D.C. Council Chairman Vincent Gray wants Mayor Adrian Fenty to immediately freeze hiring and promotions of city workers to help close a $175 million budget shortfall.
Gray might be the presumptive mayor elect, but Fenty is still the only authority in the District capable of ordering such a freeze. Gray hopes the freeze will be implemented soon after the 2011 fiscal year begins Friday.
The chairman doesn’t yet have an estimate on how much the city would save, but he’s “making the suggestion as a possible prudent solution to help fill that gap,” said Gray for Mayor campaign spokeswoman Traci Hughes.
The District’s Chief Financial Officer Natwar Gandhi announced the $175 million budget gap on Monday. The bulk of the missing cash has come from a $100 million decline in revenue collection, primarily the result of a drop in sales and income taxes. Another $25 million is from D.C. Public Schools busting its budget and at least $33 million is due to cuts in Medicaid funding by Congress.
It’s up to Fenty to introduce the measures to the D.C. Council to close the gap. Hughes said Gray hopes to work closely with Fenty in drafting the cuts and fee raises that will be necessary to cover the shortfall. She said she did not know whether Fenty and Gray have met since Gandhi’s announcement of the budget gap on Monday.
Fenty was scheduled to speak at a news conference outside a burned-out building in Columbia Heights on Wednesday evening, but a spokeswoman said he didn’t make it because he got stuck in traffic. She could not immediately say whether he would support Gray’s request for the hiring freeze.
Since the hard-hitting Democratic primary campaigns came to a close earlier this month with Gray victorious, he and Fenty have met several times to work on the transition process. The council chairman has been increasingly taking the lead, and his biggest push to take the reigns came Wednesday when he called for the hiring freeze.
“Gray has been saying all along that the District will have to tighten its belt to put a dent in the budget shortfall,” Hughes said.
