Mayor-elect Vince Gray wants to save $50 million on top of closing a $187.8 million budget shortfall as the D.C. Council is about to begin a scramble to comb through Mayor Adrian Fenty’s budget proposal. For Gray to achieve his savings goal, the council will have to either slash more than $230 million from the budget, raise taxes or do a mix of both.
But as of Monday evening, the council had not yet received Fenty’s proposal. It will now be delivered more than two weeks after Gray had hoped it would be. Chief Financial Officer Natwar Gandhi received a final copy of Fenty’s budget late last week, but the CFO was still reviewing it Monday night to make sure all the lines added up before passing it to the council. Council members can’t begin to review the budget until it’s in their hands.
The council will vote on the budget Dec. 7 after holding a public hearing Nov. 30, Council Chairman Gray said.
“The next few weeks are a critical time for all of us,” Gray said Monday morning while delivering a state of the budget address. “We are about the embark on a very important – and condensed – process to balance the current year’s budget before the end of the year. That leaves us with very little time to deal with some significant challenges.”
Gray has said he wants to look at spending cuts before considering tax hikes.
The current year’s budget requires the city to spend $186.2 million from the fund balance, the District’s savings account. The fund is already low and the city won’t be able to dip into it to close the gap between revenue and spending in the next fiscal year, when the city is expected to face another $345 million shortfall.
Gray said Monday that he had originally hoped to slash all $186.2 million of fund balance spending from this year’s operating budget, in order to save it for next year.
“However, given the time we have remaining, this is no longer a realistic goal,” he said.
Instead, Gray wants to cut the fund balance spending down to about $136 million, keeping $50 million available for next year. The mayor’s budget is expected to only cut spending to reach the $187.8 million, so it would be up to council members to find the additional $50 million.
