenue estimates because of the “considerable risk and uncertainty, from litigation or other actions, to the revenues associated with the District’s decoupling legislation.”

That means neither the mayor nor the council may be able to spend the nearly $600 million they anticipated the decoupling legislation might generate over a multiyear period.

Get ready for another huge budget fight.

Speaking of risk and uncertainty: During the council’s legislative session on Tuesday, members unanimously approved the two public safety bills. Several legislators lamented possible pushback from GOP members of Congress but said the issues at stake are too important.

“This is more about principle. What is best for public safety,” Mendelson said after acknowledging the worries. 

He may be right. But, if past is prologue, and it always is, that will mean little to Capitol Hill Republicans or Trump.

DC is in their crosshairs. Some have introduced legislative proposals designed to weaken or outright overturn the city’s quasi political independence delivered through the Home Rule Act. Consider that in the lineup there is a measure that would repeal the law that permits District residents to elect an attorney general, making the position a presidential appointment instead.

This current circumstance is not aided by the fact that DC officials are in the middle of a highly charged local political season. A record number of offices are hotly contested, with several retirements spawning open seats that have attracted multiple contenders. Mendelson and other incumbents are facing challengers, too.

Moreover, a new system — ranked choice voting — is being introduced in the June primary, enhancing the unpredictability.

Call this the era of District officials Livin’ la Vida Conundrum. 

Every action becomes a dilemma. Tensions are high among councilmembers, two of whom may face each other on the ballot: Pinto and White are vying to become DC’s delegate to the House of Representatives, a seat that opened when Eleanor Holmes Norton announced she would retire at the end of the current term. 

The current strain between the city and Congress is horrible. For the District, every misstep or political miscalculation drags with it the potential for serious consequences — or multiple serious consequences.

In their breakfast meeting, Pinto, chair of the Committee on the Judiciary and Public Safety, alluded to a newfound caution permeating legislators’ policy and political considerations. She said that she had worked on the body camera legislation for “six weeks to make sure we would have support to get it over the finish line,” including consulting with people on Capitol Hill.

That measure, which Pinto co-introduced with Mendelson, would amend on an emergency basis the District’s current law by requiring “release of body-worn camera recordings of Metropolitan Police Department Officers present in the event of an officer-involved death or serious use of force by a law enforcement officer other than a Metropolitan Police Department officer.” 

It also requires release of the “names, as available, of all other law enforcement officers, directly involved in the officer-involved death or serious use of force.” Some portions of the bill would be retroactive to Aug. 1, 2025 — just before the crime emergency was declared by presidential executive order. 

Undoubtedly, seeking to prevent a possible clash with Republicans, especially in the House, that bill does not address the more contentious concerns about ICE and other federal law enforcement, including mask wearing, the lack of visible identification badges, and their frequent tendency to enter private homes and businesses without court-issued warrants. 

Pinto said she had reason to think the measure would be accepted or at least tolerated on the Hill. But given the language in White’s legislation, on which she had not been consulted prior to its circulation, she said she was no longer confident “there will be no pushback” on her own bill.

“We are in a very intense environment,” continued Pinto, asking that she be given a heads-up when someone is developing legislation around issues over which her committee has jurisdiction. “It is important that the council, the mayor, the AG all work together. [That] we’re all on the same page.” 

Except, at least as of Tuesday, there wasn’t full agreement among the different branches of DC government. In a letter to the council sent before their formal vote, Bowser succinctly urged against passage of both bills. 

“This is a federal issue that should be handled by the Congress,” she wrote, noting that the House and Senate have oversight of “federal law enforcement agencies and can require a mask prohibition as well as body-worn cameras and name identification.”

“I urge members of the Council to seek congressional action on these matters,” Bowser added.

Truth be told, I thought that was reasonable advice since Democrats in the Senate continue to block new funding for ICE pending agreement with Republicans on critical reforms, including removal of masks and mandated public identifications.

But councilmembers were listening to different voices — advocates, organizations and ordinary citizens — who have become increasingly and understandably concerned by ICE actions not only in DC but also in other places like Minneapolis. The governors of Virginia and Maryland are moving to constrain ICE.

I am not unsympathetic to the quandary in which District elected officials find themselves. If they attempt to negotiate their way through the issue, they could be perceived as cowering to an unpopular president and law enforcement officers who increasingly look and act like Nazi agents from World War II. If they rush forward battering down the door and asserting their right to run the city, which is not even a territory but a district, they could be stripped of that small crumb of independence.

Being caught in that type of predicament should inspire smarter, savvier maneuvers. Thus far, it has been mostly knee-jerk reactions that sometimes succeed but sometimes provoke greater disruptions. Not much changed this week.

White defended his actions and his bill — the Full Accountability in Arrest Reporting Emergency Amendment Act of 2026, which requires “on an emergency basis, Metropolitan Police Department officers to document identifying information for all law enforcement officers present at the scene of an arrest and any use of force in documentation supporting the arrest, including probable cause affidavits.” The measure was co-introduced by eight of his colleagues.

“I’m not going to fight over which body-worn camera [legislation] is better,” he told Pinto. He suggested during their breakfast meeting that they merge their bills. She declined.

Nevertheless, he removed that section of his bill, eliminating a major area of duplication. He retained requirements for a written report that would include names of all officers including federal agents who were on the scene when a death or serious use of force occurred. 

“The video tells part of the story, the written record tells the rest,” he said later, adding, “This is a question of civil rights. It is the least we can do.”

On the dais, White thanked Free DC and other organizations, offering that they had “asked for leadership” and “13 members” have shown up. 

Co-founded by Alex Dodds, a former head of DC for Democracy and a former staffer for Ward 4 Councilmember and mayoral candidate Janeese Lewis George, Free DC has frequently confronted Bowser at public events over the past several months, accusing her and the police chief of collaborating with ICE as the federal agency undermined DC’s Sanctuary City law and ruthlessly implemented an immigration arrest and deportation campaign. Free DC demanded the council take action.

Last week, the group helped pack a public performance oversight hearing on the DC Metropolitan Police Department before Pinto’s committee. On Tuesday, Free DC and other advocates came back, hoping to declare victory.

That kind of official recognition of citizen participation and political muscle-flexing may play well inside the John A. Wilson Building and among some DC residents. But does it have the same effect inside the federal enclave, or does it simply exacerbate the agony that is Livin’ la Vida Conundrum?

Time will tell.

jonetta rose barras is an author and DC-based freelance journalist, covering national and local issues. She can be reached at thebarrasreport@gmail.com.