jonetta rose barras: Where is the DC Council’s Committee on Finance and Revenue?

The DC Council met earlier this week for its third administrative meeting in as many weeks. Chair Phil Mendelson had called members together to focus, yet again, on reconfiguring Mayor Muriel Bowser’s $22 billion Fiscal Year 2026 Budget and Financial Plan. He and his colleagues have been trying to finalize an alternative document that synthesizes their preferences for how and where to spend the public’s money. 

They are expected to take their first budget vote on Monday. 

In one of their previous gatherings, the idea of “revenue enhancers,” a euphemism for tax increases, surfaced. Someone suggested a higher tax on capital gains. Another proposed increasing the property tax rate for high-value homes. Matt Frumin, who represents Ward 3 where many of those homes are located, reminded his colleagues that the madman in the White House had fired tens of thousands of federal workers. Many of them are District residents whose homes may be their most important asset for surviving the city’s and country’s dystopian reality. 

Mendelson has said he doesn’t have an appetite for new taxes. But do his colleagues on the council feel likewise? 

This week, Ward 5’s Zachary Parker renewed the call for some kind of tax increase as councilmembers bemoaned the fact that Chief Financial Officer Glen Lee has essentially posted a “Do Not Touch” sign on $243.7 million in new revenue the city is on pace to collect above the total initially forecasted for 2025. 

Eric Balliet, a CFO spokesperson, told me via email that the additional FY 2025 revenues “are one-time funds anticipated to be used in FY25” and are necessary “to address the District’s year-end needs, including bond escrow and replenishment and year-over-year growth in federally mandated reserves.”

The council’s collective fiscal policy choices have created a portrait of a legislature too often driven by its personal predilections and idiosyncrasies as well as a desire to satisfy vocal advocates or lobbyists. It is generally not perceived as a body that fully understands and appreciates DC’s financial management system and the interconnected network that fuels the District’s economic health and growth potential.

The council has become an institution that is all trees and no forest.

One solution, I concluded after listening to Mendelson’s administrative meetings, is the reconstitution of the Committee on Finance and Revenue. Ever since the forced resignation of Ward 2’s Jack Evans, there has been no strong, knowledgeable or seasoned fiscal voice.

There is no one on the council who has command of government-wide financial and economic matters. There is no one who knows the right questions to probe beyond the surface elements of large economic development projects like the sports-entertainment mixed-use complex slated for the 180-acre RFK campus in Ward 7 along the Anacostia River.

The need for greater fiscal mastery and acuity came into clearer focus this week as members discussed how to fund their pet projects or areas where they seem to believe the mayor has neglected DC residents — despite a $22 billion budget for a population of 702,250 residents. 

Legislators had their sights on that $243.7 million in projected new revenue for 2025 but noted that Lee had said some of those funds will be needed to cover overspending by executive branch agencies. The federal Anti-Deficiency Act prohibits government agencies from exceeding their appropriated budgets; DC comes under that law as well as a local equivalent.

Why is it that laws are rarely enforced in DC?

Balliet said in his email that “the OCFO does not allow violations of the Anti-Deficiency Act. Year-end reprogrammings, which are approved by the Council, are a tool used to prevent agencies from being deficient.”

In other words, after the crime, reprogrammings are used to give the impression that the DC government is a haven of sound financial management. 

During the meeting, at-large Council member Anita Bonds asked: “Have we looked at where the agencies are overspending? Can the overspending be related to something that we have mandated?”

Those are good questions — except they’re long overdue, and the answers are hiding in plain sight. Since January there have been more than 50 requests for reprogramming sent to the council. Most have been deemed approved as a matter of routine, without a public hearing or even a roundtable. 

Equally important, each year, as a prelude to the release of the mayor’s budget proposal, council committees conduct agency performance oversight hearings. Those are also supposed to examine what is being done with the public’s money. Surely somewhere in all those hundreds of hours of discussions someone must have discovered overspending at one or two agencies under their jurisdictions and asked why and how this is happening. Assuming that did occur, shouldn’t the obvious follow-up have been to gauge the breadth and depth of the problem?

