jonetta rose barras: Searching for integrity in the DC Council’s budget process

Initially, I thought about letting it slide. I had already written three columns about the District’s fiscal crisis before the DC Council’s final vote on the Fiscal Year 2025 Budget and Financial Plan. I explained in depth why I was convinced that neither Mayor Muriel Bowser nor the legislature, led by Chair Phil Mendelson, had sufficiently responded to the challenge. Each refused to make the truly tough choices that would steer the city away from any fiscal cliff. 

I remain no less concerned after the June 12 vote. 

However, having reflected on the process and comments made by elected officials, something even more fundamental than the city’s severe revenue-spending imbalance troubles me. The hypocrisy and doublespeak on display seemed particularly odious. At times there appeared to be a deliberate effort to misinform or misdirect the public. 

Mendelson and his council colleagues repeatedly blamed Bowser for excessive spending. They downplayed their role. 

Mendelson claimed he wanted to get control of expenditures but tossed aside three viable reforms advanced by at-large Councilmember Robert White that included conducting a financial and performance review to identify potential savings, creating a Sunset Commission to eliminate superfluous programs and agencies, and enhancing the legislature’s capacity to more effectively evaluate an agency’s performance. Rather than implement that course of action, Mendelson just added money for two new positions in the council’s budget office.

“It is difficult to get support for reform measures like this that don’t result in instant gratification,” White wrote me in an email when I asked for his reaction. He said he is “grateful to the Chairman for investing in doing things differently.” 

“DC cannot continue to face the same tough choices between cutting vital programs or raising taxes year after year. I believe my budget reforms will make DC government more efficient and effective for residents,” said White.

He may be sincere. It’s hard to know who is committed to reforms or who is tossing soundbites. There are lots of people in the John A. Wilson Building speaking out of both sides of their mouths. 

Folks declared that action should be taken to prevent school truancy. Then they snatched $1 million from an anti-truancy fund to spend on more housing vouchers because a bunch of advocates are beating at politicians’ doors demanding more. 

Councilmembers claimed that providing affordable housing is critical but approved a Mendelson-advanced plan that would permit the city’s chief financial officer to tap into the Housing Production Trust Fund to address potential cash-flow problems.

However,, when another councilmember proposed taking $1.9 million from that same source to fund a “child wealth building” program aimed at poor families, Mendelson and the council’s chair pro tempore, Kenyan McDuffie, killed the idea, arguing that money for housing programs must be protected.

The doublespeak is breathtaking. What does it mean to win the battle but trash your integrity? In this MAGA age, do principles even matter? Am I an anachronism for asking?

Those questions have trailed me all year; they became more intense after Mendelson’s June 10 press briefing, during which I asked if he had held a public hearing to allow individuals affected by the so-called mansion tax to testify about the change placed in the Budget Support Act.

Mendelson said proponents had pushed for a similar tax increase for years. He said the DC Tax Revision Commission had considered such a proposal. Those statements didn’t answer my question; I asked again.

“It’s a simple question,” he admitted. Finally, he said “no.” 

I thought of Stephen L. Carter’s book Integrity, in which he described three parts to the definition of the word: “discerning what is right and what is wrong; acting on what is discerned even at personal cost; and saying openly that you are acting on your understanding of right from wrong.”

“If integrity has an opposite, it is corruption — the getting away with things we know to be wrong,” Carter wrote.

The deliberate degradation of the democratic process or the pursuit of a divisive ideology for the express purpose of political self-preservation is unquestionably a form of corruption, in my view.

“Corruption is corrosive,” wrote Carter.

That’s indisputable.

Earlier this week, Mendelson pushed back against my criticism of his handling of the budget process, including what I consider to be a cavalier attitude toward the importance of genuine citizen participation. He argued that residents who want to know more can read the budget books. He said council committees held weeks of public hearings. He said there was a lengthy hearing on the FY 2025 Budget Support Act (BSA) as submitted by the mayor. 

In fact, those committees present their reports and recommendations to him. As the official with budget oversight, he can make changes to their proposals, or he can introduce entirely new ones as he did with the mansion tax. Those are done each year without benefit of any additional public hearings. It’s all Mendelson, his colleagues and their staff. Often advocates who are like appendages to some legislators hear about nascent proposals. The majority of citizens may never know.

Mendelson told me there was no time for additional hearings. He said DC’s home rule charter limits the legislature’s budget deliberations by requiring a vote within 70 days after the mayor submits her proposal. 

“Something would come up short,” said Mendelson. “Either the [council] committees would have less time, or I would have less time.”

I am unsympathetic to the whine. Amend the home rule charter. This is supposed to be a government of the people, by the people, for the people — not for the convenience of politicians.

