Mayor Adrian Fenty has taken his lumps over the years, but no one can accuse him of playing politics with the most recent budget he presented to the D.C. Council. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem like the same can be said about his chief rival, D.C. Council Chair Vincent Gray.
Fenty’s FY 2011 budget seemed to reflect the difficult financial state faced by the District and the country at large. In hopes of closing a $500 million budget gap for the coming year, Fenty continued a two-year long slashing of spending on social services aimed primarily at the city’s lowest income residents. His 2011 budget dug deeper, cutting $4.6 million from adult job training programs, $4 million from a child care subsidy program, $1.3 million from emergency rental assistance, and so on.
The merits – or lack thereof – of the cuts notwithstanding, Fenty deserves credit for not letting his electoral hopes get in the way of his duties as a chief executive facing tough times. Elections and governance rarely mix well, and many a mayor, governor and president have been known to use their power to propose spending priorities as a way to shore up their base and attract new voters. Fenty’s clearly not doing this, because no one giving his 2011 budget even the most cursory look would assume that he’s going to gain much politically from it.
Unfortunately, the same recognition can’t be extended to Fenty’s chief rival, Vince Gray. When he was confronted by activists from the Save Our Safety Net campaign this week and asked to support a proposal to raise taxes on the city’s highest earners, he not only demurred, but openly admitted that raising taxes during an election year just wouldn’t be feasible.
Well, it’s true – very few elected officials like raising taxes as they hit the campaign trail. But that Gray so crassly admitted it hints that he’s having trouble balancing his political ambitions against what may be best for the city. Fellow council members Jim Graham (D-Ward 1), Tommy Wells (D-Ward 6), Harry Thomas (D-Ward 5) and Michael Brown (I-At Large) have sided with an increase in taxes on the District’s richest, and three of the four them are likewise facing re-election this year.
Ultimately, Fenty doesn’t get off scot-free, though. Since he first ran in 2006, he’s stuck to his promise not to raise taxes. (He has been somewhat liberal in increasing fees, though.) And as nice an idea as this might seem, it’s turning out to be more of a straight-jacket on what Fenty can and cannot do than we should be comfortable with. Raising taxes should not be the first thing elected officials propose when faced with funding shortfalls, but it shouldn’t always be the last. In a city where marginal tax rates for someone making $40,001 is the same as someone making $400,001 or $4,000,001, there’s a problem, even more so when the proposed solution is more cuts to services targeted to those who often need them most.
Where Fenty might have made a mistake by sticking to his pledge not to raise taxes, Gray is only making it worse by refusing to consider it because he’s in a tough electoral battle. Both of them should step back, if only because the District can’t afford mixing politics and the budget without someone losing out – and in this case it seems it will be the city’s poorest residents.
