Here are several key facts about the District of Columbia at this moment:
The economy has contracted.
The District has lost tens of thousands of jobs.
Population growth has essentially stalled since 2019, after the District gained 100,000 residents over the previous two decades.
Maintaining the District’s robust social safety net depends on reinvigorating economic and population growth. The District desperately needs to retain and attract more people who pay more in taxes than they consume in city services.
These facts should guide policymaking on the D.C. Council. That’s why I am deeply frustrated that Mayor-elect Janeese Lewis George, Councilmember Zachary Parker, and Councilmember Elissa Silverman are blocking Councilmember Charles Allen’s bill to authorize autonomous vehicles (AVs) like Waymo to operate in the District. Chairman Phil Mendelson called it an “embarrassment” that the Council would not move forward, and I agree.
I’m not going to rehash the reasons Capital Commonsense supports legalizing autonomous vehicles. Our contributor Greg Rogers has laid them out in great detail and pushed back on the arguments against it here, here, and here.
A Vote About More Than Waymo
I will also fully admit that I am far more frustrated about this vote than the issue of autonomous vehicles alone warrants, and that’s because this bill is about more than Waymo. At a moment when we desperately need to diversify our economy and attract private-sector investment, this vote was a chance to signal to companies considering the region that the District of Columbia welcomes their business and their dollars.
Are the new mayor and a majority of the Council going to make a real effort to attract companies that create jobs and drive innovation? Or will they be content with degrowth and managed decline? Their position on Waymo points to the latter: muddle through for two years, hope a Democrat wins the White House and reinvests in the federal workforce, and pray we don’t go through another DOGE.
Mayor-elect Lewis George’s at-times bizarre speech against the bill should concern voters who hope she will ultimately put her most rigid ideological commitments aside and govern pragmatically given our economic and fiscal crises.
She argued that the District’s narrow streets, pedestrians, First Amendment activity, and first-responder concerns are unique, as if the 15 cities that have figured this out (San Francisco, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Austin, Atlanta, Miami, Orlando, Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, Nashville, Tampa, San Diego, Denver, and Las Vegas) don’t share any of these characteristics. Can we solve problems as a city or not?
She also said AVs alone would not end traffic deaths (no one claimed they would) and pointed instead to the need to “reduce[d] congestion, better public transit, high-quality street design, and improved infrastructure.” Notably missing from her list was cracking down on dangerous drivers. That’s not surprising, given that Lewis George has traditionally downplayed the importance of enforcement, including during the “Clean Hands” debate in 2022.
No company considering doing business in the District will look at what happened here, where labor groups representing mostly Maryland and Virginia residents were handed an outright veto, and conclude that our elected leaders are serious about pulling the District’s economy out of a ditch.
Our next mayor and a majority of the Council rejected the most progressive AV legislation in existence, after years of study and months of negotiations and revisions by Councilmember Allen to address concerns about accessibility, labor, and safety. Counting on a favorable presidential election in 2028 is not an economic development strategy, and the decision to kill this bill makes painfully clear that the Council doesn’t have one.
If Lewis George was sincerely concerned about traffic deaths, she would not have voted in favor of allowing people to renew their drivers’ licenses no matter how many tickets they have accumulated for speeding or running red lights. She continues to blame “infrastructure” as if people have no choice but to disobey road rules.
There could be a political opening for the seat in the Spring if someone can paint JLG as the failed establishment who needs to be checked. Janese Loses Jobs.