Local
Gray seeks to revive city’s rainy day fund
By: Bill Myers
Examiner Staff Writer
November 9, 2008
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| D.C. Council Chairman Vince Gray wants to resurrect the city’s defunct rainy day fund. — Examiner File Photo |
Under legislation still being drafted, Gray would require the administration to set aside $50 million in this fiscal year’s budget – just in case. D.C. is facing a $131 million budget gap for fiscal 2009 but Gray has told colleagues he’s worried things might get worse.
The council will hold hearings Monday on Mayor Adrian Fenty’s budget. The money would come by slashing cash from Fenty’s proposed new expenditures. The measure apparently has broad support from the council.
“We feel we have to be prepared,” Councilwoman Mary Cheh, D-Ward 3, told The Examiner.
The Fenty administration has sent a provisional budget over for approval. Administration officials have acknowledged that the crisis was magnified by the abolition of the city’s rainy day fund. The fund had been required by Congress, but the Hill lifted the provision earlier this year. Fenty laid out his spending plan without setting aside any funds for an emergency.
The administration has claimed that the money wouldn’t have been enough to close the budget gap, anyway.
Chief Financial Officer Natwar Gandhi has blamed the crisis on Wall Street’s collapse but said that it was still too early in the fiscal year to determine how bad things are. Some inside District government are worried that Wall Street hasn’t bottomed out yet and things will get worse in the second quarter, around December.
Gray met with council members individually this week and asked them about their own views of the mayor’s proposed budget.
Gray also announced that he was rejecting Fenty’s proposal to slash agency funding across the board. Gray said in a news release late Friday that Fenty’s plan “lacked specificity” and also would also gouge vital systems like the crumbling foster care agency.
Got a tip on the city’s budget? Call Bill Myers at 202-459-4956 or send him an e-mail, bmyers@dcexaminer.com.
