The District’s chief financial officer on Thursday began reviewing Mayor Muriel Bowser’s proposed budget for the upcoming fiscal year, weeks after a federally mandated $1 billion cut.
CFO Glen Lee will have 10 days to look over the mayor’s finalized budget plan to make sure it’s balanced, as required by city law, before turning it over to the D.C. Council.
Council Chairman Phil Mendelson, at-large Democrat, said he anticipates taking a final vote on the budget in early August.
Ms. Bowser, a Democrat, didn’t share her budget proposal with the council by April 2, as she held out hope the GOP-controlled House would reverse the hefty midyear cut included in March’s federal stopgap package.
Both the Senate and President Trump support reinstating the District’s full $21 billion budget for fiscal year 2025. D.C. leaders have argued repeatedly that the cuts affect only local tax dollars and won’t help trim the federal deficit.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, Louisiana Republican, this month said the chamber wanted to sort out national finances before turning its attention back toward the District.
The mayor has warned that Metropolitan Police, fire and emergency services, and D.C.’s public schools are likely to see cuts before this fiscal year ends Sept. 30.
Delays in sharing the budget with council members rankled Mr. Mendelson, who at one point threatened legal action to compel Ms. Bowser to turn over her proposal. That possibility is now moot since the CFO received the mayor’s spending plan.
“We are in very unprecedented times with having to deal with a complicated issue with FY25, and so we all have been working in earnest and good faith to deliver a budget that is good for our city,” Ms. Bowser told reporters Wednesday after a closed-door meeting with the CFO and D.C. Council. “People have to recognize — including the council members — that that will impact schedules. It’s impacted ours; it’ll impact theirs.”
Council member Robert White, at-large Democrat, told Washington’s WJLA-TV thatthe District has no choice but to go through with the midyear cuts, given Capitol Hill’s inaction on the budget.
Despite the Home Rule Act allowing D.C. residents to elect a mayor and city council to handle local matters, Congress still controls which D.C. laws can take effect and how the city spends its money.
Federal lawmakers exercised that power in March when House lawmakers removed a decades-old provision from a temporary spending bill, called a continuing resolution, that lets the District fund city operations even when Democrats and Republicans are at odds over federal spending.
Without the provision, the stopgap law holds the city to the same standards as federal agencies, which must revert their budgets to 2024 levels.
Last month, Ms. Bowser ordered a hiring freeze and facility closures to accommodate federally mandated budget cuts. She also ordered a stop to pay raises, promotions, bonuses and overtime pay.
City Administrator Kevin Donahue was supposed to produce a plan for furloughs and facility closures by late April, according to the mayor’s order.
Ms. Bowser has not detailed exact plans for the pending cuts, but she has said the short-staffed Metropolitan Police are exempt from the freeze on overtime pay. The added pay is a major incentive to get officers to work extra shifts.
The midyear cuts are part of an increasingly dim financial situation for the District. D.C. officials have said the city faces a roughly $1 billion drop in revenue over the next three years due to the Trump administration’s downsizing of the federal government.