Not to put too fine a point on this: Mendelson meets monthly with CFO Lee, according to Balliet. “During those regular meetings, the CFO discusses budget and financial matters with the Chairman.”

In response to Bonds’ questions and concerns, Mendelson said, “We need to step up the discipline on the spending side.” Later, in the same meeting, he told members that the CFO might yet loosen his tight fist around the wallet. “I don’t want to give up on him giving us the green light to get [some of that] $243 million.”

Mendelson explained that for now the council has $100 million it could spend on priority items. He told members to provide any final ideas in writing by Friday as he finalizes the council’s version of the city’s FY 2026 budget.

Did the thought cross anyone’s mind that they could save those funds?

The flawed fiscal thinking and fundamental inadequacy was also on display during a clash between Ward 7 Councilmember Wendell Felder and Mendelson at the same administrative meeting. The dispute arose over the chair’s decision not to share with councilmembers the draft independent analysis of the Bowser-Commanders development deal that had been prepared by the consulting firm founded by Robert Bobb, a former DC city administrator and national municipal management consultant with extensive knowledge about sports facilities as urban economic development engines. 

A freshman legislator who once worked in the real estate division of Howard University, Felder chastised Mendelson, arguing that “you’re withholding information to benefit you.”

“You’re the gatekeeper of all information,” continued a visibly agitated Felder. He also asserted that the Commanders deal “isn’t as complicated as people make it.”

Mendelson defended his handling of the council’s involvement with the deal and argued that he had not presented the draft report provided by Bobb because technically it was incomplete. Mendelson said there was no review of traffic projections and no “pro forma analysis” addressing various financial scenarios and risks. “I kind of want to see that.” 

However, government sources told me that Mendelson did not initially request that information from consultants — suggesting, in my view, that he is educating himself on the fly.

“I don’t see the value of circulating a document that is missing stuff,” Mendelson told Felder and other legislators, several of whom joined the unusually frank debate opened by Felder.

“I sense your frustration,” at-large Councilmember Christina Henderson told Mendelson. 

“I hope you respect ours because we are all kind of in the dark and we’re receiving incoming” flak from the project’s supporters and critics, she added.

“I’m pushing these reports along,” countered Mendelson, offering that the mayor didn’t present the council with legislation formalizing the Commanders deal until late May when she included it in her budget proposal. “The mayor didn’t have to wait a month to send us the legislation,” he said.

Mendelson keeps coming back to an implication that Bowser — who first announced the deal and the general terms at the end of April — sought to force the council’s hand by leaving it only five or six weeks to review the details and approve the deal. In reality, however, that is a lifetime in the economic development and finance arenas. 

What’s more, Felder is correct: The basic elements in the Bowser agreement are not particularly complicated. In fact, many of the components of the Washington Commanders deal were used and exploited in DC’s construction of the baseball stadium and to some extent in the recent redesign of the deal with Monumental Sports & Entertainment for Capital One Arena and adjacent properties. 

The Commanders’ overall proposal is complex, however. The myriad parts must be understood, analyzed and tracked separately and globally. Each piece must produce the anticipated outcome in order for the city to achieve the desired return on its investment over the next 30 years and beyond.

The District is facing multiple fiscal challenges in a politically charged environment. Amplifying an assertion I made last week, President Donald Trump’s recent statements make clear that he is standing in the wings ready to snatch the stadium out of DC’s hands and put it under the control of his federal administration. Additionally, there is an urgent need to pass a FY 2026 budget that includes smart policy and fiscal decisions.

Reconstituting the council’s Committee on Finance and Revenue isn’t really a feasible short-term solution at this late date. However, Mendelson can do two things to minimize the current fiscal and economic deficits: First, heed Felder’s advice to work more collaboratively — not just in the legislative branch but also with the executive and the CFO. 

Second, don’t just use Bobb as an analyst. He has the skills the council needs. Mendelson should expand his role, designating him as the legislature’s lead negotiator on the Commanders deal, to ensure District residents get their money’s worth from the redevelopment of the RFK Stadium campus.

jonetta rose barras is an author and DC-based freelance journalist, covering national and local issues. She can be reached at thebarrasreport@gmail.com.