D.C. Council adopts $5.4B budget
By: Michael Neibauer
Examiner Staff Writer
May 12, 2009
The D.C. Council on Tuesday adopted the District’s $5.4 billion fiscal 2010 budget, which members say closes a projected $800 million shortfall with job cuts and fee increases while sparing critical services in a host of areas.
The council “has made substantial improvements to the introduced budget” offered by Mayor Adrian Fenty, said Council Chairman Vincent Gray. Ward 2 Councilman Jack Evans said the budget was one “of priorities, of rearranging and trying to accommodate everyone.”
The adopted plan slashes more than 1,000 jobs, hundreds of which are filled, adds a slate of new fees and raises a host of others, and makes liberal use of newfound interest income to close an estimated $800 million gap. That shortfall, officials warn, might widen when new revenue predictions come out in June.
That said, critical agencies such as police, fire, and human services emerged from the budget process virtually unscathed, council members said.
The budget debate went relatively smoothly, with only a handful of amendments: One yanked $27.5 million from the D.C. Public Schools and charter schools pending an enrollment audit. Another called on the D.C. Water and Sewer Authority to hold rates steady. WASA has a $30 million surplus, Ward 1 Councilman Jim Graham claimed, yet “136,000 ratepayers are going to carry the weight” of a proposed 10 percent increase.
The budget restores $5.4 million in cuts to pre-kindergarten programs, $16.7 million for charter school facilities and $1.2 million for Emancipation Day, which will remain a legal public holiday. It eliminates a “streetlight maintenance fee” and E-911 fee increase that Fenty proposed, but it adds $12.6 million in revenue through enhanced parking enforcement, including the new street “sweeper cams.”
The plan also adds $1.7 million for an anti-youth-crime initiative in Ward 5, delivers more than $20 million in earmarks to roughly 120 groups, funds a major expansion of litter cleanup efforts, restores school crossing guard positions, spares the offices on veterans and Asian and Pacific Islander affairs, and cuts $20 million from the Summer Youth Employment Program.
