Capital Mayor Proposes Exempting Residents From Income Tax Until City Achieves Statehood

Mayor Marion Barry Jr. said Wednesday that the District of Columbia’s 638,000 residents should be exempt from federal income tax until the city achieves statehood and has voting representation in Congress.

“I kind of like that idea as an interim measure while we work toward statehood,” Barry told Walter E. Fauntroy, the city’s non-voting delegate to the House, as hearings opened on revisions to the city’s proposed state constitution.

District voters in November, 1982, approved a constitution for a proposed 51st state named New Columbia, despite warnings by Fauntroy and others that the document was too controversial to get through Congress.

A task force spent the last year amending the proposal with suggestions that several provisions be eliminated, including the guarantee of government-sponsored jobs and loans for all district residents and guaranteed rights to abortion.