If you ask someone how to count to 30, you’d think the answer would be simple. Not so in Washington, apparently.

A bill passed by the D.C. Council currently finds itself in an awkward legislative limbo. Local officials insist the bill is now law, while congressional officials are saying just the opposite. The dispute — which boils down to counting — again highlights the city’s complicated and often contentious relationship with Congress, its minder on the Hill.

The bill in question is the measure passed late last year that would allow non-citizens to vote in local D.C. elections starting as soon as 2024. Like every measure passed by the council, the bill had one last stopover before becoming law: a 30-day congressional review period. (The review period is 60 days for any bill making changes to the criminal code.)

The 30 days are often closely counted, largely because that’s the window during which the House and Senate can raise objections and move to block any D.C. bill from taking effect. This bill had sparked criticism from Republicans on Capitol Hill, and they moved quickly in the House last month to approve a resolution blocking it. The Senate would have to follow suit, but time was running short.

And that’s why supporters of the bill cheered at the news this week that the council had declared that the 30-day review period ended on Feb. 23, meaning the bill is now law. “Those who’ve made D.C. their permanent home now have a say in who represents them in local government,” tweeted Councilmember Brianne Nadeau (D-Ward 1), who authored the bill.

Well, maybe not.

Officials on Capitol Hill have countered (get it?) that the 30-day review period is most certainly not over; they say that it actually ends on March 14, giving Senate Republicans two more weeks to marshal their forces to block the bill.

So what gives?

Council officials tell DCist/WAMU that they’ve merely followed the law: They sent the bill over to Congress on Jan. 10, and started counting the days until they got to 30. (Weekends and holidays are excluded, as are days when Congress isn’t in session because of a recess of more than three days.) And they made a critical disclaimer: As they have in the past, they started their count “on the day such act is transmitted” to Congress, as the law dictates. (Recall that’s Jan. 10, per the council.)

But a source in the Senate who’s well-versed in the ways to count to 30 tells DCist/WAMU that the chamber’s parliamentarian, who interprets the Senate’s arcane rules, only started the 30-day count on Jan. 30.

So what accounts for the two-week difference? Well, Jan. 30 was the day the bill’s transmittal was officially cited in the Congressional Record, which, per the parliamentarian, is the actual moment the 30-day count starts. (Former Senate aide Michael Thorning guessed on Twitter that this is what happened.) We’re told that the Senate was largely absent for the first three weeks of the month; while senators were technically in session for some of the days, they didn’t actually do anything.

Council officials insist that they’re right, and they’re sticking to their interpretation that the 30-day review period ended on Feb. 23 and the bill is now law. Of course, that’s seemingly irrelevant to Congress; with the parliamentarian having spoken, the Senate will to continue reviewing the bill until March 14.

At the end of the day, the difference in timing may not matter much, at least insofar as the bill is concerned. Our Senate source says it’s unlikely that the chamber will block the bill that lets non-citizens vote in local D.C. elections, though it is marching towards blocking a separate measure that overhauls the city’s criminal code. (Congress can interfere in local laws in other ways, though, including by prohibiting the city from spending any money to implement them.)

But the counting conflict does highlight the city’s awkward and sometimes antagonistic relationship with Capitol Hill.

It was just about 50 years ago that Congress granted the city home rule, giving it an elected mayor and legislature. But it only loosened the leash so far. While Congress rarely shows any interest in actually making sure the trash gets picked up or streets are repaved, its members often do weigh in on hot-button social issues playing out in the city or seek to use it as something of a testing ground for policies they couldn’t implement anywhere else. If you’re curious why D.C. hasn’t yet legalized the sales of recreational marijuana, look no further than Congress. Or how about the dozens of charter schools that educate almost half of the city’s children? Congress is why those exist. And so on.

That control has also been exercised through the 30-day congressional review period of every D.C. bill. But it has also spawned years of complaints from city officials, who say it throws unnecessary wrenches into the legislative works.

Bills passed by the council can often spend far longer than 30 days on the Hill, especially if there’s a long congressional recess happening. (Summer’s never a good time to legislate.) “For example, the congressional review period for a bill that changed the word ‘handicap’ to ‘disability’ lasted nine months,” said D.C. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton in a 2021 speech. That often forces the council to pass emergency bills that stay in effect for 90 days and don’t get congressional review to address issues that need immediate attention; local lawmakers spend a lot of time passing emergency bills.

Longstanding practice requires that bills be sent over in physical form; after the Jan. 6 insurrection, the fencing around the Capitol literally made it impossible for council bills to get to Congress for its review. (Norton has since introduced a bill to allow the council to email the bills over.) And remember when the House couldn’t decide on a Speaker a few months ago? During that whole time, there was no one to whom D.C. could actually address its bills, so they just waited, and waited, and waited.

Norton, who has served in Congress for 30 years, has derided the 30-day congressional review period as a “Kafkaesque make-work procedure,” and she pushed to get rid of it altogether. “The congressional review period for D.C. bills is almost entirely ignored by Congress, providing it no benefit, but imposes substantial costs (in time and money) on the District,” she said two years ago. “The council estimates that it could save 5,000 employee hours and 160,000 sheets of paper per two-year council period if the review process were eliminated.”

Is that likely to happen? Don’t count on it.