MISSOURI COMMENTARY: VIEW FROM THE HILL OF CITY IN DISARRAY

It's still August, and Paris glitters even though Parisians are away on vacation. Berlin, despite the devastation of war, is reinventing itself as one of the colossal cities of the world. London, along with many other venerable cities in Great Britain, exudes rebirth and renewal.

Meanwhile, the capital of the world's greatest democracy flounders in disarray. By the year 2000, Washington, D.C., will have barely half as many residents as it had in 1950. There has been enormous white and black flight to the suburbs.

There are two Washingtons.

One is the city of the federal government -- the White House, Capitol Hill, the various departments, museums, memorials and monuments. This is the city that the sight-seers of America visit and enjoy as part of our nation's great heritage.

The other Washington is a city of poor, mostly black residents with high rates of unemployment, crime, and high school dropouts. Sight-seers steer clear of this Washington. If the first city is America's jewel, then its doppelganger is America's shame.

A quarter-century ago, Congress decided that Washington should have "home rule," meaning that governmental decisions previously made by the federal government would henceforth be made by elected local officials. No longer, so the thinking went, would the District be an ill-treated "colony."

So it was that Washington was now free to run and finance its own maximum security penitentiary, its own Medicaid and other health programs for the poor and disabled; its own public university; and its own judicial system replete with trial courts and a supreme court. The problem was with the word "free." Everything was expected to be "free" because Washington was "free" to run all sorts of state-like functions without an adequate funding base to support them.

At the same time that Congress gave the new D.C. government great new responsibilities, it specifically denied Washington the authority to levy an earnings tax (sometimes called a commuter tax) on those who make their living in and utilize the services of the District, but who sleep in the suburbs at night. The congressional delegations of Maryland and Virginia protected their citizens from taxation of the income they earned while working in the city.

All old American cities experiencing white and black flight to the suburbs must have an earnings tax to survive. Thus, with "home rule," Washington was born to be free, but was disemboweled financially in the delivery process.

Then came Marion Barry. His best friends would describe him as politically adroit, but a dreadful administrator. With every governmental problem, Barry has a knack of compounding it. Yet when the "white establishment press" criticizes him, his friends amongst the poor and downtrodden love him all the more. He's one of the rare American politicians who did time and enhanced his popularity thereby.

Along with the decline of other services, the D.C. school system hit the skids. By every measure, the D.C. schools were dreadful. Things were so bad that a newly created federal financial control board appointed a general to take command and clean up the education mess. A few weeks ago, the general announced that the schools would not open this week because some of the school buildings were unsafe.

Before Congress left on vacation, it decided to turn over the most important managerial functions of the city to the federal control board. Mayor Barry was overseas "selling the great image of the District of Columbia to the world."

Let behind to do the heavy lifting of trying to keep D.C. from going bankrupt was the District's non-voting congressional delegate, Eleanor Holmes Norton. In exchange for giving up most of "home rule," Norton persuaded Congress to take over funding large parts of the D.C. budget: the $5 billion pension liability, the penitentiary, the court system, most of the Medicaid program. Assorted federal tax breaks were provided to D.C. residents to entice them not to flee to the suburbs and, who knows, maybe attract a few back from the suburbs.

Norton though she had done a lot to bail out the District: "a big win for the city" she called it.

She miscalculated the politics. Barry came home and with his skill of arousing his followers, fired off militant rhetoric aimed at Congress, the "white establishment" and the daily press. Jesse Jackson, not to be overlooked, chimed in with his oratory: "the District is now governed by a military junta."

Poor Delegate Norton, after once claiming victory, she turned right around and dismounted her own work. It was all wrong, very wrong, because it "lacerated the notion of democracy." Marion Barry had done it again. He painted himself and his followers as victims of "the rape of democracy."

A year from now, Barry will most likely be running for his fifth term as mayor of the District of Columbia. By then, more residents will have left for the suburbs, the potholes with have grown more numerous, the schools will have generated more dropouts. Barry will talk about the "rape" of the city. It's even money that the voters will anoint Barry once again.

~Tom Eagleton of St. Louis is a former U.S. senator from Missouri.