| Legal public holidays: - New Year's Day - Martin Luther King Jr. Day - Inauguration Day (every four years) - Washington's Birthday - D.C. Emancipation Day - Memorial Day - Independence Day - Labor Day - Columbus Day - Veterans Day - Thanksgiving Day - Christmas Day |
say, what?
to a growing list of public holidays that shutter schools, give local government employees a day off and cost the city more than $1 million.
While many jurisdictions across the United States recognize the Lunar New Year - a holiday celebrated by the Chinese, Koreans, Vietnamese and other Asian cultures - only San Francisco goes so far as to close schools.
But Ward 2 Council Member Jack Evans, who represents Chinatown and much of the District's Asian population, recently introduced legislation that would take D.C. to another level, closing government offices and emptying classrooms. With a strong and vibrant Asian community in Washington, it is "appropriate to honor the celebration of their new year," Evans said when he introduced the bill, co-sponsored by 10 of his colleagues.
Would he get the day off, too?
"There are hundreds of millions of people who celebrate this every year and we don't," Evans said Tuesday.
Most of them don't live in D.C.
"We don't even recognize it." Roughly 3 percent of the District's population, or about 17,000 people, are Asian, according to the U.S. Census.
Like Emancipation Day, added last year to the D.C. calendar as an annual April holiday, the new day off would cost District taxpayers $1.1 million. Evans said the holiday is worth the money, but one local budget watchdog disagreed."It seems we could find a way to honor the Chinese New Year and other important days to District residents without making it a costly holiday for the District," said Ed Lazere, executive director of the DC Fiscal Policy Institute. "Every time you give every D.C. government worker a day off, it costs that much more to run the D.C. government." The Lunar New Year generally falls between the end of January and the first two weeks of February. The holiday in Washington would open many young eyes to a growing minority community, said Jeanny Ho, vice chairman of the District-based Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association, a Chinese American advocacy group.