“With a modest tax increase on D.C.’s wealthiest residents, the council will raise over $170 million each year by fiscal year 2025 to help dismantle structural barriers to opportunity for Black and Brown communities and those living on low incomes,”
The DC Council cast its first, and arguably most important, vote to advance the fiscal year (FY) 2022 budget last week. The Council budget leverages over $3 billion in temporary federal recovery funds and maintains the Mayor’s strong investments in […]
“These are people who work, who are earning wages but still struggle to get by. So it’s basically allowing them to keep more of the money that they’re earning,” says Tazra Mitchell, the policy director for the left-wing D.C. Fiscal Policy Institute.
In its first budget vote yesterday, the DC Council met the urgency of the moment by raising taxes on DC’s wealthiest to make ongoing, transformative investments in child care, homelessness prevention, and working residents.
At the vigil the Sunday before, both councilmembers said the mayor’s proposed budget of $20.6M for PSH in FY22 — $4M less than in 2021 — is not enough to end chronic homelessness. Other speakers at the vigil included Kate Coventry of DCFPI.
The $200 million they were asking lawmakers to include in the FY 2022 budget is less than half of what excluded workers would need in order to achieve parity with folks receiving unemployment benefits, according to a report by the DC Fiscal Policy Institute.
“We have federal money to allow for some childhood stabilization grants, but we’ve not made investments in raising childcare worker wages,” says Erica Williams, the executive director of the D.C. Fiscal Policy Institute.
We’re in the final stretch of the DC budget process, when the DC Council will have the opportunity to make large strides towards an anti-racist, equitable recovery. Councilmembers are weighing choices that have the potential to usher in bold, transformative […]
Last month, the DC Fiscal Policy Institute and DC Action commissioned a poll that found that 80% of District voters support asking residents making above $250,000 a year to pay more in taxes to fund greater investments in child care and housing.
She [Councilmember Nadeau] proposes to raise funds for this effort by taxing residents making more than $250,000 a year at a higher level — an idea opposed by Mendelson but urged by advocates such as the DC Fiscal Policy Institute and DC Action.