Local
D.C. looks to recoup some costs from inauguration
By: Leah Fabel
Examiner Staff Writer
February 13, 2009
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| D.C. spent nearly $5 million transporting 4,000 visiting police officers from 99 jurisdictions, and overtime and holiday pay ate up almost $16 million. (Getty Images) |
D.C. spent nearly $50 million on Barack Obama’s inaugural festivities, and now the city is gearing up to ask for some of that money back.
Overtime and holiday pay ate up almost $16 million, and about $15 million was spent on commodities, goods and services, according to Dan Tangherlini, D.C.’s city administrator. Tangherlini and other officials testified before the D.C. Council’s finance and revenue committee Thursday morning.
Transporting 4,000 visiting police officers from 99 jurisdictions and putting them up in 2,000 hotel rooms cost nearly $5 million. The purchase of 1,000 new 800-megahertz radios set the city back almost $4 million, and new fire and emergency resources rang up to about $3 million.
After the federal government’s $15 million yearly allocation to D.C. for events of national significance, “an estimated shortfall of $33.5 million remains,” Tangherlini said.
“Furthermore, we have the rest of the year to cover,” he added.
Some of those costs will be covered by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, but Tangherlini said his office would review all expenses “to ensure full accountability” of the costs, and would go to Congress for costs not eligible for FEMA dollars.
In the past, the federal government hasn’t gone out of its way to cover the city’s inaugural expenses, but Councilman Jack Evans, D-Ward 2, chairman of the finance committee, said, “We’re hopeful [the Obama] administration will be more inclined to help get reimbursements for us.”
The city’s chief financial officer, Natwar Gandhi, said it was too soon to tell whether D.C. would receive a significant inaugural bump in sales tax revenue,and played down the possibility of an influx of cash.
Street vendors, he said, are exempt from paying sales tax in exchange for a quarterly vendor fee. Those fees, which were higher during the inauguration, would generate some additional revenues but would not result in a “bonanza,” Gandhi said.
And although initial research suggests that hotels saw about $60 million in sales between Jan. 17 and 21 (compared with $13 million over the same days in 2008), Gandhi said about 4.5 percent of the 14.5 sales tax must go to the Washington Convention Center Authority.
Lastly, he said, any five-day bump could be swallowed up by the economic downturn and a steep decline in tourism throughout the rest of the year.
