The rollout of Mayor Adrian M. Fenty's budget proposal has not been without hiccups: Last-minute changes meant budget books had to be reprinted. The books didn't make it to the council until Monday, and fewer than usual arrived. And now D.C. Council Chairman Vincent C. Gray is miffed because a key part of the budget [...]
A last-minute change to Mayor Adrian M. Fenty's fiscal 2011 budget proposal this morning will cost taxpayers "in the tens of thousands" of dollars to reprint budget documents, sources tell LL.
The change has to do with the Office of the Tenant Advocate, an office that "advocates for, educates, and provides outreach for" the city's renters. [...]
With details still scarce, Mayor Adrian M. Fenty's budget proposal holds sacred education and public safety, while finding sundry service cuts and fee hikes to close an approximately $550 million budget gap.
The budget proposal eliminates 385 full-time equivalent positions; a Fenty official estimated than one-half of those positions are already empty, the other half will [...]
Allow LL to follow up on the new city revenue projections for a second. In his letter to the mayor and D.C. Council, Chief Financial Officer Natwar M. Gandhi informed them that a $.50 per-pack cigarette tax hike implemented last October has not gone as planned.
Because the increase, to $2.50, catapulted the District's rate over [...]
Chief Financial Officer Natwar M. Gandhi's latest city revenue estimates are in, and guess what: bad news.
For the current fiscal year, which started last Oct. 1, Gandhi is now estimating $17.7 million less in revenue. So what was a projected $223 million budget gap is now $240 million. And for the upcoming fiscal year, the [...]
Ed Lazere of the D.C. Fiscal Policy Institute has scooped the reportorial corps with this revelation: District government agency heads have been asked to reduce their budgets by some $300 million going into the fiscal 2011 budget planning process.
This news comes from a memorandum [PDF] issued by City Administrator Neil O. Albert last month, which [...]
