March 15, 2022

Schannette Grant
Interim Executive Director
Office of Advisory Neighborhood Commissions 1350 Pennsylvania Ave., N.W., Ste. 11 Washington, D.C. 20004

Re: Interference in another Commissioner’s single-member district

Director Grant:

You have asked us to advise on a question your office has received: whether the Advisory Neighborhood Commissions Act of 1975 (“ANC Act”)1 prohibits a Commissioner from “interfering” within the single-member district of another Commissioner by speaking with businesses and community members from the other Commissioner’s single-member district, or holding events in that single-member district, without consulting with or involving that other Commissioner. No such prohibition exists.

Single-member districts play an important role in the operations of an ANC. Under the Home Rule Act, Advisory Neighborhood Commissioners are “elected from single-member districts within each neighborhood commission area by the registered qualified electors of such district.”2 Likewise, under the ANC Act, each single-member district Commissioner is entitled to “equal access to the Commission office and its records in order to carry out Commission duties and responsibilities,”3 and entitled to advance notice of certain proposed governmental actions that may affect neighborhood planning and development in that Commissioner’s single-member district.4

Even so, single-member districts are electoral districts, not territorial units. Although each Commissioner elected from a single-member district can fairly be described as a representative of that district, nothing in the ANC Act, or any other District law, gives a single-member district Commissioner any control over activities that take place within that Commissioner’s district.

1 Effective October 10, 1975 (D.C. Law 1-21; D.C. Official Code § 1-309.01 et seq.).
2 D.C. Official Code § 1-207.38(b); see id. § 1-309.03 (Council establishes single-member district boundaries by

act).
3 Id. § 1-309.13(p).
4 See, e.g., id. § 1-309.10(b).

For instance, a single Commissioner has no authority to determine how ANC funds will be spent within that Commissioner’s single-member district, or to offer recommendations entitled to great weight about policies affecting that district. Any ANC authority on those and others matters within a single-member district is exercised by the ANC as a body, rather than by any single Commissioner.5 Nor does anything in District law restrict a Commissioner’s activities to his or her own single-member district. Accordingly, the ANC Act leaves Commissioners free – just as private citizens are – to travel to, speak to people in, and conduct events in other single-member districts, without any requirement that they first consult the Commissioners elected from those other districts. Commissioners may choose to do this kind of consultation as a matter of etiquette, but it is not required as a matter of law.

Sincerely,

KARL A. RACINE
Attorney General for the District of Columbia

By:

JOSHUA A. TURNER Assistant Attorney General Legal Counsel Division

(AL-22-181)