“The American society as a whole can never achieve the outer reaches of its potential so long as it tolerates the inner-cities of despair”

                          - Rep. Jack Kemp

 The DC Republican Committee (DCRC)  created a document entitled “A Republican Urban Agenda”. Many urban and inner-city Republicans   can support this document. We believe that this document can be a start in implementing an effective strategy that Republicans can use nationwide. If the Republican Party is going to take its fight to urban American, it must be prepared and it must be in sync with the people it seeks to empower.

http://www.dcgop.com/Urban.html

DC REPUBLICAN COMMITTEE URBAN GOP PLATFORM

In this document, the District of Columbia Republican Committee (“DCRC”) is pleased to make recommendations for issues to be addressed in the 2008 National Republican platform.  It is intended to inform the public debate at the Republican National Convention, as well as serve as a statement of our local party’s vision and priorities for the coming years. 

Because of its special place in our Republic as our Nation’s Capital, and with our continuing Congressional oversight, many actions of the Federal Government affect the people of the District directly.  Conversely, many local District issues also require significant Federal engagement, for example the issue of our voting representation in Congress, which is our most important issue.  As such, in the first section of this platform, we list our recommendations on issues which also have broad national relevance.  In the second section, we list issues which have mainly local implications.  We do not, however, address other important national policy issues of more general interest, for example national defense or economic policy.

The District of Columbia is a large, diverse, and vital community, with many intellectual, cultural, and economic assets.  It is on a path to become one of the great metropolitan areas of the world.  As such, we face many of the same difficulties and challenges as other major urban areas of our country.   Significantly, however, the District is the only purely urban entity represented at the Republican National Convention.  It can serve as a model and proving ground for innovative policies and visionary goals which can have important relevance both locally and nationally.  As such, we have crafted our first section to propose a Republican Urban Agenda.

Finally, we wish to congratulate our presumptive 2008 party nominee, Senator John McCain.  His history as a reformer, devoted to our Nation’s security, well-being and personal freedoms, aligns closely with our DC Republican Party’s core values.  We look forward to supporting his Presidential campaign this Fall and wish him all success.

• National Issues – A Republican Urban Agenda

As an overarching principle, we believe that the District of Columbia is a superb location to implement innovative urban initiatives which reflect core Republican values and informed public policy.  In our Republican Urban Agenda, we recommend consideration of the following provisions, which we group by topic area:

Education:

• Support and strengthen public and charter schools and voucher programs, to provide students and parents with choices in education.
• Strengthen all schools supported with public funds by establishing rigorous academic standards of achievement for students, standards of subject competency and performance for teachers; standards of performance for administrators; and enhanced accountability in meeting such standards.
• Create effective policies to insure the safety of students and teachers in schools everywhere; and to require effective emergency preparedness plans and resources to address critical events.
• Establish workforce development and job training programs in public and charter schools, including apprentice programs, and vocational education to broaden employment options for young people and to strengthen urban economies.
• Recognize the importance of small and medium businesses to the growth of our economy by teaching entrepreneurial skills in public and charter schools.

Health Care and Public Welfare:

• Recognize the adverse public health and safety implications of drug addiction, especially on our youth, provide alternative opportunities for substance abuse programs to empower individuals to choose the certified drug treatment option that best meets individual needs and implement programs which would, as appropriate, substitute treatment for incarceration.
• Enhance individual options for affordable health care by allowing its purchase on a National basis and by making it portable for the individual without regard to employment. This is especially important for women, who tend to move in and out of the workforce for child and eldercare responsibilities.  Flexible programs such as small business insurance pools and those directed at vulnerable population groups such as children and the elderly are important to ensure all citizens have access to affordable healthcare. Fight the global epidemic of HIV/AIDS by strengthening prevention and treatment programs, with a special emphasis on minority communities and women.
• Make adoption easier by providing prospective parents with resources for legal and financial issues involved in the adoption process, and strengthen foster care by providing appropriate resources and oversight.

Housing:

• Establish federal tax incentives to provide affordable housing opportunities for key sectors of the workforce such as teachers, police officers, and firefighters.
• Improve home ownership opportunities for public housing by converting existing rent or tenant payments into long-term purchase payments.

Public Transportation:

• Continue to maximize the value of investments in public transportation through public/private development projects in the areas around metro and rail stations.
• Increase the federal commitment through the Urban Mass Transit Act for the upkeep and expansion of public transportation.
• Push for equal treatment for Federal contributions to highways and mass transit projects, to encourage more diverse and economically efficient transportation options.

Economic Development:

• Enhance local small, disadvantaged, and ethnically-diverse business opportunities by providing reliable and accessible funding from the Small Business Administration and the Minority Business Development Administration resources.
• Promote current Innovation-based economic development policies, leveraging citizen’s creativity and high technology, to allow the urban workforce to participate in the 21st century global information economy, and to create clean, safe, high-wage jobs.
• Provide incentives for the redevelopment of “brownfield” land that has been abandoned or underutilized because of environmental contamination.
• Encourage high technology companies to locate in under-served urban jurisdictions through the provision of workforce development programs, affordable facilities and financial incentives.
• Continue to reduce impact of commercial real estate taxes on small businesses.
• Enact tax incentives for small businesses willing to relocate to economically struggling communities.

Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness

• Enhance emergency preparedness at the individual, family and group level through education, training and practice programs.
• Ensure the readiness of area hospitals to effectively respond to major public health emergencies through planning, resource availability, and practice training.

Family and Marriage Issues:

• The District of Columbia Republican Committee believes that legal issues regarding the family and marriage are primarily the responsibility of the states and should not be addressed in the United States Constitution.
• Because there are various views in our Party on right to life/choice, the District of Columbia Republican Committee does not support any language in the platform on this issue.

Green Initiatives:

• The leadership of major US urban areas should formally recognize that adverse climatic effects due to greenhouse gases pose a great potential threat to mankind, and begin initiatives to reduce carbon emissions, for example tax incentives and public information campaigns.
• Promote the use of alternative energy within urban areas by establishing tax incentives for personal and home use of alternative energy.
• Encourage public education programs for greater conservation and efficiency measures to reduce energy consumption.
• Encourage cities to adopt “green zones” or carbon-neutral areas of the city under development or particularly vulnerable via a community planning process.
• Amend building codes to address the impacts of climate change. 

• Issues Specific to the District of Columbia

The District of Columbia faces many serious challenges caused in part by decades of confusion over its relationship with the Federal Government, and economic mismanagement and corruption due to near-one party rule.  We propose the following suggestions for restoring transparent and just governance, economically sound decision making, and intelligent public policy choices:

DC Governance:

• Following a long tradition of support by the Republican Party; support voting representation in the House of Representatives for the residents of the District of Columbia, as stated in bill H.R.1905 authored by Congressman Tom Davis (R-Va), and passed in the House of Representatives by a margin of  241  to 177, and in its companion bill now before the Senate, S.1257.
• Support autonomy in budgeting and spending local funds, as proposed by President Bush and passed by the Republican United States Senate.
• Support legislative autonomy so that District of Columbia laws do not have to be reviewed by Congress.
• Support local autonomy by establishing a locally nonpartisan elected Attorney General to prosecute District of Columbia law, funded by savings from the federal United States Attorney for the District of Columbia.
• End the practice of Congressional riders to the District’s annual appropriation bill that limit local government decision-making.
• Eliminate the DC government’s structural deficit, estimated by the Government Accountability Office at $.4 billion to $1.2 billion annually, by lifting the Home Rule Charter prohibition on taxing non-resident income which is 2/3 of total DC income; reimbursing the DC government for its performance of services to the federal government such as police protection of special federal events; and/or a regular federal payment.

Education:

• Reauthorize and fund the Federal DC Tuition Assistance Program.
• Reauthorize the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program which provides federal funds for low-income DC children to attend non-public schools in DC.
• Make the teaching of entrepreneurial skills a standard facet of the DC school system, to build a smarter, more innovative workforce.
• Support DC Charter and public schools.

Health Care and Public Welfare:

• Ensure that residents living east of the Anacostia River have access to prompt and quality medical care at a significant facility or facilities equipped to handle emergencies.

Housing:

• Protect the Federal tax credit for first time home buyers in the District of Columbia.
• Encourage DC government to continue low-income housing efforts by promoting the development of affordable housing to maintain economic diversity.  

Public Transportation:

• Enact Republican Congressman Tom Davis’s bill that would contribute 1.5 billion dollars to the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority to improve our Metrorail system, provided that affected jurisdictions establish a permanent funding source for their shares of the cost of Metro.
• Contribute federal funds and guidance to extend Metrorail to Tyson’s Corner and Dulles International Airport in Northern Virginia.

Economic Development:

• Expand the current Enterprise Zone for the District of Columbia to include the entire District.
• Ensure that District-located contractors have special legal status when competing for contracts under the purview of the DC Office of Contracting and Procurement.
• Encourage DC public-private institutions to coordinate with new regional Innovation-based economic development initiatives, which leverage creativity and high technology to create clean, safe, high-wage jobs which can compete in the global information economy.

Homeland Security and Law Enforcement:

• Push for increased Federal homeland security funding to help DC acquire the resources necessary to manage its special security and emergency preparedness needs as the seat of the Federal Government.
• Dedicate resources including federal funds for a District DNA Crime Lab.
• Create additional DC government resources to provide information to the public on disaster and critical event preparedness and response.
• Whatever the Supreme Court decides in Heller v. District of Columbia, we support changes in the District’s strict gun laws to permit law-abiding adults to keep and bear arms for self-defense, subject to regulation in the interest of public safety.

Taxes and Spending:

• Continue DC “Tax Free Holidays” on a permanent basis.
• Maintain laws that protect homeowners from sudden reassessments that dramatically increase property taxes.
• Continue to bring needed tax relief to District taxpayers.
• Enact a capital gains tax differential for DC small business owners.
• Reform DC estate and capital gains tax laws to conform to current Federal laws.

Corruption and Ethics:

• Immediately ban the practice of District employees lobbying the Council and Mayor for contracts.
• Limit the practice of eminent domain, or selling of District property without full public hearings.

Green Initiatives:

• Restore laws that give economic incentives for purchasing fuel efficient vehicles such as hybrid vehicles. (Reduction in District Registration fee for new Hybrid vehicles.)
• Promote tax incentives for small businesses willing to relocate to economically disadvantaged parts of Washington in which they can show an environmental benefit to their communities.
• DC Government should provide incentives towards reducing the carbon footprint of City services and contractors.