Behold an election-year budget season.

That key part is the Budget Support Act, which is the package of legislation that makes all the necessary policy changes to "support" the budget request. It contains details on fee increases, tax modifications, changes to legislative initiatives, and, at least in past budgets, earmarks.

Today Gray dispatched a letter to Fenty saying, in essence: WTF dude?

"I am writing to you on an issue of basic government transparency, for which I have substantial concern with the actions of your administration," Gray writes. He points out that council staffers asked Fenty staffers for a copy, and that the Fenty staffers said that it would not be completed until next Monday.

"If the Budget Support Act is not completed," Gray writes, "how could the Chief Financial Officer have certified your budget submission?"

The legislation, he continues, "contains over $100 million in tax and fee increases which the Council and the public need to examine." (Note the use of "tax" increases—a challenge to Fenty's claim that his budgets contain no such thing.)

By law, the budget is due to the council on April 1.

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. An early version of Fenty's budget plan involved plans to scale back or eliminate the agency, as mentioned in a post to a Washington Post blog this morning. But uproar from several persons who learned of the cut, including Ward 1 Councilmember Jim Graham, forced the change.

No budget books were available this morning for reporters or council staffers; staff from the Office of the Chief Financial Officer explained that they were still being printed. A letter distributed by the CFO's office indicated a $469,000 cut from the Tenant Advocate, with an additional $1.8 million transferred to other agencies, but in an interview, City Administrator Neil O. Albert indicated that the office would remain as it was.

The decision had heavy consequences, quite literally. The budget books aren't just a couple of pamphlets with some spreadsheets inside; they really are books. Last year's congressional submission (pictured) consists of seven perfect-bound volumes containing hundreds and hundreds of pages. Stacked together, one set of last year's tomes measures more than seven inches thick and weighs some 17 pounds.

The entire initial press run of 25 books had already been printed, says one source, and a second run of 250 had already started when the order was given for the redo.

A letter from the mayor would have sufficed to make the change, says a Wilson Building staffer. The city faced a budget shortfall of more than $550 million for the 2011 fiscal year.

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 be laid off. The proposal also seeks to freeze automatic "step" increases in government worker salaries, saving $20 million. All told, general spending is falling 1.2 percent against the current fiscal year.

The big news is what is increasing: Fenty is proposing actually hiking funds for D.C. Public Schools and charter schools by as much as $140 million. The per-student funding formula would increase by $175, to $8,945. Fenty is also proposing a modest increase, 4 percent, for the Fire and Emergency Services Department.

What Fenty isn't proposing: No additional money for Metro, to help offset proposed service cuts. And no local money for vouchers, making up for the federal money lost after Congress refused to reauthorize the program.

How to pay for it all? Fenty, in keeping with a 2006 campaign pledge, is not proposing any hikes to the "Big Three" revenue generators: sales, income, and property taxes. But, as has become habit, there is a passel of new fees in the Fenty budget: $28 million in increased traffic fines; $7 million in 911 fees (see below); $150,000 in increased notary registration fees; $3.6 million by hiking parking meter rates from $.75 per hour to $1 per hour; $3.1 million from a "fee for steel plates on roadways"; $920,000 from additional fees for business licenses and public space permits; and $16.1 million in other fee hikes.

There are other cuts, too: Changing hazardous-waste dropoffs from weekly to monthly; eliminating the police department's pager contract; and merging the Office of Employee Appeals, Public Employees Review Board, and the Office of Administrative Hearings into a single shop, saving $1.9 million. But there are still no details on core human services functions—health care, homeless services, poverty relief, and other programs that are very costly and are expected to bear heavy cuts. A group of activists, from Save Our Safety Net, briefly interrupted Fenty's press conference this morning to protest the anticipated cuts.

Some big fights to come:

The Enhanced 911 fee, aka E911. Fenty has proposed this fee every year in office, which would add a tax to phone bills raising, an estimated $7 million in FY2011. And every year he's proposed it, At-Large Councilmember Phil Mendelson has cut the fee from the budget. This year, there's a twist: Fenty wants to take the fee and use it not for enhancing 911, according to a CFO analysis, but to pay salaries and benefits for 30 employees. That would require a change to current law—a tough slog for sure.

