The House Committee on Oversight and Accountability has called on D.C. officials to testify at a hearing later this month where Republicans say they want to discuss “general oversight of the District of Columbia, including crime, safety, and city management.”

In letters sent Wednesday, committee chairman Rep. James Comer (R-Kentucky) invited D.C. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson, D.C. Councilmember Charles Allen (D-Ward 6), and D.C. Chief Financial Officer Glen Lee to testify and answer questions during a hearing scheduled for March 29. Comer also invited Gregg Pemberton, the head of the D.C. Police Union, which represents some 3,000 officers and detectives.

The letters were first reported on by The Daily Caller.

“Congress has sent a clear message to the D.C. Council: it’s time to make our nation’s capital safe again. All Americans should feel safe in their capital city, but radical left-wing policies have led to a crime crisis and rampant homelessness. As the committee with jurisdiction over the District of Columbia, the Oversight Committee has a constitutional responsibility to conduct oversight of the policies that have plagued our capital city,” said Comer in a statement.

The scheduled hearing marks yet another example of increased Republican scrutiny of D.C., which has an elected mayor and council but formally remains under congressional oversight and control. Congress recently blocked the bill passed by the D.C. Council that revised the city’s century-old criminal code, and a pair of House Republicans are now looking to block a separate police reform bill passed by the council and opposed by the police union. Comer and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia) are also investigating the treatment of Jan. 6 detainees held at the D.C. Jail.

After last year’s elections, D.C. officials conceded that the city would face a “special danger” under a Republican majority in Congress, even if only in one chamber. One Republican with a particular interest in D.C., Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-Georgia), has even raised the prospect of repealing the city’s home rule.

While D.C. officials have traveled to Capitol Hill for hearings in recent years, it’s been on better terms: in 2021 the Senate took testimony from Mayor Muriel Bowser on a bill to give D.C. statehood, and two years before that the House Oversight Committee held its own hearing on the same bill.

It’s been at least a decade since D.C.’s elected leadership got dragged up to Congress to testify on the city issues, but even then it was under generally more accomodating Republicans. Back in 2012, the Republican chairman of the House Oversight Committee even partnered with then-mayor Vincent Gray to propose loosening restrictions on building heights in certain parts of the District.

Comer and other Republican members of the Oversight Committee are likely to focus on policing and crime in D.C., and are certain to have a willing partner in the police union, which supported the congressional move to block the revised criminal code and has more recently said it also wants the police reform bill to be repealed. (The union filed an unsuccessful lawsuit to stop a provision that removes disciplinary matters from contract negotiations.)

Republicans have also been critical of D.C.’s management of homeless encampments, even though Bowser — who wasn’t invited to testify at this hearing, despite being the city’s executive — has pushed forward in clearing larger encampments on D.C. land and assisting the National Park Service in clearing those on federal land.

The planned hearing drew criticism from ranking Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Maryland).

“I wish my Republican colleagues would show the same devotion to public safety in the nation’s capital when it comes to the January 6th insurrection, the worst episode of mass violence against the Capitol Police, the Metropolitan Police, and the peaceful transfer of power in American history. But this hearing is just one more political distraction designed to placate the ultra-MAGA base and one more affront to self-government in local Washington. If my colleagues want to act as the largest city council in America, with 535 Members, this hearing should take place at the D.C. Council chambers or somewhere in the local city so residents can actually participate,” he said.

The inclusion of Lee, the District’s chief financial officer, in the hearing could help Republicans and Democrats alike better understand the state of the city’s finances. In a late-February revenue estimate, Lee said that while D.C.’s financial situation remains generally solid — the city has more than $1.6 billion in reserves, enough to run the government for 60 days if all other revenue dried up — the ongoing trend of remote work is likely be a consistent drag on commercial property values and thus tax revenue. On that issue, Bowser and Comer are aligned: both have said they want the federal government to require that workers return to the office.

But Lee could also play a more basic role in educating Republicans on where D.C.’s budget comes from. In a House committee hearing earlier this year, Rep. Ralph Norman (R-South Carolina) made comments insinuating that the federal government forgives D.C. debt (which isn’t true) and that the majority of the city’s budget is federally funded (which is also not true).

In a brief text message, a spokeswoman for Mendelson would only say that he plans to attend the hearing.