As the D.C. Council starts summer recess, transparency advocates inside and outside the D.C. government are still raising alarm about what recently transpired in council chambers.
Just over a week ago, the council approved the Fiscal Year 2027 Budget Support Act (BSA) with a subtitle dissolving the Homeland Security Commission (HSC) and allowing for: the destruction of all commission records; a lifetime gag order on current and former commissioners; and Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) exemptions for HSC and the agency under which it exists.
“I don’t understand how the council held that to be legally sufficient,” D.C. Auditor Kathleen Patterson told The Informer. “We have a record retention law that says records have to be maintained for at least seven years… so I don’t understand how that could go forward without any kind of debate.”
In her last act as Ward 3 D.C. council member two decades ago, Patterson secured the passage of the legislation launching HSC and revamping what’s known as D.C. Homeland Security and Emergency Management Agency (HSEMA). While transparency advocates, specifically those who Patterson would later work with, didn’t express qualms about the commission’s dissolution, they took issue with the BSA subtitle preventing preservation of information.
Patterson also chimed in, calling it an affront to all that she’s worked toward during her council tenure.
“I’m an ex-newspaper reporter,” Patterson said. “I did lots of FOIA amendments as a council member. I brought the council under FOIA legislation, so I have a record that indicates my own support for open government.”
The D.C. Open Government Coalition’s Call that Went Unanswered
According to DC Code § 2-1706, each District agency is responsible for records management. In instances, perhaps like that involving the HSC, when inactive public records have historical significance, the agency is required to transfer them to the D.C. Archives for preservation and referencing.
That’s why, in June, with the second reading of the Fiscal Year 2027 BSA just days away, the D.C. Open Government Coalition, where Patterson served as a founding board member and president, sent each council member a letter decrying the HSC dissolution subtitle concerning destruction of documents and silencing of commissioners.
“At least somebody in the archivist’s office should go through them and determine whether they should be preserved,” Robert S. Becker, author of the June 26 letter, said about HSC records. “They are not in a category of records that can, under statute and regulations, can be destroyed, except the council has now passed a piece of legislation that tells the agency to destroy them.”
Becker, representing D.C. Open Government Coalition’s government relations committee, concluded that the subtitle aimed to “erase the commission’s history.” In his letter, he said the subtitle should’ve been introduced as a standalone bill, all while calling the gag order provision overly broad, unenforceable, and an infringement on subject-matter experts’ First Amendment rights.
For Becker, the subtitle also rests on the assumption that all HSC meetings were secret.
“I suspect that a lot of the information that they had, even if it contains some classified information, also contained a lot of information that wasn’t classified,” Becker said. “And those are records that should be available under FOIA.”
No council members responded to the D.C. Open Government Coalition’s letter, Becker said.
Much to the chagrin of local journalists and coalition members, the council permanently narrowed the scope of its engagement with the D.C. Government Open Meetings Act earlier this year. The move built upon emergency legislation approved last year to allow council members, under the shadow of the Trump White House and congressional Republicans, to meet privately about sensitive issues.
As the D.C. Open Government Coalition noted, the recently approved legislation, titled the Open Meetings Clarification Amendment Act, also placed the Criminal Justice Coordinating Council outside of the realm of the D.C. Open Government Meetings Act.
Becker said the council, as seen in FOIA exemptions for HSC documentation, has taken a similar posture toward public access to information.
“Usually, Open Records Act exemptions cover types of records to protect privacy and trade secrets,” Becker said, “but the council has had this tendency to say that all of the records of this body aren’t subject to the statute, regardless of whether they contain any sensitive information. That’s what happens with the Homeland Security Commission.”
Chairman Mendelson Weighs In, While Patterson Reflects on Attempt to Save Her Brainchild
District of Columbia Council Chair Phil Mendelson (D) said he didn’t receive the D.C. Open Government Coalition’s letter, while District Councilmember Charles Allen’s (D) office acknowledged the Ward 6 legislator’s receipt of the letter, and nothing else as it pertains to “a bit more effort to make sure people see it and know what’s going on.”
Other council members, including D.C. Councilmember Brooke Pinto (D-Ward 2), chair of the council’s Committee on the Judiciary and Public Safety, didn’t immediately respond to an inquiry about the letter. In a separate email, Pinto’s office called the destruction of HSC documents a matter of protecting classified information, and an undertaking that’s “vital to the District’s public safety efforts.”
“The government’s greatest responsibility is to provide for the safety and wellbeing of our residents and visitors,” Pinto said in a statement, “and I am grateful for the hard work of the Homeland Security Commission in years past and the continuing work of HSEMA to ensure that our preventative homeland security efforts are strong and secure.”
In speaking about the HSC dissolution subtitle, Mendelson echoed points made by Pinto’s office.
“I don’t think you can correlate that to government going down this path of becoming less transparent,” Mendelson told The Informer. “If the Homeland Security records have to deal with security threats to the city, then there would be a value to not having them open to the public for a period of time.”
Becker, however, said Mendelson has always been on the wrong side of history.
“He has been opposed to transparency his entire time on the council,” Becker told The Informer. “He strongly opposed the first Open [Government] Meetings Act that Kathy Patterson introduced in 2006 and managed, with [At-large D.C. Councilmember] Carol Schwartz and some others, to defeat it. They got it tabled and referred back to the committee, and it died.”
During the latter part of 2006, in what was her last legislative meeting as council member, Patterson proved successful in ushering the passage of the Homeland Security, Risk Reduction and and Preparedness Act.
The legislation established HSC as a means of gathering and evaluating information about, and advising the D.C. government on, homeland security matters. Other provisions expanded the responsibility of what would ultimately become HSEMA, strengthened requirements for the District’s emergency response plan, and mandated the creation of employee security training programs.
In May, while in her personal capacity, Patterson testified before the council’s Committee on the Judiciary and Public Safety as part of an effort to save HSC, which long appeared to be on a path to elimination.
As she recounted, the Fenty administration didn’t show much enthusiasm for HSC, even going as far as attempting to disband it. Patterson noted that the Bowser administration showed similar disinterest, as evidenced by her lack of commission appointees in recent years and the production of only three annual reports during her mayoralty.
Mendelson, a longtime council fixture who introduced the Homeland Security, Risk Reduction and Preparedness Act with Patterson, acknowledged the Bowser administration’s inaction playing a significant part in the inclusion of the BSA subtitle.
“I’m just aware of some disappointment that the mayor has not been making votes in three years,” Mendelson told The Informer on Monday. “The intent behind it was to draw on the expertise that’s in this city, given that there are so many national experts, but that just never materialized.”
HSC hasn’t had a quorum since 2023, a Bowser administration official told The Informer. The official went on to explain that, since HSC’s inception, HSEMA has evolved in its command of homeland security matters via involvement with national organizations and a talent pipeline with deep expertise — thus making the commission no longer necessary.
Reports by HSC in recent years have centered on cybersecurity risks and, well before 2020, pandemic preparation. In making the case for HSC, Patterson pointed out that it was environmentalists, not elected officials, who inspired the HSC’s creation when, less than five years after 9/11, they raised concerns about the transport of hazardous material on trains running through the District.
With the District and New York City’s past experience with large-scale terror attacks, Patterson said HSC still has some utility.
“I’m just very sorry that the council decided not to consider the merits of the commission,” she told The Informer, “and let good work sort of go out into the void.”
