District of Columbia Home Rule Improvement Act of 2025

The bill would amend the District of Columbia Home Rule Act to apply a uniform 60-day congressional review period to nearly all D.C. Council legislation, replacing the current 30-day period (60 days already applies to criminal-law acts, which the bill folds into the general rule). It would let Congress disapprove not just entire D.C. acts but individual provisions within them, and would extend the same disapproval authority to Mayoral executive orders and agency regulations, which currently face no congressional review. It also sets expedited procedures for disapproval resolutions in the House and Senate.

The bill would bar the D.C. Council from withdrawing legislation once transmitted to Congress, and would prohibit the Council from re-enacting a law "substantially the same" as one Congress has already disapproved unless later specifically authorized. It would also require the D.C. Mayor and Council chair to jointly present an annual report to specified congressional committees. It does not change D.C.'s underlying legislative authority itself, only the scope and timing of congressional review.

The District of Columbia Council, the D.C. Mayor and executive-branch agencies that issue regulations, and District residents whose local laws and regulations would face a longer and broader federal review window. Congressional committees—Oversight and Government Reform in the House, and Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs in the Senate—would gain new oversight duties.

D.C. laws and regulations would take longer to go into effect and could be blocked piece by piece rather than only as whole acts, giving Congress finer-grained control over local D.C. governance. The Council would lose flexibility to withdraw or revise disapproved measures, and Mayoral executive orders and regulations—currently not reviewed by Congress at all—would become subject to possible congressional veto.

The D.C. Council would continue transmitting enacted legislation to the Speaker of the House and President of the Senate, but now under a 60-day review clock; the Mayor would newly have to transmit executive orders and regulations for the same review. Congressional committees (Oversight and Government Reform in the House, Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs in the Senate) would receive referred disapproval resolutions and follow the bill's expedited discharge, debate-limit, and floor-vote procedures. If a joint resolution of disapproval becomes law, it repeals the targeted D.C. act, provision, executive order, or regulation as of that date. The Mayor and Council chair would separately appear annually before both committees to report on D.C.'s condition.