D.C. Mayor Vincent Gray’s plan to spend $20 million to pay District employees for furlough days they were forced to take last year has drawn opposition that will cost the mayor support for his broader supplemental budget package, legislators say.
“There are better uses for this money,” said at-large Councilman David Catania, who said he will not vote to fund the furlough repayments. “We do nothing in this city for the working poor.”
To try to bridge a $188 million budget shortfall last year, city leaders decided not to compensate city workers for four holidays that were supposed to be paid.
But the city ultimately ended its fiscal year in the black, posting a $240 million surplus. That surplus, along with updated revenue forecasts that predict the District will take in at least $77 million more than originally projected this year, prompted Gray to include the furlough payments in a supplemental budget the D.C. Council will consider on Tuesday.
“It’s a good faith effort to say to people that, ‘We appreciate you working with us. We appreciate the work that you do. As it turns out, we didn’t need the $19.9 million to balance the budget,'” Gray said. “There are people who made that sacrifice who did not have a real strong capacity to be able to make that sacrifice.”
Although the city raised income taxes last year, mayoral spokesman Pedro Ribeiro said Gray didn’t consider slashing tax rates or refunding the extra money the District collected. Ribeiro said, though,that Gray has proposed tax changes in his 2013 budget.
“It’s something that we’re looking at and something we’ve included in next year’s budget,” Ribeiro said. “We make some very solid suggestions on tax relief for District residents.”
Although Gray’s supplemental budget is poised to win the council’s backing next week, Catania isn’t the only legislator nervous about the furlough payments.
Ward 1 Councilman Jim Graham has repeatedly expressed concern about Gray’s plan to pay employees while proposing welfare cuts for 2013.
“Unlike the D.C. government employees, most of whom don’t live in D.C., these people live in D.C.,” Graham said of welfare recipients. “It is a larger issue, but this is an important piece of it.”
