Reply to Charles Allen pushing for no parking for Union Station overhaul

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[quote=Anonymous]Actually the parts that are not federally owned actually belong to MD and it’s residents. MD just agreed to slow DC to borrow certain swaths. So yes, indeed us suburbanites have a say in “your DC neighborhood”.
 
See below:

In order to grant the residents of the District of Columbia voting representation and control over their local affairs, some members of Congress, such as Rep. Dan Lungren, have proposed returning most parts of the city to Maryland. These proposals go back at least as far as 1839, when some members of Congress proposed retrocession of the portion of the District west of Rock Creek to Maryland. In recent years since at least 2001, several failed attempts, mostly supported by Republicans, have been made to return most of the District to Maryland and give them full voting rights: H.R. 810 & H.R. 381, both sponsored by Rep. Ralph Regula (R-OH); and H.R. 1858, H.R. 1015, H.R. 3732 and H.R. 2681, all sponsored by Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX). The proposals received little support from congressional Democrats.

If both the Congress and the Maryland state legislature agreed, jurisdiction over the District of Columbia could be returned to Maryland, excluding a small tract of land immediately surrounding the United States Capitol, the White House and the Supreme Court building which would become known as the "National Capital Service Area". The idea to retrocede all but the federal lands to Maryland dates back to at least 1848.

https://www.dcvote.org/sites/default/files/documen...s/articles/mdrretrocession.pdf

ProQuest has a few pretty good articles about DC retrocession as it relates to MD. Also to become a state DC needs permission from the state of MD.

Originally DC was formed from Maryland and Virginia land, but the Viriginia land was ceded back to Virginia in 1846. Thus, all of DC's current land was originally Maryland's land. And as noted above, there's already been a case (1793-1794) where a DC resident represented Maryland in the U.S. Congress.

Uriah Forrest (who lived in DC) represented Maryland in the U.S. House of Representatives. Up until 1801, people who lived in DC voted just like any other U.S. citizen (voting in either Virginia or Maryland, depending on where the DC land came from). However, the "Organic Act" passed by Congress in 1801 stripped DC residents of their rights to vote in Federal elections. In 1801 this didn't affect many people, but this 1801 law now affects hundreds of thousands of people. Given this strong historical precedent, it would make sense for DC residents to vote in Federal elections as Marylandians. Although a bill was passed in 1961 to give residents the right to vote in presidential elections we still lack proper congressional representation. DC Vote has more information on this)

Which leads us back to the thesis sentence: Although Maryland ceded the land of DC for purposes of creating a Federal capital district, there's evidence that Maryland never ceded that land for the purpose of creating another state. That's important, because states have to specifically okay the creation of another state from their land. Indeed, there's historical evidence that Maryland did not intend for another state to be created, since a DC resident has represented Maryland!

Credit to: David A. Wheeler 
https://dwheeler.com/essays/dc-in-maryland.html [/quote]

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