Hours after D.C. Mayor Vincent Gray sought to stem unease on the D.C. Council about his proposal to spend nearly $80 million in surprise revenue, the months-long back-and-forth between the mayor and legislators grew sharply personal on Tuesday.
Since January, Gray has sent lawmakers two supplemental budget requests — one valued at $44.7 million and the other worth $34.8 million. Although Gray pushed for quick action, Council Chairman Kwame Brown refused to schedule a vote until April 17, saying lawmakers needed time to have their questions answered.
“We’re no longer just going to accept what people tell us and just go along with it,” Brown told The Washington Examiner on Tuesday. “People are going to do their due diligence, and they’re going to take time to make sure things are the way they’re supposed to be.”SClBLater, Megan Vahey, Brown’s chief of staff, said the chairman hadn’t scheduled a vote in March because the proposal wouldn’t have passed.
But a senior Gray administration official, who demanded anonymity to discuss the legislative process candidly, insisted Brown was the sole reason for the delay.
“It’s clear that the chairman is a do-nothing chairman,” the official said. “It’s not even the individual members of the council. It’s the chairman.”
Brown hammered Gray and his aides for the comment.
“It had to be a do-nothing staffer for the mayor who said that,” Brown said. “It’s personally offensive that [the mayor] would allow his senior staff to attack me for doing the people’s work.”
The war of words began soon after Gray met with legislators for nearly two hours in a bid to answer their questions about his proposals, which he issued after the District’s chief financial officer twice predicted the city would take in more money than originally forecasted.SClB”We’ve done our best to work with them and to provide as many answers as possible,” mayoral spokesman Pedro Ribeiro said. “We’ve done everything we’ve possibly could to work with them.”SClBVahey said most of the questions legislators posed remained unanswered.
Gray’s proposals include $25 million for D.C. Public Schools, more than $9 million for charter schools and nearly $20 million to pay city employees for the four furlough days they were forced to take last year.
