You would think from the public rhetoric of certain advocacy groups that the budget before us [last week] ignores our poorest citizens, the people whom the late Marion Barry called the last, the lost, and the least. I want to emphasize that while we have not met the costly demands of the most strident groups, the budget before us does a lot.
What’s going on?
For starters, we are in a recession, our revenues have tanked $1.5 billion through Fiscal Year 2021, several states are teetering on bankruptcy, and almost every city and state is cutting millions, and billions.
But we are maintaining social services. About half of our budget is devoted to public education and human support services. I repeat: about half.
While the Mayor in her proposed budget made some cuts here and there, she increased spending to reduce homelessness, increased the formula for funding schools by 3%, and maintained her $100 million commitment to affordable housing. That’s remarkable.
The Council has taken the Mayor’s budget and made additional changes. You would think, to hear some of the advocates, that we did nothing. But we:
- Increased funding for Access to Justice Initiative over last year
- Funded the REACH Act for racial equity
- Provided a total of $15 million relief for undocumented workers
- Increased emergency rental assistance to almost double the current year’s budget – to about $14 million
- Fixed the DC Healthcare Alliance Program recertification process
- Budgeted $50 million for public housing repairs
- Leveraged about $88 million for the Housing Production Trust Fund and Housing Preservation Fund, meaning that next year almost $200 million will be available for these purposes
- And increased funding for libraries, early literacy intervention, childcare, social/emotional learning supports, school based mental health, community based mental health, permanent supportive housing, targeted affordable housing, LRSP, violence interruption, Cure the Streets, DYRS credible messengers, and so forth.
Yes, you can look at a budget and see if we’re caring for the downtrodden. So look at ours; look at these changes we’ve made. Don’t preach to us about morality.
However, I fear that we’ll be back here in two months. The national economy is not coming out of the crisis and we may have to come back to balance things. For now we can hold our own against any city or state, and I want to thank Mayor Bowser for her budget proposal, and for her management of the public health, and I want to thank committee chairs for their work on this budget -- and finding ways to do more to help our neediest residents.
