that they haven't had time to submit a detailed analysis, to do so by Thursday. Of course, if it is not too long, it will be included as a part of your statement. Senator Smith, any questions? Senator SMITH. No; thank you. Senator KEFAUVER. Dr. Galloway? Dr. GALLOWAY. As a footnote to the witness' statement, Mr. Chairman, I might add that I estimated that during the first session of the Eightieth Congress, Members of the House devoted 3,000 man-hours of time to the consideration of District affairs. Senator KEFAUVER. What did the members of the Senate do? Dr. GALLOWAY. I have not made such a study of the Senate, sir. I was working for a House committee at that time. Senator SMITH. Do you want to comment on the amount of work that the chairman of this committee has done this year, Dr. Galloway? Dr. GALLOWAY. Oh, thank you; yes, indeed. The chairman of this committee has devoted his talents without end to this cause, both before and after his becoming a member of this body; and will continue, I am sure, to do so, as well as other members of the subcommittee. Senator KEFAUVER. As a further footnote to the record, Dr. Galloway and I are very good friends. Senator SMITH. As long as we are stirring away a bit, Mr. Chairman, I may say, sitting on the other side, I certainly agree with Dr. Galloway, and the chairman deserves the entire credit of the haste with which we have worked and the desire of getting a bill before the House, entirely the chairman's. Senator KEFAUVER. Thank you. I am certain I have not given any more time to this than has Mrs. Smith. Senator SMITH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Senator KEFAUVER. Let us see who else we have. Mr. Martini, will you come forward? Mr. Martini, will you identify yourself? STATEMENT OF JOHN H. MARTINI, BUSINESS AGENT AND SECRETARY OF HOTEL AND RESTAURANT EMPLOYEES INTERNATIONAL ALLIANCE, AMERICAN FEDERATION OF LABOR Mr. MARTINI. Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, my name is John H. Martini, business agent and secretary of Hotel and Restaurant Employees International Alliance of the American Federation of Labor, representing over 1,500 workers. The majority of our workers are District residents who have never in their lives been able to cast a ballot, only because they live here. They feel their difference from other Americans keenly and therefore overwhelmingly favor suffrage for the District of Columbia. They are tired of having a government which is completely unresponsive to their needs, as judged, for example, by the action of the Public Utilities Commission in the recent Capital Transit hearings, the role of the Commissioners in pushing for the sales tax and countless other examples. We support the bill reported out by the subcommittee. We think it is a tremendous improvement over bills reported out in the past. It is our earnest hope that this year Congress will grant suffrage to the people of the District. We strongly support the provision of the bill which would set up a city council that has legislative power to draft legislation which becomes law unless adversely acted upon by Congress in 60 days or vetoed by the President. While the bill is a good one and we support it, there are certain recommendations that we wish to make to the committee, which we believe would strengthen the bill. We believe the Nation's capital should be a model of democracy and not like today, a constant reminder that we do not practice what we preach. The slums of Washington, the Jim-Crow conditions here, the antiquated welfare system, are a constant testimonial to our failure to put into practice what we preach. We think that the bill suggested by the subcommittee would help eradicate these conditions by including in its provisions on the reorganization of the District Government a clause that would ban discrimination in schools, hospitals, recreational facilities. We also suggest that the salary of a councilman he raised from the proposed $3,000 a year to $5,000 per year. A salary of $3,000 per year is inadequate to live on today. Thus, only those with other sources of income could afford to serve as councilmen. Obviously, the aim should be to attract the person of the highest ability and not only those financially able to serve as councilmen. We also think that the bill would be strengthened if it permitted 18-year-olds to vote. At 18 we judge our youth to be old enough to fight we should judge them old enough to participate in their government. Along the same lines we favor a system of proportional representation so that minority groups could be represented. In conclusion, I wish to repeat that we wholeheartedly support the bill as reported by the subcommittee. We think it would extend democracy to the Nation's capital and give to Washingtonians a chance to run their own government. Our hope is that Congress will act on the bill this year. Our suggestions to the committee, we believe, would improve the bill. We therefore urge the committee to give our recommendations its thoughtful attention. Senator KEFAUVER. Thank you, Mr. Martini. We