I am calling to order this hearing.

This is a public hearing of the committee, the whole of the council of the District of Columbia.

Today is Wednesday, May 13th, 2026.

The time is 9 52 in the morning.

We're in room 500, the council chambers of the Johnny Wilson building.

This is a hearing, the hearing that the council has on the legislative measures the mayor has submitted relevant to the budget for the District of Columbia government.

There are, I believe, six legislative measures.

Bill 26-658, fiscal year 2027 Federal Portion Budget Request Act, which is comment on the portion of the district's budget that is funded at the discretion of Congress, such as funding for the Judicial Nominations Commission, which is a DC government agency, funding such as tuition assistance grant program, which is a congressionally enacted program.

And this is uh our request to Congress with regard to the federal portion budget.

Bill 26-659, the fiscal year 2027 local budget act, which we adopt through budget autonomy.

That is what everybody focuses on when they think of as the district's budget.

Bill 26-660, the fiscal year 2027 Local Budget Emergency Act of 2026, which we adopt when we adopt a local budget act so that it becomes more effective, becomes effective, excuse me, becomes effective sooner than congressional review of the permanent bill.

Bill 26-661, the fiscal year 2027 Budget Support Act of 2026, which is a very um lengthy legislative measure that contains provisions that are intended to be all of them are supposed to be relevant to the budget to support the budget.

Bill 26-662, the fiscal year 2026 revised local budget emergency act of 2026.

Those are revisions to the current year budget, and the Bill 26-663, fiscal year 2026, revised local budget temporary act, which will be the same as the local budget emergency act for fiscal year 2026.

Again, the revisions are to the current year budget.

So this hearing, for this hearing, the committee of the whole is welcoming testimony from any citizen or business or anyone else who has comments with regard to any of these budget measures.

We have a hundred and seventy-one witnesses who signed up, so this will probably be all day.

We begin this meeting hearing testimony from the government.

This is not comprehensive testimony on the budget because all of the committees have had their hearings, and that's where we've been getting detailed testimony from executive uh officials uh with regard to the proposed budget for specific agencies.

All the committees have, I believe, at this point completed their hearings on the proposed budgets for the agencies under their purview.

The committees will do their markups of recommendations next week.

The council members will have a work session the following week where we go over where we go over all of this, and then the council is scheduled to vote.

First reading on June 9th, if I remember correctly.

Unfortunately, I have these dates committed to memory.

Uh June 9th, and then we have to vote a second time that will be on June 23rd.

The Budget Support Act will probably have its second reading later than June 23rd, and the revised budget uh for the current year, the emergency and temporary acts will get their um uh final reading on June 23rd.

Um with that, we have uh Kevin Donahue, the uh city administrator.

Uh please, when you're ready, begin.

Uh, good morning, Chairman Mendelson.

Uh, good morning, uh staff and team of the committee on the whole.

I'm Kevin Donahue.

I have the privilege of serving as city administrator for the District of Columbia, and I'm joined here by Jenny Reid, the Deputy City Administrator and Budget Director, and Barry Christworth, our general counsel, who does a lot of the hard work of actually developing and writing the language of the BSA.

This morning I'll provide testimony on the fiscal year 2027 Budget Support Act submission.

Uh, I know you have a very long day of public testimony, so I'll keep my remarks quite short.

Uh I also want to say good morning to everyone in the room here, for those watching, you can't see all the folks here, but there's probably a hundred plus people.

Whenever I'm at ANC meetings, I always encourage folks to advocate for the budget, whether they agree or disagree with what we're putting forward, because it's an incredibly important document that really shapes what we do for an entire year.

Uh so now I'll begin my formal remarks, which I said I'll keep brief.

Um, and I'll really use them to highlight the four priorities that Mayor Bowser set out when she had us develop the FY27 budget, the BSA, and the FY26 supplemental.

And there are really four guideposts that we have pointed to for each one of the hearings.

Uh the first is focusing on making sure we protect and enhance education and public safety.

Part of the reason for that is the mayor's view is that improvements in education and public safety are often the foundation for growth as a city and as an economy.

Uh DC's comeback often depends on strong schools in a safe city, and we're proud of the investments we were able to make in the budget that we put forward to the council.

Uh and that budget that we have put forward over a number of years that have led to increased enrollment, graduation rates, test scores, teacher retention, parent satisfaction in a moment in time post-pandemic when all of those things in other school districts are often at risk.

Uh we're equally proud of the investments we make to the district's public safety ecosystem, resulting in last year the lowest levels of violent crime uh in over 30 years and the lowest level of homicides in about 15 years.

The second guidepost we've used is preserving core services.

I call core services things that, because it depends on who you ask, but really is things that every municipality everywhere in the world does and really has to do to be able to maintain their credibility as a basic functioning city government.

You have to pick trash up, you have to respond to police calls and fire calls.

You need to have a strong parks department, rec centers.

You need libraries that are safe and maintained with content and programs that draw people to those libraries.

And we wanted to make sure we maintain those core services.

It does not mean there were increases, but it means that we wanted to make sure as we go into a difficult budget season, the core functions of a municipality are preserved and protected in what we put forward in our ability to function over the course of the next year.

The third one took some doing, which is to make sure we protect health care.

All across the country, health care costs go up far faster than anyone's income, including the cities, which means each year we have to be creative in how we make sure that we keep people on Medicaid and we keep people on the alliance programs.

This year we were able to do that, even though we started with a deficit or a we call a budget cliff of about 1.1 billion dollars.

We not only preserved those programs, we added dental and vision programs to those services starting October 1st.

