*** It’s important to understand this correctly. The policy of giving city jobs to city residents is often thought of as necessarily leading to degraded city services.  Ed Kilgore, a prominent Democratic commentator, for example, recently attributed to Barry “the idea that municipal government should exist for the benefit of its employees rather than its citizens. Anyone who had the misfortune of dealing with DC government in the two Barry administrations can attest to the faithfulness with which this principle was applied to virtually every public ‘service.’”  The problem was not the policy of preferring DC residents over non-residents for city jobs.  Kilgore once worked for Georgia Sen. Sam Nunn.  Does he imagine that Nunn steered defense jobs to Georgia with any intention other than that they would be filled by Georgians? The problem was Barry’s failure to insist that city jobs be filled with qualified DC residents. The fact that the city has among its population a higher proportion of college graduates than any of the fifty states suggests that there were qualified Washingtonians aplenty. The city just didn’t hire them, at least in Barry’s day.