appreciate your views. Mr. MARTINI. Thank you for allowing me to testify. Senator KEFAUVER. Mrs. Sillers, we are glad to have again. you with us STATEMENT OF MRS. CHARLOTTE SILLERS, PRESIDENT, WOMEN'S AUXILIARY, UNITED PUBLIC WORKERS, CIO Mrs. SILLERS. Thank you. I am glad to have the opportunity to comment on the bill itself. My testimony is pretty much the same as it was at the hearings previously on suffrage bills, but there are some specific recommendations. I think I ought to say who I am. Charlotte Sillers, Women's Auxiliary of United Public Workers, CIO. Senator KEFAUVER. You told us before how many members the United Public Workers had? Mrs. SILLERS. I am not speaking for the United Public Workers, but for the Women's Auxiliary of the United Public Workers. Our membership is about 400. Senator KEFAUVER. I see. Mrs. SILLERS. First, I want to commend you. In spite of throwing bouquets, I think you did a wonderful job. We feel that to have come out this soon with a bill, with the provisions that this one has, is a good thing, and hope that we will see some action before Congress adjourns this session. I am glad that you included in it this time the provisions for reorganization of the city government, because I think it is a necessity for efficiency; and we approve the provisions for the election of the city council and the board of education. As we have testified before, we do prefer proportional representation. However, we support your plurality vote because we believe it is a better provision than what has been made in other home rule bills. We also approve the dual voting provisions of this bill for other reasons I have given. I want to make my statement as brief as possible now. On the floating of bonds we have testified before that we feel that is a very good way of raising revenue. In fact, I recently testified on this tax thing before a House committee on the sales tax, and that was one of the things that we had recommended, that the District be given the authority to float bonds. It We felt that instead of limiting it to 5 percent, it should be doubled, that is, 10 percent of the assessed valuation of taxable real estate. would strengthen the financial structure. We also feel that the provision of having Congress and the President retain the right to pass on legislation suggested by the council is good, that is, passed by negative action. I am sure that if some provision was not made that you would not have this thing go through. However, I was wondering whether it would not be fairer to reduce the time to 30 days for congressional veto and 10 days for Presidential veto, as was provided in the previous bill, instead of 70 days, which is a terrifically long time. On the salary of councilmen, we, too, feel that a simple honorarium of $3,000 should not be paid. If a person can afford to handle the job of councilman for an honorarium, he can afford to handle it without charge; and it seems to me that it is much more important to have civic-minded people who have the interests of the District at heart, and because other surveys have indicated that this job could easily take a person's full time; and I think we can assume that it might, if only on the basis that it has never been done in Washington before. We should have a salary on which persons could live and so we are recommending a minimum salary of $5,000 per annum. We also feel on the subject of finances that consideration should be given to an increase of Federal contribution to the District commensurate with the tax value of the land they occupy now. I think that one of your reasons for not including it was that Senator McGrath has a bill before Congress. We do not know whether that is going to be passed, and it seems to me this bill ought to be all-inclusive in that respect. There are just one or two other things, and then I will wind it up. Mrs. SILLERS. Thank you. We feel that the provisions of initiative, referendum, and recall ought to be made on this bill in order that officials of the District Government will be responsive to the will of the people. The one point that has been made earlier I would like to make, too. The auxiliary has always stood for the abolition of discrimination and segregation in the District, and feel that some provision should be made so that services performed by the District or contracted for by the District should be on a nonsegregated and nondiscriminatory basis; because if such a provision is not made, services that are now granted on that basis could easily be thrown into a segregated and discriminatory category, and that would be a backward step. However, I would like to say the women's auxiliary is supporting this bill, and we feel that we will put all the forces at our disposal to pushing it in any way you can recommend, because we want a vote here. We want to be able to say when we go out how the taxes that we pay shall be spent, whether we want certain taxes, without having to bother congressional committees. Senator KEFAUVER. Thank you, Mrs. Sillers. Mr. Wheeler? Dr. GALLOWAY. Mr. Chairman, apropos