Useful reading
(excerpt)
Why does the District need a planning commission? It would help educate the city government, developers and citizens in every neighborhood about the planning process, which currently is not well understood. Yes, we have a comprehensive plan, but it is, in effect, a triumph of good graphics and ballyhoo over substance. A planning commission could help citizens and public officials understand this and set their sights higher. The D.C. Council vacuously cites the comprehensive plan, but always manages to find a way to defer final action on anything the plan suggests. Then, in haste, it adopts whatever has emerged. This amounts to political flatulence, rather than legislating as the law requires.A planning commission for the District would provide some parity with the National Capital Planning Commission, a heavily funded agency interested primarily in the federal government’s holdings. The NCPC also calls the shots, ultimately, on whatever the local planning and development office produces in the way of a comprehensive plan.
There is no legal barrier to the city establishing a planning commission. The power of the mayor to do exactly this was confirmed in a 2003 legal opinion by Covington & Burling. Copies of that memorandum of law written for the Committee of 100 were furnished to members of the Council, then-Mayor Tony Williams and Office of Planning officials. They ignored it. The same memorandum was given to the current mayor and his director of planning. They, too, have ignored it. A planning commission might, after all, provide some sort of check on the mayor’s and deputy mayor’s adventures in development.
