D.C. Council Chairman Kwame Brown says the budget he will put before the council will not include any increases in property or income taxes, despite the mayor’s proposal to raise incomes taxes on the wealthy. “Income and property tax increases are not on the table,” Brown told The Washington Examiner in an interview. The mayor presents the budget to the council, but the council chairman traditionally reshapes it around members’ wishes and presents his own version the day of the vote.
Brown killing Mayor Vincent Gray’s proposal to raise taxes on those who make $200,000 or more means the fiscal 2012 budget Brown presents to the council on May 25 will have to account for the $35 million that the tax increase would have raised. Brown’s statement to The Examiner implies that he has found the dollars, although he was mum on the details.
The move, however, shifts the burden from tax-raising opponents searching for the council votes to stop the increase, to those who favored the measure needing to find the seven votes to put it back into the budget.
Brown described the $5.5 billion budget as “the toughest in the last 10 years.” The city’s cash reserves that former Mayor Adrian Fenty dipped into now can’t be touched, and the recession has cut deeply into the District’s revenue.
“This isn’t going to be a year when the budget gets a 13-0 vote,” he said. “Every council member has different leanings and represents different constituencies, and a unanimous vote is not realistic in relation to the finances of this city.”
In addition to the tax increase, the budget won’t likely include a pension reform bill proposed by at-large Councilman David Catania that would reduce retirement payments to the city’s police officers and firefighters, Brown said. Behind closed doors, council members and city officials have been battling over the role the bill could play in the budget process. Some opponents of the legislation feared it would be used to offset the dollars raised by Gray’s proposed income tax increase. Brown said he won’t let it be.
“I won’t be presenting a [budget] that has any pension reform legislation in it,” Brown said. “It should be on a separate track that’s open and transparent.”
The council chairman said this year’s difficult budget is “a one-time thing.”
“This city is on the move. We’re going up financially, not back to the 1980s,” he said, firing back at critics who say the city is heading backward under his and Gray’s leadership.
