Hacker News Reader

Comment by lambda | Hacker News Reader

I don't understand why they don't just change the District of Columbia to consist only of the federal buildings, and give the rest back to Maryland (I don't believe there are still any residences on the Virginia side of the river, but if so, give that land back to Virginia).

Then there can be the constitutionally mandated federal district, that consists simply of the federal buildings, and everywhere that people live (outside of the White House, Number One Observatory Circle, and maybe a few other formal federal residences) would actually be within state jurisdiction.

This already happened to the bulk of the Virginia side of DC in 1847 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_of_Columbia_retrocess...). I don't see why they don't just do that again with the rest.

View on HN

Geography, for a start. Federal buildings quite widespread, not just concentrated around the mall.

http://www.gsa.gov/portal/category/22431

Does that really matter? Couldn't you just say "Federal Buildings are in the jurisdiction of the District of Columbia, everything else is in the jurisdiction of Maryland"?

If that doesn't work, it doesn't really matter that much if you sweep up a few commercial buildings into DC. Most of those federal buildings are mixed in with retail, hotels, convention centers, offices, and the like, which doesn't cause disenfranchisement if you include them within DC. The big problem is residential areas.

I don't think there's any circle you can draw around federal buildings that wouldn't include residential buildings also.

If you declared all federal buildings to be part of the district (and everything else Maryland) it would get messy fast:

+ What about commercial buildings that the feds lease? (There are many of these.)

+ What about federal buildings which are leased to commercial organizations? (Not sure if there are any, but it wouldn't surprise me.)

+ Would federal DC have its own first responders specifically to service federal buildings?

+ Would DC pay Maryland taxes for road maintenance between its "islands" of office space?

Etc.

How would that differ from embassies?

The district would be subservient to the state for taxes, lease contracts etc. but it's entirely possible to treat the individual buildings as "sovereign territory of the District of Columbia" just like how the little townhouse in London is Ecuadorian territory, and thousands of other embassies around the world like it.

Once you walked off the sidewalk, or off the third floor elevators, or through that door, etc, you would be on "federal turf" so to speak. It's not about a geographical circle.

None of these are particularly new questions. There are federal buildings and federal leased space in every major city across the US. The feds have their own Federal Protective Service Police that respond to incidents on federal property in major cities nation wide. Fire/EMS is usually handled by the locals.

The core national mall area is already protected by US Park Police, it would be possible to create a core DC area as a national park and return the rest of all land to the states. Federal buildings on land returned to the states would be treated like any other federal building in a state. There are plenty of federal buildings in NoVa and Maryland already.

And a whole bunch of them are already in Virginia anyway.

It's probably a good idea for DC to not be inside the territory of any state. Maryland would have the power to severely disrupt the federal government otherwise, and it could be seen as a conflict of interest if Maryland asks for a bunch of money to improve their roads or emergency services, since some of it will trickle back down to benefit the federal government.

Virginia has the Pentagon, among other things, so that conflict of interest already exists.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com