Each year, new laws and public policies are buried in the BSA, with little or no advance notice to the public. Equally troubling, the language in the document is cryptic and difficult for most people to fully understand, with no real effort to provide the public with the appropriate explanations in plain language. That opacity is deliberate and acts as a protective political shield.

The FY 2025 Budget Support Act received initial approval May 29; a second, final vote on a version is expected June 25. It’s likely to contain untold further changes, with the full text available to the public and Mendelson’s own colleagues only a day beforehand — par for the course when it comes to the council’s budget process.

What would happen, I wonder, if residents knew and understood that the mayor proposed and the council approved sweeps of dozens of funds. Cumulatively in fiscal years 2024 and 2025, more than $132 million was moved to the “unassigned fund balance of the General Fund of the District of Columbia,” according to an engrossed copy of the BSA as initially approved.

For example: $2.5 million was taken from the Arts and Humanities Enterprise Fund; $912,000 from the West End Library/Firehouse Maintenance fund; $4.6 million from various dedicated taxes; $2 million from the Fire and Emergency Medical Services Reform Fund; $6.6 million from the renewable energy development fund; $33,615 from the nuisance abatement fund; and $94,175 from the lead service line replacement fund. 

The BSA also authorized sweeping $1 million from the Inspector General’s Support Fund; $40,000 of health benefit fees; and $1.3 million from the Universal Paid Family Leave Fund.

“Our commitments are admirable, but they carry the seeds of tragedy,” warned Carter — an admonition appropriate for DC at this moment.

“The deeper our commitment to our causes, the weaker may be our commitment to democracy, for it is in the nature of the true believer to have little patience with majoritarian structures that get in the way of progress,” wrote Carter.

All too frequently, there is also little patience for the majority of the population, as evinced by Mendelson’s response. Consequently, legitimate concerns are brushed aside. There are fewer people, fewer voices in the public square. Those getting the attention often are those important to a politician’s personal aspirations or desire to retain political power.

African American small-business owners get stepped on, for example, as Mendelson and McDuffie respond to cries from billionaire sports owners who somehow are perceived as victims of a monopoly.

As an example of spectacular hypocrisy or doublespeak: McDuffie is the person who fought for the creation of an Office of Racial Equity in the council to prevent continued discrimination against African Americans and other people of color. He has advanced the creation of a reparations commission. He has talked repeatedly about the need to close the racial wealth gap.

Still, he has forged ahead with a new sports-wagering model that will ultimately injure small businesses while also potentially harming the District overall — all in dedication to fully opening the spigot to sports team owners.

Yes, there were major problems with DC’s sports wagering program, including its mobile app. However, during his tenure as executive director of the Office of Lottery and Gaming, Frank Suarez (who is expected to leave DC in July for a new job in Connecticut) made improvements that already have resulted in more revenues for the city’s coffers.

When I asked Mendelson during that June 10 press briefing if he was worried the council’s planned changes would harm small businesses, he said “no.” He added the change was linked to the Child Trust Fund, the financing mechanism behind what’s commonly known as “baby bonds.”

Is not the ecosystem of small Black businesses fundamental to wealth building in America? In the District?

During budget deliberations a few days later, Ward 5 Councilmember Zachary Parker offered an amendment that would have used $1.9 million from the Housing Production Trust Fund to finance baby bonds for FY 2025, avoiding the need to change the sports wagering system as part of the budget process. Nine legislators, including Mendelson and McDuffie, voted against Parker’s proposal.

Moments later, Mendelson and McDuffie repeated their inexplicable and laughable rhetoric about a need to protect billionaire sports team owners and their industry partners against a monopoly. When the sports wagering legislation was originally approved, they were the only ones who could hold a Class A license. Further, no one could operate a sports betting lounge or book within a two-block radius of their facilities.

Now, the two top leaders of the council, elected to represent the interests of District residents, are fighting to protect a group of individuals who are making money hand over fist and are already sopping taxpayers’ funds at the government trough. 

Mendelson and McDuffie said they are trying to build wealth for poor children of color, ensuring they receive an annual allotment of up to $1,000 per year until they reach 18 years of age. However, “the first $2.583 million” from the remodeled sports wagering program will go into the general fund in each of the next four fiscal years, according to the BSA.

When I asked Mendelson about how much would actually be left for baby bonds, he was unable to share specifics. He said all the money will go into the Child Trust Fund. 

That doesn’t necessarily mean all of the funds will ultimately go to poor children, though, especially given the reality of this budget cycle, which has included account sweeps, a lack of integrity, and spectacular levels of hypocrisy and doublespeak.

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