ATTORNEY GENERAL KARL A. RACINE

Legal Counsel Division

March 15, 2022

Tiera J. Fletcher Vice-Chairperson, ANC 7E 3939 Benning Road, N.E. Washington, D.C. 20019

Re: Expenditures for Public Purposes “Within the Commission Area”

Dear Commissioner Fletcher:

You asked whether section 16 of the Advisory Neighborhood Commissions Act of 1975 (“ANC Act”)1 prevents an ANC from expending funds on an event that would serve public purposes but is scheduled to be held outside the ANC’s boundaries. It does not, as long as the expenditure is still for the benefit of the ANC area.

To determine what section 16 means, we interpret its words in a way that is “consistent with their ordinary meaning at the time [the Council] enacted the statute.” Wis. Cent. Ltd. v. United States, 138 S. Ct. 2067, 2070 (2018) (cleaned up, with brackets added). We read this language in context, mindful of its “place in the overall statutory scheme.” Davis v. Mich. Dep’t of the Treasury, 489 U.S. 803, 809 (1989); In Re Edmonds, 96 A.3d 683, 687 (D.C. 2014).

Your question stems from section 16(l)(1),2 which says that ANC expenditures that are not for the “functioning of the Commission office” must be “for public purposes within the Commission area,” and similarly says that any expenditures via grant must be “for public purposes within the Commission area.” The phrase “within the Commission area,” read on its own, might suggest that any event funded by an ANC must take place inside the Commission area. Read this way, it would be comparable to one of the ANC Act’s notice provisions, which says that notices of ANC meetings must be posted in conspicuous locations “in each single-member district within the Commission area.”3 Critically, however, section 16(l)(1) does not say that public-purpose expenditures, or the events they fund, must themselves operate within the Commission area. Instead, it requires that these expenditures be for “public purposes within the Commission area.”