D.C. Council Chairman Vincent Gray Thursday asked Mayor Adrian Fenty to pinpoint and detail potential cuts in his proposed fiscal 2008 budget so that the council can fill an estimated $30 million gap.
“This information willallow the council to pass a budget that is balanced,” Gray wrote in a letter to the mayor.
The issue stems from Fenty’s decision to have executive agencies pay for personnel and contracting services out of their budgets. But the mayor’s 2008 spending plan does not provide his department heads with additional money to pay for those programs, nor did he identify what will have to be cut.
During recent council budget hearings, agency directors have struggled to answer where the money will come from.
“We don’t have $30,000,” D.C. zoning director Jerrily Kress told the council during a March 29 hearing. “I am unaware where we will get it from. I was hoping it wouldn’t come to that.”
In the letter, Gray asked that Fenty provide, by April 11, specific agency budget cuts and the number of full-time employees who might lose their jobs. He also requested the methodology and rationale for charging each agency for those services.
“If you need to find areas to make reductions within your agency budgets that are not reflected in the current budget to pay for these services, which clearly appears to be the case, then I … must again assert that the project budget you have submitted is not yet balanced,” Gray wrote.
Fenty spokeswoman Mafara Hobson said the mayor will comply with the chairman’s requests. The mayor maintains he submitted a balanced budget, Hobson said, but he will “certainly work closely with the council in getting the proposed budget approved.”
