Photo by Mr. T in DC.

This week, the D.C. Council and its various committees will again convene to hold hearings, debate proposals and vote on legislation. But if any councilmembers have laws they’d really like to pass, they’ll just have to wait until September.

Because of the District’s status as a federal colony of sorts, any law that the Council passes has to be sent to Capitol Hill for 30 days of congressional review. (In some cases, the review period is 60 days.) Of course, that’s not just 30 normal days — it’s 30 legislative days, or those days that the House of Representatives is actually in session.

According to the House’s legislative calendar, our congressional overlords will only be actively working in the District for 28 days from now until their summer recess begins in August. So even if the Council passed a bunch of laws today, they wouldn’t formally go into effect until September 8 at the earliest. Lawmaking in the District is literally taking the summer off, it seems. (The city’s 2012 budget, for example, will be voted on a second and final time in two weeks, but Congress won’t approve it until mid- to late-September — if then.)

Fortunately, the District’s Home Rule Charter does allow the council to enact emergency legislation for 90 days without congressional approval — though more votes are needed to pass anything on such an emergency basis. Emergency legislation is useful in some regards, though it’s overuse by the council has been questioned by good-government advocates that claim that emergency laws don’t receive the same vetting as normal laws.