First, the District Dime would like to congratulate Mayor Vincent C. Gray, DC Shadow Representative Mike Panetta, and the six members of the DC Council who got arrested on Capitol Hill yesterday for protesting our city’s lack of budget autonomy.
As many readers know, the District’unlike any other city or state in the country’cannot spend even its own tax dollars raised through the local income or sales tax without Congressional approval. After the Mayor and DC Council agree to a budget, it is sent to Congress and our tax dollars then need to be allocated through the federal budget appropriations. That makes our city’s budget a political pawn and subject to meddling, as was demonstrated during last week’s last-minute wrangling over the federal budget and a possible government shutdown.
The compromise on the current year’s federal budget and the deal to keep the government open included two provisions that directly contradicted policies decided upon by our locally-elected leadership. In the end, the federal budget included a provision that prohibits the District from spending LOCAL’not federal’tax dollars on abortion and related healthcare for low-income women, as well as funds a controversial private school voucher program.
DCFPI supports the efforts of DC Congressional Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton and others to give the District budget autonomy from the federal government and make officials elected by the District’s residents the ultimate deciders on how the city spends its money. The budget is a statement of our city’s priorities, and it should be decided by leaders from DC’not from the 8th Congressional district of Ohio.
