Council Overrides Mayoral Veto on Increased Scrutiny of Federal Officers in Force/Death Cases, Postpones Some Electricity Shutoffs

Baseball and politics famously share many fans, and both attract a disproportionate number of statistics nerds. It is therefore appropriate that in the same week as Major League Baseball's opening day, the Council's most recent Legislative Meeting saw not just passionate action on the field but also a number of notice-worthy statistical rarities for those meticulously updating their scorecards.

Veto Override

The Council's electronic records only go as far back as Council Period (1989-1990), with prior records only available via low-resolution microfilm. But in the time from 1989 to the present day, the quantity of Council bills that have been vetoed number in the dozens, well short of a hundred. Given the comparatively small size of the DC Council, when it comes to vote counts, there is a very narrow window between a bill failing (six votes), passing (seven votes), and passing by a veto-proof two-thirds majority (nine votes). With decreasingly few nail-biter Council votes in recent years, most mayoral vetoes serve more of a symbolic role, with the results of an override vote rarely in true question.

Such was the case at the most recent Legislative Meeting, when the Council voted to override a mayoral veto of a bill that required Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) officers present when federal law enforcement officers engage in a serious use of force during an arrest fully document these incidents by recording the number, name, and agency of the federal officers present at the time. (This bill was passed as part of a matched pair of bills passed at the previous meeting, with the other bill extending the District's body-worn camera laws to cover specified incidents of serious use of force or death when the perpetrator is a federal officer.)

Both bills were passed unanimously by the Council two Legislative Meetings ago, and the veto override vote at the last Legislative Meeting was also unanimous.

Pause in Electricity Shutoffs

Current DC law provides consumers with protection from electricity shutoffs due to nonpayment during periods of extreme hot or cold weather. At the Council's most recent Legislative Meeting, a limited new pause in electricity shutoffs was put in place via emergency legislation, this time not due to weather but instead, based on a regulatory procedural failure, and subsequent court decision.

In April of 2023, Pepco filed a proposal for a multiyear rate increase with the Public Service Commission, the independent agency that regulates utilities in the District. The Public Service Commission approved the rate increase in November of 2024, and the first increase went into effect in January of 2025. However, a March 2026 DC Court of Appeals decision vacated the approved rate increase, due to the fact that a required evidentiary hearing on the increase was never held.

At its most recent Legislative Meeting, the Council approved a piece of emergency legislation that would ban Pepco from shutting off anyone's electricity, in cases of nonpayment of balances of $1,000 or less, during the 90 days that the emergency bill will be in effect. With the higher electricity rates still in effect, but the procedural snafu which led to it still in flux, the hope is that the pause in shutoffs will allow for some clarity to develop on the future of the process on the higher rates.

Generically, the Council's emergency and temporary bills are a procedural oddity as old as Home Rule, born in the uneasy balance between the need for the Council to pass important and/or time-sensitive legislation quickly with the fact that, under Home Rule restrictions, Congress must be allowed thirty legislative days to passively review all permanent District legislation before it becomes law.

Each emergency measure is actually comprised of two pieces of legislation: a declaration that an emergency (which can imply a time-sensitivity, the gravity of the matter, or both) exists, and then the emergency bill itself, which includes the proposed legislative solution to the problem. If an emergency is declared by the required two-thirds supermajority, and the paired emergency legislation also passes, the legislation goes into effect for ninety days.

When the Council takes separate votes on an emergency declaration and its paired legislation, the vote counts on both measures are usually identical. But in an interesting quirk, for the pause in electricity shutoffs, the votes differed slightly. Some Councilmembers supported the finding that an emergency existed but did not support the legislative solution, while others disagreed there was an emergency but approved of the legislation itself. As a result, the required two-thirds supermajority vote for the emergency declaration was maintained, but the bill itself passed with a slightly lesser (but still sufficient) supermajority vote.

Additionally, temporary versions of bills (which require two votes and remain in effect for 225 days) usually pass by the same vote count as their emergency counterparts, but in the case of the electricity shutoff pause, the temporary bill did not advance.

In other action at the most recent Legislative Meeting,

• On the first of two necessary votes, the Council passed a bill which would require changes in DC's building code to allow for new residential buildings of six or fewer stories to have a single entry/exit stairwell, rather than the currently required two. This would maximize the amount of residential square footage available within the building's footprint, which could ultimately drive down housing costs. Other cities, such as New York, made this change to their building codes years ago.
• The Council voted to disapprove a proposed accelerated, no-bid, single-source contract for the purchase of up to 24 fire trucks from a designated bidder with which the District had not previously done business.
• Via emergency legislation, the Council voted to approve an extended lease between Events DC and the Washington Nationals baseball team, keeping them in DC and at Nationals Park until at least the 2058 baseball season. It also writes into the terms of the lease the substance of legislation passed previously by the Council that dedicates a portion of revenue from the longstanding arena fee on businesses to ongoing improvements at the ballpark.
• Via emergency and temporary legislation, the Council extended its recent revisions to the District's Open Meetings law allowing specific exceptions when a majority of Councilmembers are allowed to legally gather, as long as no votes or action are taken by the Council during these meetings. A permanent version of this bill remains pending.
• A planned vote on emergency and temporary bills extending the capacity of the Metropolitan Police Department to declare temporary 8PM youth curfews in specific geographic areas was postponed until the Council's April 21 Legislative Meeting.
• The first of two necessary votes was taken on a bill to call an accelerated special election to fill the office of DC's Delegate to the House of Representatives in the case of a calamity whereby over one hundred House seats are simultaneously vacant. If the Speaker of the House declares such a number of vacancies exists, and the DC Delegate seat is also vacant, the Board of Elections would be required to hold an election within 49 days. All states were requested to pass such laws under a 2005 federal law on the topic.
• In the first of two necessary votes, the Council voted to prohibit DC Public Libraries from entering into unduly restrictive e-book licensing agreements with publishers once ten states with a total of 50 million people also vote not to do so. This brings the District in line with multiple other states who are seeking improved bargaining power against increasingly pricey and restrictive e-book licensing agreements.
• Via emergency legislation, the Council voted to add Capital One Arena and CareFirst Arena to the list of DC sporting facilities where unauthorized entry onto the playing surface by spectators is forbidden. Such activity is already banned at RFK Stadium, Audi Field, and Nationals Park, but the two other facilities mentioned previously had been inadvertently omitted from the list.

The Council's next Legislative Meeting was originally thought to be on April 21. However, due to late completion of the budget by the mayor's office (while being responsive to additional requests from the Chief Financial Officer), the Council will now hold a brief Legislative Meeting on April 7 so that the Council's rules can be amended to allow the budget to be submitted by the mayor during the Council's spring recess.