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Writer's picturejonetta rose barras

DC Councilmember Christina Henderson digging deep and legislating widely — with feeling





ON April 3, members of the DC Council took turns questioning Mayor Muriel Bowser about her proposed fiscal year 2025 budget, which she contextualized as an exercise in shared sacrifice. Most of the legislators dismissed that characterization, noting that residents and workers would be severely impacted by her planned cuts in programs and services.

When at-large Councilmember Christina Henderson’s time at the mic came, she seemed to quickly tear up, overcome with emotions. In more than 30 years of reporting and commenting on DC government affairs, I had never witnessed an elected official so moved during budget deliberations.


“If I’m honest with you, I was pissed. Sometimes, when I am angry, that is how it manifests itself. I don’t even remember where I was in the lineup, but I do recall that day I had left the dais multiple times before I spoke. [I was telling myself,] ‘You need to calm down and you need to get it together,’” Henderson told me recently during an interview via Zoom about her actions, proposals and achievements over her nearly four-year tenure in the District’s legislature. She is running for a second term. 


Henderson explained she was deeply disturbed by Bowser’s decision to eliminate the Pay Equity Fund that had been created to cover the costs of health insurance and salary increases for child care workers, who had been forced to secure additional educational credentials to retain their positions. The mayor was “literally trying to find a mechanism to balance the budget on the backs of these individuals,” explained Henderson.


The council eventually put money in the budget to maintain the Pay Equity Fund, though not at its previous funding level — meaning many workers won’t get all of the benefits they expected.


The Early Childhood Educator Equitable Compensation Task Force was established under the auspices of the Office of the State Superintendent of Education to recommend how the DC government should manage the Pay Equity Fund and provide better working conditions for child care workers. A key part of the assignment in recent months has been to find ways to limit costs.


That task force issued its report on Tuesday, recommending among other things a reduction in minimum salaries for select educators and a freeze on those salaries “at the proposed levels for the duration of the four-year budget,” according to a copy of the report shared with me. 


The group also recommended establishing a “new target anchor for adjusting [Pay Equity Fund] salaries in the future.” The report clarified that this latter recommendation would mean that after the new Washington Teachers’ Union contract with DC Public Schools is finalized, salaries for those early childhood educators with bachelor’s degrees would “no longer mirror the DCPS first year teacher salary and, as other LEAs also increase staff pay in future years, the minimum salary for child care teachers will equate to a lower percentile of the distribution of LEA teacher salaries.”


Days before the report’s release, Henderson told me that “the council will have to vote again on needing to rightsize that program.” She noted that restoration of more than $70 million in annual funding would be difficult — as it proved to be in May, when legislators weren’t able to meet the funding level that advocates had sought.


Henderson said the council will “continue to fight” and “to perhaps evaluate more stable sources of funding as we have this conversation. It’s not over. I’m very clear,” she added. (The council ultimately voted to solidify funds, ensuring raises for some workers.)





A political independent, Henderson previously served as staff director for the council’s Committee on Education when it was led by David Grosso. She later became a legislative assistant to Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer. During a robust at-large race, Henderson was elected to the council in November 2020, coming in with 79,189 votes — 14.77% of ballots cast, the second-highest tally among 24 candidates vying for the two available seats. Robert White, the other at-large winner, was the top vote-getter, receiving 139,208 or 25.96% of the votes as the Democratic nominee.


DC voters get to choose two at-large candidates again this November. The DC Board of Elections has already begun mailing ballots to voters. Ballot drop boxes will open Oct. 11. Vote centers will open for in-person early voting on Oct. 28. 


Statehood Green Party nominee Darryl Moch and Republican Party nominee Rob Simmons will appear on the November general election ballot, as will White — who is seeking a third term — and Henderson. Most people believe the two incumbents will win re-election.


Henderson has been endorsed by the DC Chapter of the Sierra Club, DC National Organization for Women (DC NOW), Local 36 of the International Association of Fire Fighters, Amalgamated Transit Union Local 689, and LiUNA Metropolitan Area of Philadelphia/Baltimore/Washington Laborers District Council, among others.


Truth be told, I worried about Henderson when she won that first election. I was no fan of her former council boss and thought he did a lousy job leading the Education Committee. If she was the staff director, didn’t she have some responsibility for those results?


