Keshini Ladduwahetty: Don’t shut out the public from the budget debate
The budget is a reflection of our values as a community, and so is the process that guides its creation. Yet, in a time of pandemic when government resources are a literal lifeline to local residents, the DC Council is significantly constraining opportunities for public input into the budget process. This unnecessary and ill-advised decision undermines the public’s confidence in our local government, and it is a failure of leadership on the part of the entire DC Council. Enlightened leaders would offer consistent opportunities for robust public participation.
In the normal budget cycle, following the mayor’s presentation of the budget in late March or early April, council committees hold budget hearings that are open to testimony from any member of the public. The Housing, Human Services, Education committees, as well as the Committee of the Whole, are known to draw hundreds of witnesses at hearings that extend into the night. Any person can enter the Wilson Building to testify about the investments they want lawmakers to make in their community.
This year, DC officials postponed and abbreviated the budget process because of the public health emergency. While working with DC for Democracy (where I serve as operations director) to prepare for the scheduled release of the budget, I was shocked to learn that some committees are completely excluding public witnesses from live hearings. Understandably, the pandemic poses significant challenges. With the council’s concurrence, the mayor is delaying her budget presentation by about two months as staff members work to account for reduced revenue estimates, and the lively in-person hearing process has been rendered impossible by social distancing. But these challenges are no reason to restrict public input into the most significant legislation of the year — especially when government services can make the difference between life and death.
On April 28, the council unveiled a budget hearing schedule based on the expected release of the mayor’s budget on May 11. Today we learned that the mayor will not present her budget proposal until next Monday — a further delay of nearly a full week that throws the entire budget hearing schedule into disarray. But even the previously published schedule presented significant obstacles to public participation. The all-important Committee of the Whole hearing on the overall budget was scheduled to occur just one week after publication of the budget. Worse, the public’s opportunities for testifying are inconsistent among the various committees and in certain cases severely constrained. Some committees will provide limited opportunities for public witnesses at live virtual hearings, while others are limiting live hearings to government witnesses. Some committees will accept video and audio testimony, while others will accept only written testimony. The critically important Committee on Housing and Neighborhood Revitalization, chaired by at-large member Anita Bonds, has made repeated changes to its process for public testimony on agencies under its purview, including the DC Housing Authority and the Department of Housing and Community Development.
This hodgepodge of processes causes confusion and discourages public input. It is an abdication of leadership by the DC Council — especially on the part of Chairman Phil Mendelson, who is not exactly shy about wielding power. Last year he strong-armed council members to pass the controversial sports betting contract championed by disgraced former Ward 2 member Jack Evans. In 2018 Mendelson and Evans conspired to divert online sales tax revenue originally intended for homeless programs toward a commercial property tax cut. But when it comes to budget transparency, he acts like he has no say. Instead of formulating a consistent budget hearing process that allows the public to engage, he has left each committee to its own devices. It is an uncoordinated mess that parallels the nation’s uncoordinated response to the pandemic.
To make matters worse, the DC Council is shutting out the public just weeks after having gone to great lengths to give favored access to a group of prominent business leaders (“DC 2021”) in a virtual meeting that served as a special budget hearing for a select few.
It doesn’t have to be this way, and it’s not too late for Chairman Mendelson to set this right. He needs to:
- establish a consistent budget hearing process for all committees that has at least one live virtual hearing for each committee with at least four hours for public witnesses on a first-come, first-served basis. In addition to hearing live testimony, all committees should accept video, audio and written testimony.
- provide other opportunities for informal public input into the budget — for example, virtual town halls, emails, texts, video submissions, and social media postings. Committees should incorporate this input in the official hearing records to the maximum extent possible.
- delay the date of the Committee of the Whole hearing as long as possible to allow the public to study and react to the mayor’s budget.
The coronavirus pandemic is not a valid excuse to limit the public’s voice in critical decisions like the DC budget. That’s why we’re working to build a broad coalition to demand that our elected leaders center the people’s voices in the budget process.
Keshini Ladduwahetty is former chair of DC for Democracy (DC4D) and a member of the group’s steering committee.
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