Sponsor
Eleanor Holmes Norton
Representative · D-DC
Representative · D-DC
The bill grants D.C. state-equivalent access to certain wildlife and sportfishing funding pools—improving funding parity and clarity for D.C. projects—at the trade-off of reducing other states' proportional shares (if funding isn't increased) and requiring some federal administrative adjustments.
District of Columbia local governments and residents will be treated like a State for Pittman–Robertson and Dingell–Johnson funding formulas, making D.C. eligible to receive allocations from the same statutory pools as states.
D.C.-administered conservation, wildlife, and sportfishing projects are likely to gain parity (or increased funding) with projects in states by placing D.C. in the same categorical pool, potentially improving local environmental outcomes.
Removing separate carve-outs for D.C. reduces legal ambiguity and should simplify how the Department of the Interior apportions funds under these formulas, clarifying administration and claiming rules.
State fish and wildlife agencies and taxpayers in other states could see their proportional shares of Pittman–Robertson and Dingell–Johnson funds reduced if total program funding is unchanged and D.C. begins drawing from the same state pool.
The Department of the Interior and federal staff may face a short-term increase in administrative workload to adjust formulas, recordkeeping, and grant processes to integrate D.C. into state-based distributions.
Based on analysis of 2 sections of legislative text.
Includes the District of Columbia in the definition of “State” and removes separate D.C. allocation language under federal wildlife and sport fish restoration statutes.
Official title: To amend the Pittman-Robertson Wildlife Restoration Act and Dingell-Johnson Sport Fish Restoration Act to treat the District of Columbia as a State for the purposes of such Acts, and for other purposes.
Introduced February 20, 2026 by Eleanor Holmes Norton · Last progress February 20, 2026
Treats the District of Columbia as a “State” under the federal wildlife (Pittman–Robertson) and sport fish (Dingell–Johnson) restoration statutes, and removes separate, specific textual references to D.C. from apportionment and allocation provisions. The change rewrites defined terms and some statutory paragraph numbering so D.C. is included in the same category as the states for distributing funds and shares under those programs. The bill is a targeted statutory change to allocation language—it does not create new programs or appropriate new money but alters who is considered a State for the purpose of calculating and distributing wildlife and sport fish restoration funds.