of the witness' reference to the proposed debt limit in the bill and for the information of the subcommittee, I would like to state for the record that the comprehensive plan for capital improvements recommended by the Citizens Planning Committee, the entire cost of which would be $253,210,000, one-fifth of which is now completed or is under contract could be financed by borrowing, if the debt limit in the bill were only 3 percent of the assessed valuation of taxable real property in the District, for the annual expenditures for this program, here estimated in order to complete it over the years, not to exceed $35,000,000. The present total assessed valuation of taxable real property in the District by the latest count is about $1,600,000,000, 3 percent of which would yield $48,000,000, which obviously would be more than sufficient to cover the annual cost of this comprehensive plan for capital improvements. Senator KEFAUVER. Thank you, Dr. Galloway, for that. All right, Mr. Wender, will you come around? We are glad to have you with us. STATEMENT OF HARRY S. WENDER, CHAIRMAN, DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA RECREATION BOARD Mr. WENDER. Thank you, sir. Mr. Chairman, I am Harry S. Wender, attorney, practicing law for the past 17 years in the District of Columbia, with offices in the Woodward Building. I am here at your invitation, as chairman of the District of Columbia Recreation Board, which position I have held for the past 7 years. At the outset I should like to appear in my official capacity and state the position of our board. We have had no opportunity as a board to discuss or to consider the provisions that deal with the Recreation Board and the Department of Recreation of the District of Columbia, but I have had an opportunity today and through reading newspaper accounts to determine that the provisions are prac tically identical with those of the Auchincloss bill that was before us last year in the House of Representatives. In that connection, we did have an opportunity to make a very careful study of the effect of the bill on recreation in the city, and brought in a comprehensive statement which was included in those hearings, pointing out the fact that the abolition of the recreation board, which is provided in this legislation, as well as in that, would be a step backward insofar as recreation locally and nationally is concerned. I stated then, and I state now, that the bill is still a good bill and should not be rejected for that one feature alone, but if you wish to have the very best in recreation, it is my considered opinion as a strong home rule advocate and one who feels that home rule is more important even than recreation, nevertheless we pointed out in those hearings and I call your attention to the statement we made and trust that you will include them in these hearings for the sake of the record Senator KEFAUVER. We will. Let us include Mr. Wender's statement before the Auchincloss committee. As I remember, it is two pages. Mr. WENDER. Yes, sir. Senator KEFAUVER. We will include that as part of your testimony at the present time. Mr. WENDER. I would just like to say one further word about it, Mr. Chairman, that practically everywhere in the country today, where you have city councils, with very, very few exceptions, the modern influence of recreation is such that the boards are independent. That is the growing feeling throughout the country; and, as you know, the whole field of public recreation is relatively new insofar as city governments are concerned. It is almost as though it were created yesterday. They followed the pattern of boards of education generally, and even in some districts they have a separate taxing power, those boards of education do, in many jurisdictions. We do not suggest anything of that kind, but we do feel that recreation is so very close to the people as education is that no matter how you select them, whether they be appointed by the council or whether they be elected, as in the case of the Board of Education here, they should have an intimate contact with the people, and the council should not be burdened with the many responsibilities involving recreation; and to saddle that work on to an individual director of recreation, who then would be responsible to your city manager, and he in turn to the council, would remove from the people the present opportunity that they have to participate in open meetings of the Recreation Board and to know exactly what is going on and to make their needs known. These are the needs of day-to-day consequence, and cannot wait for long periods of time for these various problems to be met. I do not want to burden you with this discussion, except to say that if you wish to have the best recreation, you would follow my suggestion. If, on the other hand, you feel that would so burden the bill that it might affect its passage that would be something else again. I do not believe it would. I have discussed this with many people. I find no one who is an advocate of home rule who feels that a separate |