D.C.’s chief financial officer dropped an economic bombshell late Friday evening: The District is facing a budget shortfall of more than $1 billion over the next three-and-a-half years, he projected.
CFO Glenn Lee flagged revenue drops from income tax, property tax and sales tax as the Trump administration fires and lays off thousands of federal workers.
At separate press conferences Monday, Mayor Muriel Bowser and D.C. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson fielded questions about how they plan to balance the District’s budget and what cuts they will make to programs and services.
Mendelson said raising taxes is not an option for him.
We've got the news you need to know to start your day. Sign up for the First & 4Most morning newsletter — delivered to your inbox daily. Sign up here.
“We will not solve this problem by raising taxes,” he said. “Many of our taxes are the highest in the region. We should not keep going higher.”
The mayor would not make the same commitment to take tax increases off the table.
“Well, I never take anything off the table when I'm formulating the budget, especially we hope that this is the latest update before I have to send the budget to the council. So, I never take anything off the table,” she said.
Despite the sobering fiscal forecast, Bowser said she still supports using public funds to build an NFL stadium at the RFK campus.
“We still have to invest in our growth. Who wants to look around in four years and see the same thing at RFK? No tax revenue coming in. So, we have to, that's an engine, that's an economic engine,” she said. “… What we have to do is to make sure that we're replacing the activity and revenue that we are missing from income in other ways.”
As for which programs might be cut in order to make up such a huge budget gap, Bowser only would point to her budget priorities.
“Our focus has been on making sure that we have robust investments in public safety and public education,
and that we're investing in our downtown,” she said.
Mendelson pointed out that public education and human services programs make up about half of the District’s budget.
"I don’t want to suggest that there are going to be programs wiped out, although that’s possible. All I can say is that if roughly a quarter of the budget is just human services, it's inescapable that human services will be affected by some cuts," he said.
Sign up for our free deep-dive newsletter, The 4Front, to get standout News4 stories sent right to your inbox. Subscribe here.
Bowser said negotiations with the Commanders about a potential stadium in D.C. are ongoing, with a sense of urgency. Mendelson affirmed his opposition to spending any public funds on a new stadium.