The caliber of Henderson’s performance has surprised many with whom I spoke for this article, who praised her handling of oversight hearings and roundtable meetings with government functionaries. “She takes seriously holding people accountable. It’s not necessarily punitive,” said Ambrose Lane Jr., founder and chair of the citywide, citizen-comprised DC Health Alliance Network. 


“She doesn’t have love for the mayor or her tactics. She sees budgets as moral documents,” he continued. “Her stance on child care certainly was a moral one.”


Henderson has introduced more than 70 legislative proposals covering everything from protecting against exorbitant application fees for rental housing to making Metrobus service more accessible, creating early career opportunities for DC middle school students and ensuring equity for special education protocols. She has also spent a significant amount of time dealing with transportation and traffic issues, including scrutiny of Maryland and Virginia motorists who have long violated District laws with impunity. 


Earlier this week, the STEER Act — a far-reaching package that includes some of her legislative proposals — became law, though parts await funding. Henderson’s campaign sent out a prepared statement offering that "Over the past four years I’ve advanced common sense solutions to improve infrastructure, get dangerous drivers off our streets, and ensure our students get to school safe.” That attention and investment in public safety policy may have contributed to her election in 2021 as vice chair of the National Capital Region Transportation Planning Board of the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments, and then as the board’s chair in 2024. 


By her own admission, Henderson has been all over the legislative space. “I wasn’t elected to just talk about one issue,” she told me, recalling that former Ward 3 Councilmember Mary Cheh once joked that she wanted Henderson to be given a committee to chair so she would “stop coming to our stuff.” (Council Chair Phil Mendelson has made it a practice, with his colleagues’ assent, to withhold committee chairmanships from new members for the first two years of their terms.)


It wasn’t until January 2023 that Henderson was appointed chair of the Committee on Health. She had previously been a member. 


That shift in authority lodged her in the middle of controversy between Mendelson and Ward 7 Councilmember Vincent Gray, who had been the longtime leader of the Health Committee until a series of health emergencies made it difficult for him to carry out those duties. Gray objected to the change as discriminatory, but the full legislature approved Mendelson’s reorganization proposal.


“I had been on the Health Committee since my first year, and you could definitely see a difference in terms of the work of the committee, the stamina of the committee, and getting things done and getting into the meat of some of the work,” said Henderson, discussing some, though not all, of the reasoning behind the change. 


“There was just a difference in terms of how we would go into budget and performance oversight,” she continued, noting that members would anticipate the chance to “dig into questions” only to be told by committee staff that “We can only have one round of questions with the government witnesses. It was like, ‘Wait, what? DC Health’s budget, [the] Department of Health Care Finance’s budget is nearly a billion dollars. But you are telling me I only get seven minutes of questions?’” 


“Taking over the Health Committee was always going to be a big responsibility just because there’s so much that’s part of it,” added Henderson, who as a committee member had already made her mark. 


Henderson has aligned herself with the movement to protect and improve women’s reproductive rights and health care. For example, she introduced the Maternal Health Resources and Access Act of 2021, which required doula services; the Expanding Access to Fertility Treatment Amendment Act of 2022; and the Enhancing Reproductive Health Protections Amendment Act of 2022, among others. 


With the change in committee leadership came an end to enabling the executive branch’s tendency for slip-sliding. Providers believe their concerns about policies and costs are now being heard; they are beginning to see solutions to long-standing issues like adequate funding for health care aides and other workers. Henderson has moved the conversation beyond just providing access to insurance and health care to one focused on actually enhancing the quality of services being provided, especially to DC’s poor and working-class residents — those who rely on Medicaid.


“She’s done a great job on health,” said Lane, praising Henderson and her staff for doing their own research and maintaining a steady demeanor. “She’s more inquisitive. … She takes each issue on its face. She picks her battles.”


When she took office, Henderson called herself a “pragmatic progressive,” which she said drew some criticism at the time over both words in the phrase. Now she might be a member of the no-label crew.


“You know how in music folks don’t really like genres because it’s putting people into a box? That’s how I feel about some of the labels on issues,” she told me. “I feel like you gotta deal with each issue as it comes.


“Frankly, this means that everybody talks to me, because they know I’m not coming to the table with some [preconceived] notion about how I’m going to approach a thing,” continued Henderson.


“I also feel like, too, I’ve never been a developer, I’ve never been a doctor. I need to learn from the people who are in the field. I’m always open to hearing a different set of facts and opinions about how we should move forward on something.”


That attitude just may win Henderson more votes next month than she earned in 2020.



This article first appeared on TheDCLine.org


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