District leaders have nearly reached an agreement on a watered-down version of D.C. Mayor Vincent Gray’s $20 million plan to repay city workers for furlough days they were required to take last year, Wilson Building officials said.
A compromise plan, which aides speculated could pay city workers for two furlough days instead of the four Gray initially envisioned, might face a D.C. Council vote as early as Tuesday.SClBPedro Ribeiro, a spokesman for Gray, declined to detail the negotiations but said the mayor’s office was working with legislators.
“We are engaged in discussions with the council,” Ribeiro said.
Approval of a new plan would be a dramatic about-face for lawmakers after they unanimously stripped Gray’s original proposal out of a spending package on April 17.
The proposal’s removal was a part of a larger council effort to slash the mayor’s $77 million supplemental budget proposal to $15 million.
But the day after lawmakers voted down the proposal, Gray indicated he was open to compromise.
“You have to have conversations,” Gray said then. “Eventually, you find a solution that people can work with.”
The development of a compromise could signal a political armistice between Council Chairman Kwame Brown and Gray, who publicly clashed on the supplemental budget. In the days leading up to the vote, a Gray aide called Brown “a do-nothing chairman,” and Brown described Ribeiro as “clueless.”SClBThe men later pledged, though, that they had a positive working relationship.
But not everyone in the John A. Wilson Building is enthusiastic about a potential compromise.
Ward 6 Councilman Tommy Wells said he would need to review the details of a new proposal, but added he thinks city employees should be paid for all of the holidays they were promised.
“You ought to pay your employees what they had been told,” Wells said. “Otherwise, you almost get the idea that what we pay our employees is negotiable every year. … You can’t run a professional organization with that relationship to your employees.”
City leaders ordered the furlough days — taken in 2011 on Presidents Day, Emancipation Day, Memorial Day and Independence Day — as they tried to close a $188 million budget shortfall. The furlough days were originally scheduled as paid holidays, but District officials converted them to unpaid days.
Ultimately, the city posted a $240 million surplus.
