jonetta rose barras: What a difference a week or two makes to DC budget-making
Between the DC Council’s first budget vote on June 9 and its second earlier this week, its proposed spending jumped by $50 million — ultimately exceeding by nearly $500 million Mayor Muriel Bowser’s initial proposal.
That add-on may not seem significant when measured against a Fiscal Year 2027 Budget and Financial Plan that totals $21,876,189,466. The local portion of the budget is $12,242,673,131, according to documents posted on the council’s website.
However, the legislature’s multimillion-dollar increase is tangible proof that it is unable or unwilling to control its spending addiction — despite the fact that councilmembers acknowledge the fiscal challenges facing the District.
Equally egregious, legislators — following recommendations of Council Chair Phil Mendelson — used one-time funding to temporarily extend services for critical recurring programs like housing vouchers, pay equity for early childhood educators, childcare subsidies, and school mental health services. They will have to scramble around when determining how to continue those services or programs in FY 2028 when money is expected to be even tighter.
“No matter what, [Mendelson] just keeps spending,” said Jack Evans, former Ward 2 councilmember who is considered an expert on District finances and financial management.
“The council missed a real opportunity. [Members] could have shown what we call a profile in courage,” Evans added during a telephone interview with me on Tuesday not long after lawmakers took their second budget vote.
Layering their recklessness, legislators also used $150 million from one of the city’s reserve accounts — despite DC Chief Financial Officer Glen Lee having warned in a letter to Mendelson that taking such action would mean, in Lee’s view, that the budget is unbalanced. That could mean trouble when the District’s budget legislation is sent to Capitol Hill for congressional approval — a process essential not just to local funding but also to needed sign-off on federal appropriations for the District.
“As you are aware, pursuant to the Home Rule Act, the Council is required to approve a balanced budget in which expenditures do not exceed available resources,” Lee wrote.
“I again urge the Council to pass a balanced budget and four-year financial plan that does not reduce the local reserves, which are essential for District liquidity.”
During their pre-vote administrative meeting on Monday, Mendelson and his colleagues created a contingency list with more programs, including the Emergency Rental Assistance Program (ERAP) and the Credible Messengers mentoring intervention program, that would receive additional funding if revenues become available later in the year.
Call that a SMH moment.
Some legislators, who later became part of the go-along-get-along-crew, expressed concern about queuing a fight with the CFO. “Have we explored other alternatives?” asked Ward 5’s Zachary Parker, a sometimes pragmatic progressive who recently won his Democratic Party primary renomination bid. Currently, he has no opposition in the general election.
“The politics aren’t in our favor,” added Parker, who had joined Monday’s meeting virtually.
That was, of course, speaking in understatement. The Republican-controlled Congress has wiped the floor with various DC legislative proposals, successfully blocking the District from implementing several measures and seeking to disapprove even more. Even before President Donald Trump began his second term, the House and Senate, with a signature assist from then-President Joe Biden, overturned the city’s Revised Criminal Code Act.
The District’s current politically weak position wasn’t the only consternation, however. At-large Councilmember Christina Henderson raised concerns about predetermining spending priorities, thereby preventing the city from responding to critical needs like adequately funding future collective bargaining agreements. “That should be a priority for us,” she said.
“The public would be excited if you included some reduction in expenditures,” at-large member Anita Bonds, who opted not to run for another term, told Mendelson.
“Maybe it’s worth having a meeting with the mayor-elect,” said Ward 7 Councilmember Wendell Felder. Except, technically, there is no “mayor-elect.”
Ward 4’s Janeese Lewis George — who wasn’t at Monday’s meeting — is presumed to be the Democratic Party’s mayoral nominee, although even that isn’t official until the Board of Elections has certified the primary results. More than a dozen individuals, identifying as political independents, have picked up qualifying petitions to run against Lewis George in the November general election.
Based on the number of votes tallied for her thus far, Lewis George has outperformed every other winning mayoral candidate, including Marion Barry in his 1994 return to office. Those results could be interpreted as a mandate to implement her “affordability” platform. Or it could simply be part of a larger anti-Trump, anti-MAGA movement sweeping the country that is being partially fueled by the Democratic Socialists of America, which backed Lewis George — one of its members.
While Mendelson is no socialist, there seems to be little light between him and Lewis George on the budget and spending priorities as articulated by his budget recommendations. That means there isn’t a need, just yet, for any closed-door conference.
Mendelson made clear in that meeting on Monday — and again as the legislature prepared to vote on Tuesday — that he wouldn’t yield to the CFO. “We are the appropriators,” he said, repeating what has become a budget mantra.
Further, he insisted that the money taken from the reserve was not a large amount and that the Budget Support Act will require that any revenue above estimates be used first to replenish the account. He also quoted a two-year-old opinion written by DC Attorney General Brian Schwalb that concluded, among other things, that “the CFO’s interpretation of a balanced budget requirement is at odds with the plain language of the Home Rule Act.”
Is Schwalb’s interpretation accurate? I asked myself that question as I read the 1995 federal legislation that created the DC Office of the Chief Financial Officer. Section 209, Part 5 of that measure seemed to suggest that the control board could be reconstituted if there is the “existence of a cash deficit” at the end “of any quarter of the fiscal year” in excess of the difference between the estimated revenues and estimated expenditures.
“Several of the control board triggers in section 209 of Public Law 104-8 relate to the District’s ability to pay its bills – whether its debt service, temporary borrowings, payroll, pensions, etc.,” a spokesperson for the CFO responded after I sent an email asking about the law. “All of the triggers that would initiate a control period are relevant to the CFO’s motivation to make sure the District always has enough cash on hand to meet its obligations, especially when national and international events can quickly disrupt revenue streams or substantially increase costs.”
