Into Law But Off The D.C. Tax Form
Agency Forgets Box For Statehood Fund

By Lori Montgomery
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, January 26, 2006

It seemed like a good idea at the time: Give D.C. taxpayers the chance to bankroll the push for statehood by adding a checkoff box to their annual income tax forms.

The D.C. Council approved the idea. In November 2004, the mayor signed it into law. But things get so darned busy around tax time. Late last year, as they prepared to mail out the forms for 2005, officials at the D.C. Office of Tax and Revenue plumb forgot.

Yesterday, statehood advocates were highly annoyed by the omission, saying it all but dooms their efforts for this year.

"I'm totally ticked off about it," said council member Phil Mendelson (D-At Large), who sponsored the bill that created the D.C. Statehood Delegation Fund. "If people don't know about it, they're not going to check it off."

The director of the city's tax office, Sherryl Hobbs Newman, dismissed the error as "simply an oversight." She said complying with the new law will require a "complete redesign" of the tax form, which will be done before new forms are mailed out in December.

Until then, taxpayers interested in contributing to the statehood fund are invited to write the word "statehood" and the amount of their contribution at the bottom of page 2 of forms D40 and D40EZ.

Unless, that is, they're filing electronically.

The tens of thousands of families who file online must print out a separate form -- the D40P payment voucher -- write "statehood" on that, and mail it in, along with a check for the amount of their contribution, according to city tax officials.

A contribution to the statehood fund will "increase your taxes if you owe us, and decrease your refund if we owe you," Hobbs Newman said.

Tax officials were at a loss yesterday to explain why they failed to include the checkoff, given that they were directed to do it nearly a year and a half ago. Mendelson introduced the legislation at the request of Rep. Ray Browne (D), one of the three members of the District's "shadow" delegation to the U.S. Congress.

Browne and the two shadow senators -- Paul Strauss (D) and Florence Pendleton (D) -- are elected by D.C. voters but receive no salaries and no budgets and hold no official position on Capitol Hill. Their primary mission is to lobby for D.C. statehood, but Congress has limited their ability to spend public money in pursuit of that goal.

After years of raising his own cash, Browne urged the council to create the statehood fund to help pay the delegation's administrative expenses, including staff, postage, computers, mailings and phone service. Contributions would be logged with the D.C. Office of Campaign Finance, and the shadow delegation would be prohibited from taking any of the money as a salary.

Browne suggested -- and the council agreed -- that the fund should be filled through the fundraising efforts of a new, nine-member statehood commission. The mayor is responsible for naming five members, while the council gets to pick four.

But Browne said he doesn't think anyone has actually been appointed to the panel. If the commission does exist, "I don't think they've done anything," he said. "They haven't told us if they have."

It was Mendelson's idea to add the tax form checkoff to the legislation. The entire package won the council's unanimous support in fall 2004.

A year later, Mendelson said, he wrote the city tax office to say: "Don't forget. We passed it. It's law."

Alas, the statehood checkoff had already been forgotten on the 123,000 tax forms set to be delivered to taxpayer doorsteps in December.

Hobbs Newman had 60,000 additional forms printed up with a special notice on the cover and sent them to public libraries and other city offices. But those forms don't actually have a checkoff box, either.

Browne said he was frustrated by the mistake.

"It wasn't our job to go down there and print it on the forms," he said. "We assume that if the city passes a law, there is a way for the city to follow through on it."

Staff writer Eric M. Weiss contributed to this report.