Mayor Adrian Fenty’s revised 2010 budget slashes previously approved earmarks, hikes fees, and eliminates numerous capital projects to close a projected $150 million shortfall.
The budget proposal released late Friday, if approved by the D.C. Council, would radically amend the fiscal year 2010 spending plan adopted only a month ago. A dismal June revenue forecast by Chief Financial Officer Natwar Gandhi forced the executive back to the budget drawing board.
The District faces two shortfalls that it must tackle immediately: a $190 million gap in 2009 and a $150 million hole in 2010. In the midst of the worst recession in decades, D.C. leaders now say they can no longer close deficits without cutting services.
“This is a challenge for us,” Ward 2 D.C. Councilman Jack Evans, an 18-year council veteran, said Thursday. “But it is a challenge we are up for.”
Fenty proposed to offset the 2009 deficit with unspent fund balances, federal stimulus dollars, contingency reserves and about $14 million in agency cutbacks.
The 2010 gap-closing plan suggests eliminating 250 jobs, hiking the Emergency 911 fee from 76 cents to $1.15 per D.C. phone line, charging up to $100 for the expedited filing of business license applications, cutting subsidy programs and cancelling numerous capital projects. The E-911 hike, a proposal the council has consistently rejected, is expected to generate $7 million.
Fenty also slashes virtually every earmark in the budget, roughly 120 of them, saving millions. Nonprofits like the D.C. Central Kitchen, Access Housing Inc., CityDance and the D.C. Jewish Community Center saw their grants drop from $250,000 to $100,000.
In his transmittal letter to Council Chairman Vincent Gray, Fenty said the revised budget includes “some tough choices to prepare for the future and to secure the District’s fiscal sustainability.”
But the amended plan does not stop with budget reductions.
Fenty also seeks to undo several changes adopted by the council during the 2010 budget season – ones he strongly opposed.
A provision to turn over the shuttered Bertie Backus Middle School in Northeast to the University of the District of Columbia was nixed, for example, as was the council’s plan to empower the State Board of Education with budget independence and oversight of the public school ombudsman.
And the mayor is seeking council permission to spend $85 million on the outright purchase of 225 Virginia Ave. SE, an empty, 421,000-square-foot warehouse that the city has leased for $546,000 a month since mid-2007. The Fenty administration, having ditched earlier plans to use the building, has failed to find anyone willing to take over the lease, which has now cost the city more than $13 million.
