Photo by cmoaknd

If you’re one of the three members of the elected D.C. Statehood Delegation, there aren’t many perks that come along with the job. You’re an unpaid advocate for a tough cause, and though you’ve got a title like “representative” or “senator,” no one in Congress will formally recognize you as one of their own. Maybe the only benefit is an office in the Wilson Building—albeit in the basement.

Now Councilmember Vincent Orange (D-At Large) wants to make the job pay off a little more. Today he introduced legislation that would offer each member of the delegation—Shadow Representative Nate Bennett-Fleming and Shadow Senators Michael Brown and Paul Strauss—a $35,000 annual salary and $75,000 each for staffing and another $75,000 per person for programming. Additionally, the bill would allow the D.C. Council to spend $550,000 annually on a “lobbying and media campaign” for statehood. All told, the city would be putting just over $1.1 million a year into the fight for statehood.

Were the bill to pass, it would add some muscle to a fight that has largely suffered from lack of resources over the years. Up through 2008, Congress prohibited D.C. from spending any money on the fight for voting rights and statehood. As a consequence, the only money the statehood delegation had access to was donations made by D.C. taxpayers; from 2006 through the second quarter of fiscal 2012, it had taken in over $145,000.

For former Shadow Representative Mike Panetta, the idea is a start. “I think it would be good to have a stipend and some allocated budget for the delegation. I felt like the whole time I was in office I was trying to make a dollar out of 15 cents on everything I did. If we are serious about putting a 51st star on the American flag it’s going to take a serious commitment of time, energy, and financial resources. Funding these office would be a good start, but it’s only a down payment on what’s really needed,” he wrote in an email.

Ward 5 statehood activist Josh Burch largely agrees, writing today that if Orange is serious about promoting statehood, he should up the amount of money offered—and mandate that the $550,000 for the council be used for grants to organizations working to promote self-determination, voting rights and statehood. (The council recently offered up such a grant for $200,000.) Burch also said he worried how Orange’s plan would work with a recent proposal by Mayor Vince Gray to create a 51st Statehood Commission with a paid executive director and staff.

“While we need more people and resources committed to the statehood cause, I’m not sure we need the mayor acting on one track, the shadow delegation on another, and then the Council on another. Maybe it’s a case of the more the merrier but I do worry with too many cooks in the statehood kitchen we’ll have competing and/or conflicting messages,” wrote Burch.

A bill that would make D.C. the 51st state has been introduced in both the House of Representatives and Senate.