D.C. Mayor Vincent Gray will increase taxes and fees to cope with a deep 2012 deficit. He will deliver his proposed budget to the council Friday.
The tough budget decisions come, as the mayor wrestles with some serious allegations. Gray is juggling his first budget with a lingering political scandal over his hiring practices.
Gray's budget includes $300 million in cuts and some revenue increases, but he wasn't saying what those increases are Thursday.
The $10 billion budget and coming fight over cuts is a chance for Gray to turn attention away from the hiring scandal involving high salaries and allegations from former mayoral candidate Sulaimon Brown, who has prompted an FBI investigation with his claim that Gray's campaign team paid Brown money and later gave him a $110,000 a year city job for Brown's attacks on ex-Mayor Adrian Fenty during the mayoral race.
On Viewpoint, which airs Sunday on NBC4, Gray again emphatically denied that he knows of any payments to Brown and did not give him a city job as a payoff.
The issue could come to a head next week when Brown and several Gray campaign officials testify before a council hearing looking into how Brown got his city job -- a job from which he was fired after only a few weeks.
