I am calling to order to this hearing.

This is a hearing of the committee as a whole of the Council of the District of Columbia public hearing.

And the subject of this public hearing is testimony from the City Administrator regarding two bills before the Council.

They're basically the same.

Bill 26-662 fiscal year 2026 revised Local Budget Emergency Act of 2026 and Bill 26-663, which is the temporary version.

Temporary lasts 225 days.

The emergency bill is good for 90 days after the mayor signs it.

This hearing, I don't know if this hearing is being broadcast live on cable television channel 13, but it is available on the Council's website, www.dccouncil.gov.

I don't know that we have done this in the past, but this hearing will be very helpful as we start our council starts its consideration of the budget.

Today we are focusing just on revisions to the current year budget.

The mayor on April 14th submitted a proposed budget called the Local Budget Act for FY27, which begins October 1st.

She submitted a revised budget, which is called a supplemental budget.

For the current fiscal year of FY 2026, submitted a Budget Support Act that has legislative changes theoretically only to support the budget, and a Federal Portion Budget Request Act.

The Committee of the Whole will be having a hearing on all of the legislation where there will be public testimony on May 13th, and folks can go to the Council's website to register to testify.

That will probably be an all-day hearing.

In the meantime, all of the committees have begun hearings.

There will be three weeks of hearings, this being the first week on the proposed budgets for the agencies under their purview.

The council scheduled the vote on the budget June 9th, first reading, and June 23rd, final reading.

The Budget Support Act also on June 9th, first reading, second reading will be some at a later date, but before the council recess.

The Committee of the Whole will be having, after today's hearing, we will be having a hearing on May 1st regarding the proposed budget for DCPS, where we will hear only from the Chancellor.

Public Witnesses testified earlier this week.

And we will be having hearings May 4th on the auditor, the retirement board, the Chief Financial Officer on May 6th on the Commission on Arts and Humanities, Office of Zoning, Office of Planning, Department of Buildings, and Thursday, May 7th, on the Office of the State Superintendent of Education.

With that, we have Mr.

Donahue, but I probably should turn to my colleague, Councilmember Bonds.

Did you have an opening statement?

Thank you.

So City Administrator Donahue, the floor is yours.

Thank you.

Good morning, Chairman Mendelssohn.

Good morning, Councilmember Bonds and staff from the Committee on the Whole.

I am Kevin Donahue, City Administrator for the District of Columbia, and I'm joined by Jenny Reid, the Deputy City Administrator and the Director of the Office of Budget and Performance Management.

And I am here, actually, we are here to provide testimony on the FY26 supplemental budget.

I'm going to sort of set the stage by describing the principles that we use to develop both the 26th supplemental and the 27 budget.

And then Director Reid will go into some of the details of that budget.

I want to really talk about the four priorities that Mayor Bowser set out for us as we developed both the supplemental and the permanent FY27 budget.

And there are four primary priorities that is this guideposts as we developed and looked at the choices that we had to make.

The first guidepost was to make sure we enhanced education and public safety.

DC's comeback and our growth depends on strong schools and a safe city.

This was the mayor's foundational belief that are the two pillars that led to the city's resurgence over the past 25 years.

And we're proud of the investments we have made in both areas and continue to make that have led to increased enrollment, graduation rates, test scores, teacher retention, and parent satisfaction in our public schools.

We're equally proud of the great improvements to the district's public safety ecosystem, resulting in the lowest levels of violent crime in 30 years over 2025.

The second guidepost is preserving core services.

By core services, I really mean services that every city does, no matter how large or small, picking up trash, responding to fires, having a fantastic park system, having a fantastic library system.

We wanted to make sure these services are maintained and other core services, such as inspecting buildings, are done in a way that meets resident satisfaction.

So even in both times of boom and times of difficult budgets, residents see the foundational fundamental responsibilities of any municipality anywhere in the world as being done at a very high level.

Third, we wanted to make sure we protected health care.

In this budget, that was particularly difficult, given the rise in prices in health care across the country.

The mayor's budget makes sure our residents can keep their health care coverage by both preserving Medicaid and the Alliance program, and in fact, adding new dental and vision services beginning October 1st to both.

I have called us in the budget role, and I call it today one of the most extraordinary feats that we accomplished given how difficult that hill is to climb when we started the formulation process many months ago.

And finally, and importantly, making sure we have a budget that grows our economy.

One of our biggest challenges in making sure we respond to the doge-inflicted softening of our economy.

Any budget passed by the council really needs to include strategies and tools that attract businesses, create jobs, and keep our existing employers.

What we know looking at the past 12 years of budget growth, which has been extraordinary, is that virtually all of it came from what we call organic economic growth.

In other words, keeping people and attracting new people, keeping businesses and attracting new ones, and growing jobs.

This is the key in which we can fund not just the programs that we had to cut this year, but be able to grow programs that are vitally important in the future.

So while our economy has softened, we will have a strong and solid foundations to grow from.

In fact, this week's, just this week, Moody's analytics upgraded the district's uh rating outlook.

Moody cited our very difficult our very strong fiscal governance and prudent budget budget management that will mitigate federal policy uncertainty and offset expected softer revenue.

It is a quote from that decision they made to be able to improve our outlook.

That's a testament to the hard work that we have all done to maintain our fiscal stability and make sure we are set up for long-term financial sustainability for future administrations and budget.