A tax on hospitals. Fenty is proposing to raise $25 million by levying a "new assessment on net patient revenue" at city hospitals. Standing in front of the John A. Wilson Building today was Robert Malson of the D.C. Hospital Association, a powerful lobby group. "The hospitals are pleased to do their part, but everything has to be on the table" in terms of spending cuts, he says. "We can't afford a one-percent tax on inpatient and outpatient revenues."

Office of the Tenant Advocate. The city's voice for renters is losing $496,000 in funding, according to the CFO's office. City Administrator Neil Albert pledged today that the office would continue to exist under the Fenty budget, and that it would continue to serve the same role it does in the current fiscal year. But details are quite sketchy indeed, and any attempts to cut its budget will lead to jawing from council progressives.

Fund balance. The Fenty plans spends down the city's savings account by $97 million; Gandhi testified earlier this year that the city was approaching the limit of how much it needs to keep in reserve in order to meet its cash needs and statutory obligations. Gandhi, while certifying the request, warns in a letter that officials should "take steps to augment, or at a minimum, replenish the General Fund Balance." Fiscal hawks like Jack Evans and probably Vincent Gray are likely to make it an issue. A related issue: $97 million in "debt restructuring" that saves the city money in the short term but increases interest costs down the road.

Summer jobs. Last year, Fenty proposed a 10-week Summer Youth Employment Program, a costly mayoral pet initiative. However, the council, in order to cover a late-breaking revenue shortfall, saw fit to reduce the program to just six weeks this year. In 2011, Fenty is again proposing a 10-week program, but says he can do it for only $22.7 million. (A 10-week program in 2008 cost well over $40 million.) Fenty budget aide Merav Bushlin told councilmembers that program spending "depends on how the program is structured."

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

Because the increase, to $2.50, catapulted the District's rate over Maryland's $2-per-pack rate, Gandhi explains, many Maryland smokers who'd bought their tobacco in the District switched back to buying in Maryland. Add that to all the D.C. smokers who started buying cheap-as-dirt Virginia smokes, and you get the picture—instead of $45.4 million in revenue, Gandhi says the District will only bank $30 million.

But the legislative screw-up is more profound than that: The projections are now that this year's estimated cigarette tax revenues will fall below the pre-hike FY2009 levels ($37.6 million)—in other words, the tax hike got the city less revenue, not more.

Of course, council do-gooders will protest that this is really about a key public-health issue and that they're glad that fewer people are buying cancer sticks in D.C.

All true, and certainly admirable. But that wasn't the thinking at the time the tax was raised, LL can tell you that. The decision was made last July in a closed-door Wilson Building conference room (LL and a few other reporters were allowed inside). The cig-tax hike was on a menu of revenue-raising possibilities presented by Gandhi's office—and taxing smokers was a no-brainer for a legislative body looking to close a $660 million shortfall. LL recalls very little debate about the decision, and little mention of public health.

The good news: Maryland's currently considering another cig-tax hike, to $3.

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 revenue projection is down by $49.4 million from December estimates, meaning a $556 million problem is now a $605 million problem.

In a letter to the mayor and council, Gandhi explained why: ongoing weakness in the real-estate market, for one. But also because the city hasn't implemented new traffic penalties fast enough, it's given up some $18 million. And perhaps least surprising: The D.C. Council's move to hike cigarette taxes backfired; by raising the rates above Maryland's, Maryland smokers who'd been buying in D.C. switched back to Maryland. That miscue will cost about $15 million below projections in the current fiscal year

Get ready to do this all over again in June!

This news comes from a memorandum [PDF] issued by City Administrator Neil O. Albert last month, which cites flat revenue growth, the cessation of stimulus funding, and need to replenish reserve funds spent to cover a gap in fiscal 2009. The bottom line is that every agency is "required to present expense reductions and revenue generating proposals that could sustain up to a 10% local funds budget reduction target."

Writes Albert: "It is critical that each agency evaluate all spending, and dig deeply into the assumptions that underlie its allocation of resources." Agencies have until Dec. 2 to come up with ideas.

Lazere notes that the "revenue generating proposals" stand to be interesting, given that Fenty made a campaign pledge not to raise taxes, "which severely limits how the city can create new sources of revenue in these cash-strapped times."