D.C. Auditor: FY 2020 Budget “Not Fiscally Responsible”

For immediate release

Contact: Diane Shinn

D.C. Auditor: FY 2020 Budget “Not Fiscally Responsible”

Debt service has doubled since 2017 and is more than the District spends on the police department

WASHINGTON, March 25, 2019–In budget testimony today D.C. Auditor Kathy Pattersoncautioned that the proposed Fiscal Year 2020 budget under review by the Council of the District of Columbia is “not fiscally responsible,” with spending increases that outstrip local revenue growth.

“Growth in spending that exceeded growth in revenue is exactly how this government got into severe financial trouble 25 years ago,” Patterson said before the Council of the District of Columbia’s Committee of the Whole.

Patterson was testifying on the budget proposed for the agency she leads and made additional comments on the overall budget submitted to the Council last week by the Mayor.

“I do not want to return to a control priod—to external control over the District government and the District’s finances,” said Patterson, who, as a D.C. Councilmember in the 1990s played a key role in actions taken to rein in government spending and bring the District out of its financial crisis.

The proposed budget would take general fund spending from $9.1 billion approved in FY 2019 to $9.874 billion in FY 2020, Patterson said, adding that the budget represents a 7.5 percent one-year increase in overall spending. D.C.’s Chief Financial Officer Jeffrey DeWitt has estimated growth in local revenue of just 3 percent in FY 2020.

“That is not sustainable,” Patterson said.

Burgeoning debt service

Patterson notes that debt service is the fourth largest spending line in the FY 2020 budget, “more than we spend on the police department,” she said. In addition, using a three-year comparison, FY 2017 with the proposed FY 2020 budget, she notes that there are 13 agencies whose budgets have doubled and another 29 agencies have seen their budgets increase by 20 percent or more in that timeframe.

The number of full-time equivalent employees supported by the total District budget, including federal funds, has grown from 33,275 in FY 2017 to a proposed 37,585 for FY 2020, “a 13 percent increase in our workforce,” Patterson said.

Patterson said DeWitt’s letter in the budget book is “instructive,” but that “it reads like a cry for help, albeit a muted one.”

DeWitt writes in his letter: “As in the past, the plan shows substantial growth in debt service costs during the plan period to support the $8.4 billion CIP through FY 2025. Because of the growth in these costs, labor costs and other non-capital cost growth must be constrained throughout the financial plan.”

Growth in costs “must be constrained, but, in this proposal are not constrained,” Patterson said.

# # #

The mission of the Office of the District of Columbia Auditor (ODCA) is to support the Council of the District of Columbia by making sound recommendations that improve the effectiveness, efficiency, and accountability of the District government. Learn more at www.dcauditor.org.