D.C. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson (D) said he wrote to the U.S. Senate on Monday to withdraw the city’s criminal code revision legislation ahead of a Republican-led disapproval resolution in that chamber that could overturn the bill. However, several lawmakers raised doubts about whether the move could prevent the Senate from voting, with one Republican lawmaker calling it a “desperate, made-up maneuver.”
“The Home Rule Act requires that in order for Council Acts to become law they must be transmitted to both houses of Congress,” Mendelson wrote in the letter addressed to Vice President Harris, who serves as the president of the Senate. “Since the Senate has not yet taken action on [the criminal code revisions], my withdrawal of this legislation means … it is not properly before Congress at this time.”
Mendelson said he believes his move to pull the Revised Criminal Code Act of 2022 is unprecedented in the history of the city’s legislature, but that there is no provision in the Home Rule Act to keep him from doing so.
“I don’t know if that’ll stop the Senate Republicans, but our position is the bill is not before Congress any longer,” Mendelson said at a news conference Monday. He added that the withdrawal would allow the council to rework the bill and improve lawmakers’ messaging about the law, but he didn’t have an estimate on when any revised bill would be resubmitted, noting that it could take some time before the council comes to Congress with a new version.
“This is not conceding to Republican rhetoric that the bill is bad, it’s simply pulling it back so that we have more options available to us as well as lowering the heat and lowering the rhetoric,” Mendelson added.
But a Senate leadership aide, speaking on condition of anonymity to talk frankly about the legislative process, disagreed with the chairman’s position that the council can withdraw a bill that’s already been transmitted to Congress. (Because D.C. is not a state, Congress reviews all legislation passed by the council.) The Republican-controlled House last month voted for the disapproval resolution in a bipartisan vote.
“Not only does the statute not allow for a withdrawal of a transmission, but at this point the Senate Republican privileged motion will be acting on the House disapproval resolution, rather than the D.C. Council’s transmission to the Senate. We still expect the vote to occur,” the aide said.
Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-Tenn.), who sponsored the disapproval resolution targeting the criminal code, in a statement called Mendelson’s actions a “desperate, made-up maneuver.”
Not only do Mendelson’s actions have no basis in the D.C. Home Rule Act, Hagerty asserted, but it, “underscores the completely unserious way the D.C. Council has legislated. No matter how hard they try, the council cannot avoid accountability for passing this disastrous, dangerous D.C. soft-on-crime bill that will make residents and visitors less safe.”
The office of Eleanor Holmes Norton, D.C.’s nonvoting delegate to Congress, also said Monday that withdrawing the bill was unlikely to affect Senate proceedings, adding that there was no precedent for withdrawing a bill that’s already been transmitted to Congress.
The criminal code legislation is a sweeping bill that changes how many crimes are defined and sentenced in the city’s outdated code. Some congressional lawmakers have seized on provisions of the code revision that reduce the statutory maximum penalty for crimes like carjackings and robberies, labeling supporters of the changes as soft on crime amid national conversations about public safety and policing.
Proponents of the revisions say the debate about the bill has lacked nuance, noting that the changes create new sentencing enhancements that can increase penalties, for example. D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) has also opposed various changes to the code and unsuccessfully vetoed the bill, a posture that has been cited by congressional opponents of the bill. Ahead of the House vote, Bowser formally proposed legislative changes to the bill to address her concerns.
Last week, President Biden said he would sign the disapproval resolution if it passed through the Senate and reached his desk.
At a news conference Monday afternoon focused on public safety in the District, Bowser reiterated some of her issues with the proposed changes to the code and said she agreed with Mendelson’s view that it’d be best to prevent a Senate vote.
“It sounds like some members of the Senate have spoken up, I’m not sure that’s procedurally possible,” she added.
John Wagner contributed to this report.
This story is developing and will be updated.
