A selection of current committee lineups (including new councilmembers to start in 2023), as shown in the Fantasy DC Council Committee Maker

What’s your fantasy? Does it involve reconfiguring DC Council’s subject-specific legislative committees? No? No matter. You’ll still love our new Fantasy DC Council Committee Maker. It puts the power in YOUR hands (in an imaginary sense) to assemble District agencies into policy committees.

We may have gamified the DC Council’s committee-creation process, but this is serious stuff.

At the start of each new two-year council period, councilmembers are given new committee assignments by the chair. Committees are “responsible for holding hearings and finalizing language for laws introduced during legislative meetings. They also handle performance and budget oversight for the specific District government agencies under their purview.”

Historically, committee assignments have been proposed by the Council Chair in late December and then ratified by the full Council in January. The next couple of weeks are the prime period for Councilmembers to negotiate among themselves, and with the Chair, for their assignments.

Committee lineups set the table for the next two years’ worth of legislative work and oversight, but it’s not the sexiest process for journalists to cover. Even savvy local politicos can have a hard time keeping track of potential combinations of agencies, opportunities for new committees, and the preferences of members.

GGWash is here to help with our Fantasy DC Council Committee Maker, available at ggwash.org/fantasy. (The tool is in beta, with some functionality updates to come. It works best on a computer, not mobile.)

Sample committee lineups generated using the Fantasy DC Council Committee Maker

Built by super-volunteer Andrew Turner (who also created the visualization of ANC candidates’ responses to GGWash’s endorsement questionnaire), the Committee Maker makes it possible for you to propose:

  • What committees should exist,
  • Which agencies they should oversee, and
  • Which Councilmembers should chair and serve on them.

Think we need a new chair of the Committee on Housing and Executive Administration? Want to see a return to an independent Committee on Education? Want to split apart the Committee on Transportation and the Environment? How about reinstating the Finance committee, or splitting up Business and Economic Development, and recombining some agencies with those that used to be on Finance?!

Just drag and drop members and agencies until you’re satisfied (feel free to hum Mariah Carey’s “Fantasy” while you work). Share your committee line-up on social media with the hashtag #DCFantasyCouncil, or, if you’re interested in us sharing your work, email it to us at info@ggwash.org—we’re planning to publish some options in a future post. (If you’d like your Fantasy Committee set to be considered for publication, make sure you share it by Sunday, December 18.)