One of the signal innovations of D.C.'s Home Rule Charter was the establishment of Advisory Neighborhood Commissions, or ANCs. The purpose of these new bodies was to ensure community input in decisions of the District Government, which in 1974 came under local control for the first time in more than a century.

For good or for ill, the Home Rule Charter provided for popular election of only the mayor and 13 councilmembers. (School Board members already had been elected for several years.) As Councilmember David Catania has pointed out, Vermont, with about the same population as the District, elects several statewide officials in addition to the governor, 150 state representatives, 30 state senators, and hundreds if not thousands more local officials. So it is not surprising that in the District of Columbia, many talented and dedicated citizens who elsewhere would be state senators or representatives have sought and won election to their ANC. Nor is it surprising that several current members of the D.C. Council, including Ward 2's Jack Evans, got their start as members of an ANC.

The big difference between state legislatures and ANCs is the extent of their powers. A state legislature has plenary authority to write laws, subject only to constitutional limits. A state legislature (or, in the District's case, the Council) may set a top income tax rate of 9% or 18% (or abolish the tax, if it chooses). A state legislature has broad discretion in establishing speed limits for highways, licensing requirements for businesses, and sentences for crimes. The D.C. Council, like some state legislatures, enjoys wide latitude in prescribing policies for land use (as embodied in the Comprehensive Plan) and standards for liquor licensing.

An ANC, by contrast, is an advisory body. The role of the ANC is to give advice to District agencies as to how they ought to exercise their discretionary authority, particularly with respect to matters affecting the ANC's neighborhood. Agencies are not required to follow the ANC's recommendations, even if the issue at hand involves only one neighborhood. What agencies must do is give the ANC's recommendations "great weight." This does not mean that the ANC's recommendations trump those of other interested parties. As the D.C. Court of Appeals held in 1977, it means instead that the agency must address the ANC's recommendations, and articulate why those recommendations do -- or do not -- offer persuasive advice under the circumstances.

To be persuasive, an ANC's advice must be framed in terms of the legal regime that is being administered by the agency receiving the advice. Where the ANC is making recommendations to the ABC Board, for example, the ANC's advice must address the statutory appropriateness standards (peace/order/quiet, parking, crime, etc.) that govern ABC Board decisions. Recommendations based on other factors will be disregarded. As the D.C. Corporation Counsel (now known as the D.C. Attorney General) advised the Chair of the Dupont Circle ANC in 1995, "ANC written recommendations that are not legally relevant to the issues that the agency must resolve are not entitled to be given great weight by the agency."

Anyone, whether a member of the public or a Commissioner, who urges an ANC to advise an agency without regard for the limits on that agency's authority puts at risk the ANC's standing. To state it differently, anyone who wants the ANC to be effective – to be afforded the great weight to which it is entitled – must expend the time and effort required to understand the legal regime administered by each agency to which to ANC would make recommendations. The ANC is not a neighborhood legislature. Those who would vest general legislative authority in ANCs should lobby the D.C. Council to change the law, and in the meantime bear in mind that "great weight" depends on the relevance of ANC recommendations to the agency's decision-making standards.

A corollary rule of law is that it is only the ANC, acting as a corporate body, that is entitled to great weight. Individual Commissioners have no greater standing before an agency than any other member of the public. Thus it is the recommendations of the ANC, as determined in accordance with applicable procedural requirements, that must be considered by the agency to which they are addressed. In this regard ANCs are the same as legislatures or appellate courts the legal effect of the majority's decision is the same, whether it was unanimous or by a single vote.