Although D.C. Mayor Vincent Gray is likely to prevail Tuesday in a budget vote that he sought for months, the aftershocks of the political brouhaha that defined the debate are likely to continue.
For Gray, the path to Tuesday’s vote on his $77 million spending package has been bruising. He offered two supplemental budget requests since January, only to have most of the D.C. Council publicly rebuke him for even contemplating spending so much extra cash so soon.
Later, internal emails showed members of Gray’s staff were trying to use funding for the Ward 5 special election as leverage to win votes for the full package.
And last week, Gray spent two hours meeting with lawmakers to answer their questions about his proposal, only to face more criticisms than questions.
But it hasn’t been much easier for Gray’s council colleagues. After the mayor’s briefing for legislators, a senior aide to Gray slammed Council Chairman Kwame Brown as “a do-nothing chairman.”
As recently as Friday, the mayor and council were exchanging accusations over who would be to blame if the city’s charter schools had their funding cut off because the council didn’t act quickly enough on Gray’s supplemental budget.
“To announce on the Friday before the vote that the charter schools aren’t going to receive a payment because the council hasn’t acted is irresponsible,” said Brown chief of staff Megan Vahey.
The council didn’t learn of pressure on the schools until March 29 and Tuesday would be their first chance to act on the problem, she said.
But Pedro Ribeiro, a Gray spokesman, said the council was the obstacle.
“The mayor has been warning the council for months,” Ribeiro said. “They have known since March 23. They could have easily moved emergency legislation. … It boggles the mind.”
One political observer said the tense debate was a byproduct of the ethics probes that have enveloped the Wilson Building.
“These things have a tendency to balloon when the environment has already been caustic due to the scandals and the investigations and the previous carping,” said Chuck Thies, who has previously consulted for Gray and clashed with Brown. “It seems like the one thing they agree on is the one thing they can do nothing about: voting rights.”SClBThies added that the Gray aide’s jab toward Brown signaled a deeper problem for the city’s government.
“The tension isn’t just between the mayor and the council. There’s clearly tension between the mayor’s staff and the council,” Thies said. “And that is a potentially explosive situation.”SClB
