How to spend $15 billion
It’s budget season and the Mayor and DC Council are busy figuring out how to spend $15.5 billion
Dear District,
Dan Essrow here. I hope you’re enjoying the sights and sounds of DC in the Spring!
Dear District is a monthly-ish newsletter to help you understand what’s driving local DC politics so you can be a more engaged voter and citizen. This issue will cover DC’s $15.5 billion budget debate, the pretty cool plan to make childcare affordable for every family in the District, and a quick update on Ward 2 Councilmember/Lobbyist Jack Evans.
Making the DC budget
It’s budget season and the Mayor and the DC Council are busy figuring out how to spend $15.5 billion!
A lot of people mistakenly think that DC gets most of its budget directly from the Feds. We don’t! But the persistence of that myth hurts our case for statehood. In reality, 64% of DC’s revenue comes from local taxes. The feds kick in 23%—mostly in the form of Medicaid payments (just like they do for other states). The last 13% is Enterprise Funds—fees and taxes for specific services like water and sewage. As a point of reference, $15.5 billion is about $22,000 for each of DC’s 700,000+ residents.
That’s a lot of money to solve a lot of problems! (Though we could raise and spend a lot more if the District more fairly taxed commercial property owners, corporations, and wealthy estates.)
The District budget, which is drafted by the Mayor and passed by the Council each year, is legally required to be balanced. To kick things off, the Mayor and her staff spend months making a detailed budget proposal. It includes top-level numbers for categories like education, public safety, and public works. But it also includes dollar-by-dollar breakdowns for every agency and program in DC. How many new laptops can DC schools afford for 3rd graders? Check the budget!
(Full disclosure, I’m writing you from DC’s Southeast Neighborhood Library; the District’s 20+ libraries are allocated $65 million in the 2020 budget.)
Around March, The Mayor submits her budget to the Council for review. Finalizing the budget is a collaborative process, but the Council can’t add new spending in a particular category without finding a way to offset it. If one councilmember wants more money for free public restrooms downtown, they may have to convince another to spend less money on hiring new cops. (Which incidentally seems like a good idea.) Each Spring, the Council will hold a bunch of hearings, tinker around with the numbers a bit, and then pass the budget as law.
The budget is the truest expression of DC’s priorities. Does your councilmember believe in affordable housing and racial equity? Let them prove it with their budget votes.
What to do: Read a bit more about what the advocacy community is asking for in this year’s budget. And check out these super helpful breakdowns of the budget from the DC Fiscal Policy Institute, as well as their resident’s guide to the budget.
Birth to Three for All DC
One of the most exciting issues up for debate in this year’s budget is funding for DC’s groundbreaking expansion of affordable childcare, Birth to Three for All DC.
Budget season is also advocacy season. Each year, the advocacy community makes specific asks and lobbies the Council to fund certain programs for more or less than what’s spelled out in the Mayor’s proposal. Teachers ask for better wrap-around services to support their students, housing advocates ask for more rent subsidies, and social justice advocates ask for greater investment in domestic violence prevention programs.
DC’s new childcare program, Birth to Three, passed unanimously in 2018—but without a single dollar of funding. That means funding this new program will be a major topic of debate for years to come.
What does Birth to Three do? In the first few years of the law, it increases the capacity of the early education system so it can provide high-quality care to more DC families. The program is targeted for DC kids age 0–3, since 3- and 4-year-olds are already covered by DC’s universal pre-K program. Birth to Three is designed to attract more people to work in early education—without leaving behind those who already do. It offers grants to childcare providers to pay their staff more (what a novel idea!) and creates a program at DC’s public college so early educators can get additional training.
The bill also provides for home visiting and health supports for new and expecting parents. Eventually—and here’s the $$$ part—Birth to Three will cap the amount of money DC’s families spend on childcare. For lower-income families, after they chip in up to 7% of their income for childcare, the city will cover the rest of the cost! For higher income families, costs would be capped at 10%.
A family making $50,000 a year for example, could be expected to pay $5,000 a year for child care, and the District would cover the rest. Since average care in DC costs $23,000 per year, these subsides will make a big difference for DC families.
But there is some bad news… the Mayor only funded Birth to Three at $5 million for 2020, about $25 million less than what is needed to get the program up and running. The biggest chunk of funding this year would go to subsidies to existing providers to pay their employees more—finally recognizing the underpaid early education work performed predominantly by women and women of color in DC. Early education advocates will be descending on the Wilson Building (DC’s city hall) this month to ask the Council to find the money to fund Birth to Three, and they will be fighting for every dollar they can get.
What to do: Take a moment to tell your councilmember that you support Birth to Three funding. DC’s Working Families Party is collecting resident signatures now to be delivered later this month as part of a coordinated effort to show that Birth to Three funding is a priority.
Checking back on Jack
Since the last Dear District, things have gotten worse for Jack Evans. He was publicly reprimanded by his colleagues on the Council and many bills have been moved outside the control of his committee. He’s been rebuked by DC civic groups like the Gertrude Stein Democratic Club, and DC for Democracy is launching a new policy platform to root out Evans-style corruption. Despite all this, Jack is still on the Council (nascent efforts to recall him hit a clerical snag), and still making important decisions that affect our lives. It will be up to the voters in 2020 to show that DC has no patience for corrupt public officials.
What to do: Join DC for Democracy on Wednesday at 6:30pm as they roll out their new Evans-inspired policy agenda to end pay-to-play politics in local DC.
Thanks for reading! Let me know if you have story ideas, things you want explained, corrections, or other suggestions to improve Dear District. You can reply to this email directly or to djessrow@gmail.com. And of course please forward to your friends and coworkers so they can subscribe. See you soon!
—Dan
Found Dear District on Twitter or forwarded from a friend? My name is Dan Essrow—I’m an independent designer, writer, and concerned citizen with experience in electoral politics and issue advocacy in the District.
P.S. There is an amazing wealth of local DC reporting—longform and on Twitter. Dear District relies entirely on work from dedicated DC journalists like Cuneyt Dil, Fenit Nirappil, Martin Austermuhle, Rachel Kurzius, Tom Sherwood, Morgan Baskin, Mitch Ryals, Perry Stein, and Jeffrey Anderson.
Here’s some links in case you want more local DC content in your life:
District Links (daily! local DC email)