jonetta rose barras: Is it time for DC elected officials to begin budget cuts?

“Be careful what you ask for” is an adage that Mayor Muriel Bowser, DC Council Chair Phil Mendelson and other elected officials ought to have pondered in recent days while pushing for the U.S. House of Representatives to vote on the “District of Columbia Local Funds Act, 2025.” That bill was referred to the House after being unanimously approved weeks ago by the U.S. Senate.

The legislation would ostensibly counter the congressionally approved continuing resolution (CR) that treated DC as a federal agency and mandated that the District operate under its fiscal year 2024 budget; to be in compliance with the CR, $1 billion in spending cuts are needed.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican from Louisiana, has yet to schedule a vote on the Local Funds Act. Johnson also has not initiated the alternative of referring the bill to the Appropriations Committee for its consideration, which would at least give the impression he wants to move forward. He essentially has not responded to the Senate’s bill, despite President Donald Trump, no fan of DC, publicly urging immediate action — and now the House is in recess for the next two weeks.

DC is in fiscal purgatory. 

“Delay is never in the best interest for something like this,” Mendelson told me during an interview earlier this week that began cordially but quickly became contentious when I raised a series of questions about council plans and strategies, including whether the legislature would support a spending freeze and furloughs to address the $1 billion mandate.

Bowser and Mendelson have options: They could keep waiting for Johnson to act. They could choose to completely defy the CR, engaging in an act of civil disobedience by violating the Anti-Deficiency Act, asserting that the $1 billion is money that belongs to DC residents. I imagine that a young Mayor Marion Barry straight off his tenure in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) probably would have pushed that button. 

These are different times. Barry has been dead for many years. There is a madman in the White House, who has anointed himself God and has mesmerized once-responsible Republicans into neglecting their duty to the Constitution and country. 

Trashing DC’s political independence means nothing to today’s GOP. 

Consider Trump’s recently issued “Making the District of Columbia Safe and Beautiful” executive order. From beginning to end, it telegraphs a fevered disrespect of the city. 

In the second sentence, Trump notes that “As the Federal capital city, Washington, D.C. is the only city that belongs to all Americans and that all Americans can claim as theirs.” Where does that leave current DC residents? He makes no explicit reference to them.

The document doesn’t get much better after that. Trump asserts that it is U.S. policy to make DC “safe, beautiful, and prosperous by preventing crime, punishing criminals, preserving order, protecting our revered American monuments, and promoting beautification and preservation of our history and heritage.”

He doesn’t mention investing in DC’s neighborhoods, its schools or its businesses; it is safe to assume, I think, that Trump is not interested in preserving the history or heritage of the 700,000 residents who call the District home — a majority of whom are people of color. 

Considering the message the Republicans’ dear leader has sent about the city and more generally about people of color, there is ample reason to believe a vote on the Local Funds Act would not end well. After all, the extensive lobbying by DC elected officials, ordinary citizens and schoolchildren didn’t persuade House leaders to restore customary language in the continuing resolution allowing the District to spend according to its approved budget. Hell, it didn’t really stop senators; their answer was a separate stand-alone bill, which, as we are witnessing, only complicated matters.

“Mike Johnson might be doing the city a favor by not calling for a vote,” said a senior DC government official, who requested anonymity in order to speak candidly. 

With only a thin margin between Republicans and Democrats in the House, Johnson has been caught in a cycle of constantly trying to placate certain members of his caucus to get one bill or another passed — to keep his job, even. He needs them for the next vote, including some who feel the same way about DC as Trump does. 

Undoubtedly, one or two likely would view a vote on the Local Funds Act as an opportunity to push for the repeal of the Home Rule Act, which is DC’s governing charter. Maryland’s Andy Harris, Georgia’s Andrew Clyde and Tennessee’s Andy Ogles — as well as Utah Sen. Mike Lee — have advocated for or introduced legislation in recent years that would do just that. Those bills have yet to advance, but there is increasing criticism, no thanks to Trump, about the management of the DC government.

Thus far, Bowser has by and large managed her critics. But to paraphrase the O’Jays: They smile in your face, all the time they want to remove you from your place, the backstabbers. 

Consequently, in my opinion, the only real choice — and the most difficult — before the mayor and council is to perform penance. Say five Hail Marys and make the spending cuts.

This is not genuflecting before the titular head of the Republican Party or little Mike, who is a faithful follower of the MAGA cult leader. This is acknowledging a practical reality: The longer the mayor and the council wait, the more difficult the budget-cutting task becomes.

At the rate of current spending, the District could exceed the FY 2024 budget sometime after June 30, according to Natalie Wilson, a spokesperson for DC Chief Financial Officer Glen Lee.

“Assuming the District continues to spend at the current rate and no adjustments are made by the mayor and council, the budget limit is expected to be reached during the 4^th quarter of FY 2025,” she wrote in an email to me in response to one of several questions I asked.

