The District’s three most prominent business groups are “shocked and dismayed” over Mayor Vince Gray’s decision to veto a bill that would have held off for one year the implementation of a new tax on out-of-state municipal bonds.
Gray vetoed the bill late Tuesday when he chose not to sign it into law. He says he feared the bill would have endangered the city’s bond rating because it shifted $13 million designated for the District’s savings account to offsetting the first year of the bond tax. Gray instead wants to raise the income tax rate on the wealthy to offset the first year of the bond tax.
“This veto by the mayor came as a shock to the business community,” D.C. Chamber of Commerce president Barbara Lang said in a statement on Thursday. “We did not see this coming and it is a move we disagree with 100 percent.”
Lang was joined in her outrage by the Federal City Council and the Board of Trade.