Is the inclusion of reserve-fund replenishment on the contingency list enough to satisfy Lee? That seems unlikely at this point.
Evans said that Mendelson is “taking action that has never been done before. He is jeopardizing everything. It might break his way. But the chances are it won’t.”
“[Besides], this problem isn’t going away,” continued Evans. “There is no prediction — none — that next year is going to be any better.”
Mendelson has asserted as much. He said the one-time spending that he had recommended, and that councilmembers were supporting for FY 2027, could create a nearly $600 million problem for the next year. “We need to fix our financial plan.”
Nevertheless, Mendelson persuaded councilmembers to dismiss Lee’s assertions, contending in his letter to the CFO dated June 23 that Lee was merely offering a policy view — “but, as you know, policy decisions are reserved under the Home Rule Act to the Council and Mayor.”
“The CFO does not now have the authority to make a policy decision that this time the Council may not use local reserves to support appropriations,” added Mendelson, who also ignored a similar warning from the mayor.
In a letter dated June 20, Bowser chided council spendthrifts for reversing “$465 million” of reductions she had worked hard to make in her budget proposal as part of closing a $1.1 billion shortfall. “It has done so not with sustainable revenue, but with one-time funds – including $150 million drawn from our cash reserves – to pay for recurring programs.”
Bowser argued — using bold italics for emphasis — that as a result of councilmembers’ actions “the next mayor will be sworn in and immediately confront a nearly $800 million budget gap: $465 million in one-time spending and $313 million in built-in net cuts.
“And that doesn’t include costs we don’t know specifically now, but always emerge, such as the cost of health care inflation,” she added in her letter.
Bowser, having opted not to run for a fourth term as mayor, may have been trying to protect her expected successor. However, Lewis George — who has served on the council for only five and a half years and has no experience running any business, let alone a multi-billion corporation — was part of the unanimous vote for the ballooned FY 2027 budget.
Lewis George also supported Henderson’s late-stage amendment that provided $1.15 million to cover costs associated with establishing a semi-open primary. While some of the money would become available beginning in October, the bulk of the expense would not come until the 2028 elections.
Semi-open primaries were part of Initiative 83, passed in 2024, which also included approval of ranked choice voting. However, councilmembers chose to fund only the latter with $421,000 in the FY 2026 budget.
Those funds proved insufficient. Thus far, to implement ranked choice voting, the city has spent more than $4 million. The FY 2027 budget includes another $2.15 million, in part for a voter registration database, and the tab is still running.
The city also spent $10,550,097.93 in public campaign financing during the June primary for candidates certified through the Fair Elections Program; $12 million has been budgeted for the 2026 election season.
It’s unclear at this moment whether money will have to be re-programmed from other sources to ensure funds are available for individuals running in the general election, including Lewis George.
Am I the only person who believes elected officials could find a better use for those funds?
There was a bevy of questions from councilmembers about how the semi-open primaries might operate. No one on the dais had any answers. At least this time, they are leaving a more reasonable period for implementation by the Board of Elections.
In this political season, politicians were acting politically, satisfying the demands of independents who will be most vocal in the coming months.
Unquestionably, councilmembers are standing at the front door of the John A. Wilson Building waiting for the next mayor rather than doing their jobs of making tough spending decisions now. If it’s Lewis George, maybe she’s banking on the council passing a tax increase to provide the revenue needed for that universal childcare she has promised on the campaign trail or to start construction of those 72,000 new housing units.
Over the past year and a half, there has been plenty of evidence of how things outside of the District’s control can rock the local government and bring much anxiety to DC residents. Who remembers DOGE leaving tens of thousands of people without jobs and business owners without contracts while further decimating the city’s already declining commercial real estate market? Does anyone recall the continuing resolution in the House and Senate that prevented our elected officials from spending $1.1 billion of the city’s own money, prompting a spending freeze, among other things?
Back in 1995, Marion Barry had just replaced Sharon Pratt in the mayoral suite. He was greeted by a $750 million budget shortfall left by his predecessor, who four years earlier had traveled around the city with a golden shovel, promising to clean house while building a new government. At the time, Congress had been so delighted she wasn’t Barry, they gave her a $300 million welcoming gift. She blew through that money in short order.
Faced with the looming deficit, Barry sought money from the feds rather than making critical budget cuts. Instead, Republican leaders newly in control of Congress worked with the White House to develop a rescue plan that included creation of a control board.
“That was January 1995,” Evans recalled of the tumultuous start of Barry’s fourth term. By April 17, the legislation creating a control board was signed into law by President Bill Clinton.
Even after that, Barry tried to secure a loan from the federal treasury to support his budget request. Rep. Tom Davis, a moderate Virginia Republican considered a friend of DC, chastised Barry and DC elected officials for not making the necessary “tough” decisions. “If we gave them another $500 million annually, they would be right back before us in two years in debt again,” he told local reporters.
No one wants anything like that experience for Lewis George. But what happens if Mendelson sends a budget to Congress that is considered unbalanced? How will Republicans react?
“What will the CFO do?” asked Evans, noting that Lee’s term ends around this time next year. “So, he has nothing to lose by taking the tough stance. That’s why we have a CFO.”
What’s that adage about leading a horse to water?
jonetta rose barras is an author and DC-based freelance journalist, covering national and local issues. She can be reached at thebarrasreport@gmail.com.