Did you know that Governor Janet Napolitano wants to set up an office in Washington so that she can lobby Washington on behalf of Arizonans? This was reported in the Arizona Republic (see http://www.azcentral.com/specials/special12/articles/0224napolitano24.html). The primary reason is that she believes that the Arizona delegation to the United States Congress is not doing their job. She indicates that you just don't see much of Representative Flake, among other members. We think that we know why. Congressman Jeff Flake is expending a lot of energy on some constituents - except those constituents are not his own - trying to impose a controversial, unproven plan on Washington D.C. schools. He is spending time, energy and the political capital that belongs to Arizonans, especially his Sixth Congressional District, on local Washington, D.C. schools. Is this why you sent Mr. Flake to Washington? What you probably don't realize is that residents of Washington, D.C. do not have voting representation in Congress. D.C. residents are subject to the budgetary , legislative and judicial control of Congress - even our locally raised taxed dollars can be controlled by Congress. There are provisions of the United States Constitution that provide for some limited oversight over D.C. matters, which many scholars interpret to mean federal property. However Congress has read this to mean over the years that they get to review line by line the budget that controls the number of school buses, the hours of our neighborhood libraries and the type of programs we create for homeless people. Some people like your Congressman Jeff Flake step outside even that broad fiscal oversight role and create whole new programs for local Washingtonians - programs that local Washingtonians do not even want. If we wanted them, we have our own local legislature and our own very able non-voting member of Congress, Eleanor Holmes Norton. ( If Congress were to give the vote to her and two colleagues in the Senate we could lobby for our own federal school reform dollars). Washington, D.C. becomes the testing ground for, in this case school vouchers. School vouchers allow children to take public dollars to private school placements, and usually involve some supplementation of tuition by the family. An Arizona state study says that vouchers don't work. Read more about that here: http://www.asu.edu/educ/epsl/EPRU/documents/cerai-01-17.htm. But your position on school vouchers aside, did you really expect when you elected Mr. Flake that he would occupy himself with drafting legislation, making deals to get it passed, fending off opposition, accounting for his position in the media, making a name for himself among some party higher ups - all on local D.C. issues? I think not. Well, we residents of Washington, D.C. encourage you to do something about Mr. Flake's extracurricular activities. Here is what you can do since the Congressional election cycle just recently ended and you can't register your opinion at the ballot box for a while now. 1. Tell your Congressman to 'leave D.C.', that is stop engaging in local D.C. affairs. You can do that at this website - www.leavedc.com. 2. Tell Mr. Flake to withdraw his legislation to create vouchers. It takes up time that belongs to you. 3. Tell your Congressman to start a campaign to abolish each and every D.C. subcommittees in the United States Congress - the House and the Senate. 4. Tell Congress to support legislation in Congress right now to free D.C. by working to support legislation that promotes D.C. autonomy on fiscal, legislative and judicial matters and free Congress of the burden of Congressional governance of local D.C. Congress needs to work for its own constituents not local D.C. Help our movement in D.C. to get your Congressman out of our D.C. affairs and back on track doing what you elected him to do: represent Arizona in Congress.