“However, the OCFO will ensure that the spending thresholds are not breached, and that the District remains within statutory limits,” she added.

Complicating matters is the fact that Bowser has yet to present the FY 2026 budget and financial plan, which was due to the council April 2. Sources have told me that she cannot submit that document without first developing and proposing a balanced supplemental budget for this current fiscal year. Amid internal deliberations over exactly how to reduce spending by the required amount, Bowser has been waiting to see what House Republicans will do.

This is not a basketball game — running out the clock is not necessarily a smart move.

Bowser and the council face equally hard budget decisions beyond the CR. CFO Lee has predicted a revenue shortfall of $1.3 billion over the next four years.

Those estimates do not include potential reductions in federal grants sure to come as Trump and his chainsaw-wielding friend, Elon Musk, continue ripping through various agencies and slashing the federal workforce. Cuts to Medicaid and public education — as well as the demands of Trump’s “safe and beautiful” order — will exacerbate the city’s financial hardship. Further, economic experts have suggested that the president’s push for tariffs could increase inflation and lead the country into a recession. 

All of that spells trouble for the ailing DC government.

When I asked Mendelson during our conversation what action the council was taking to address the problem, he cited wording in DC’s home rule charter that says it’s the mayor’s responsibility to produce an annual budget and financial plan. 

“He’s going to put it all on her,” said one of several DC political operatives with whom I spoke in the past week. “He’s running for reelection; he doesn’t want to be blamed if things don’t turn out well.”

The council has its own budget office, which this year added two new staffers. As council chair, Mendelson has oversight of the city’s budget. As part of that oversight, he can convene public hearings and roundtables at any time to scrutinize spending.

During our interview, I asked if the council has considered a spending freeze. 

“What do you want me to freeze?” Mendelson replied, offering that the city can’t stop paying the debt service or funding charter schools.

“One way to get savings would be to furlough everybody,” he added.

Translation: Mendelson apparently is more favorable to furloughs than he is to a spending freeze.

Has he considered sunsetting agencies, as at-large Councilmember Robert White proposed during last year’s budget deliberations? Are there discussions about reducing certain programs?

“What do you want to know?” Mendelson snapped. 

Obviously, what I and the public want to know — have the right to know — and understand are the strategies or plans elected officials are developing to address the city’s fiscal crisis.

“We are looking at budget numbers,” Mendelson said.

I’m asking him specific and direct questions; he is dancing like he’s already well-practiced in the so-called clarification that, at least temporarily, has exempted him and the council from various aspects of the city’s Open Meetings Act. Then he started counting aloud the number of minutes remaining in our scheduled interview.

“What a lack of leadership,” said another government expert to whom I relayed my conversation with Mendelson. “He ought to be doing what the mayor’s doing. The council added to the budget. It can now decide to take back some of the increases.”

The council substantially increased the FY 2024 and FY 2025 budgets Bowser submitted. In fact, spending climbed at a pace much greater than revenue collection. And, last year Mendelson got into a huge fight with Lee over a demand that officials follow the law and promptly reimburse two of the city’s reserve accounts. Bowser made late cuts to the 2025 budget proposal to satisfy that demand. 

Mendelson, on the other hand, spent weeks negotiating a delay in the repayment. Then he and his colleagues changed the law, providing more time for any reimbursements to the two accounts the legislature had created years ago. As a result, “neither the Fiscal Stabilization nor the Contingency Reserve Fund has been fully replenished at this point,” CFO spokesperson Wilson told me after Senate passage of the Local Funds Act and again this week.

Actually, only the congressionally mandated Emergency Reserve Fund is fully reimbursed. The Contingency Fund, also established by Congress, is at 64% of its legally required amount. The city’s Fiscal Stabilization Reserve is at 42% while the Cash Flow Reserve is at 92%, according to information provided by a spokesperson for City Administrator Kevin Donahue in response to a series of questions I asked after the Senate’s vote.

In plain language, DC is in trouble.

Addressing the situation requires collaboration between the executive and legislative branches where all ideas and strategies are discussed and explored. The one welcome bit of information Mendelson shared during our conversation on Monday is that the mayor and council would be meeting soon. 

When and what exactly is on the agenda? Who knows? Mendelson declined to provide any details.

This much we know: In the 1990s, when DC experienced extreme financial challenges, elected officials were slow to respond and relied mostly on gimmicks like the creation of a fifth quarter to the fiscal year. Unsurprisingly, by 1994 it faced a full-on fiscal crisis, prompting Congress to establish the control board to oversee the city’s management and finances.

Some folks have dismissed talk of a revived control board as fearmongering. But please believe that the “Safe and Beautiful Task Force” created by Trump is just a short walk away.

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