Uh and the final of the four guideposts we use is growing the economy.

Our biggest challenge is making sure we respond to the doge inflicted softening of our local and regional economies, is making sure we find ways to attract residents, attract businesses, keep residents here, and keep business here who contribute to our economy.

And growing the economy is how we sustainably create revenue to fund programs and services our residents count on, not just raising resident and business taxes.

A data point that I'll point out, not in my formal testimony, but one I do like to point out, because I also we have a lot of folks here going to advocate for the budget, is that over the past 12 years, the budget's grown by about 62%.

A really significant increase of billions of dollars over the course of 12 years.

That increases have been how we have funded the programs that in this room folks I know are probably here to advocate for.

If you go back and track what accounted for the increase of revenue over those 12 years, and you divide it into two buckets.

One is what I call organic economic growth, the other one are changes to tax rates.

About 80% of that growth of 62%, billions of dollars over that time came from organic economic growth.

And what's that?

It is means that people have chosen to stay here who have options to leave the city.

People chose to come to the city.

Businesses and nonprofits who started here have been able to survive and grow and employ people.

It increases the tax base that increases the size of the pie.

That far exceeds in terms of what it contributes to our ability to fund programs to any incremental tax rate changes that we're able to do.

And so that's the fourth and important pillar is to making sure we find ways to be able to grow the economy at a rate that each budget is not a difficult budget, but one in which the initial submission funds programs at the level that we want them funded at.

Finally, I want to make say I'm proud of the work done by the team and our agencies in developing the budget.

It's done by employees and civil servants at agencies at the CFO's office, in my office, the folks at the table with me.

I'm equally proud of the work, proud to work in an administration where so many of our employees go above and beyond in ensuring our residents are well served.

FY 27 will present many challenges, but I have the full confidence in the mayor's budget and the council's deliberation that will meet those challenges and keep the city moving forward.

Thank you for the opportunity to testify today about the FY27 budget support act.

I'm available to answer your questions.

I do have a few questions.

I'm not going to go into the agency specific questions that I've asked of at our committee hearings, where I probed some of the changes that the mayor's proposing.

I'm not going to go into that, but I do have some other questions.

The first one, and I forewarned you I was gonna ask this question when are we going to receive the errata letter?

Good morning, Chairman Mendelssohn.

Good morning.

Uh we are currently working on the Irata letter.

Our goal is to try to get it to you all by the end of this week or early next week.

Okay.

And the errata letter will have where you've identified some corrections that need to be made.

Yes, that's correct.

And sometimes it has some policy stuff in it.

We're so long in this process.

Okay, so by the end of this week, I can hold my breath.

Or early next week.

We're working on it.

Or before the council recess.

All right, we'll look for it this week.

Um, the um part of the challenge in putting together the budget, your the mayor putting it together the budget was um restriction on access to revenues or cash.

Uh, I wanted you to go into what that all meant or looked like.

Um, sure.

I will start and I'll ask um director reid to sort of add anything that I left out.

So um the city has four official legally mandated cash reserves.

Two are federally mandated, they can't be touched, uh, emergency and contingency, and two are locally funded.

The two locally funded really came out of the Great Recession 15 years ago.

I worked in the OCA, the city minister's office during the recession budgets.

The city drew down its cash reserves, and so there was an attempt when we bounced back from that to create locally mandated cash reserves to make sure the city had the ability to be able to pay its bills.

The city does not pay its bills.

Unlike other cities, it triggers a federal control board, so it becomes a fatal mistake if we're not able to pay our fundamental bills.

So for years, the city would try to get to a point where it would basically hit what was called 60 days of cash on hand, which we achieved in 2019, 2019, just before the pandemic.

Uh, pandemic comes, we draw down all the reserves except emergency.

And if we had not gotten federal, we would have drawn that down too.

This is what it's there for.

Um we get federal aid economy, has a couple of of uh boom years as people were coming out of COVID, in which our um uh which are revenue so significant, we had cash reserves, not just for those official four reserves, but cash we decided to spread out over multiple fiscal years.

Instead of imagine you're not spending it all in one year, but you're spending over multiple years.

But the target had always been 60 days of cash on hand, was the gold standard that we had strived for for many years.

So let me fast forward to what that means for the twenty seven budget, because it's an important point.

In any prior, say, ERA year, except for the past maybe couple, that 60 day was the market.

Any cash above that was effectively go into funds that were able to be appropriated.

So they went into housing a housing production trust fund, pay-go capital, but could also be appropriated anywhere.

And that becomes money that is in addition to what you receive with your regularly forecasted revenue.

You basically add to what you're estimating and putting into your budget.

So there was two groups of funding of cash that we were not able to access based on that we would have in a prior moment in time.

One is that the city has more than 60 days of cash on hand, it has 66 days of cash on hand, which is about 200 million dollars by my rough estimation, maybe a little bit more than that.

But 66 days was the amount now that the CFO's deemed is needed and appropriate to be able to pay the bills.

That in the in the teens of the 20 teens, we were often at 45 days, 50 days.

We had other mechanisms to be able to pay bills, including short-term borrowing.

We've moved beyond that.

So there were six days of cash on hand, about just over 200 million dollars that in a prior moment in time we wouldn't have been able to use.

Um after the courts did not uphold the Congress's overturning of the decoupling.

That's about 180 million dollars.

So that's money that's coming into our revenues, was not reflected in our revenue estimate, but it's generate being generated.

That was set aside as has been set aside for what is effectively a legal risk reserve.

It's not officially called that it's what it effectively is used for.

That's 180 million dollars.

Uh, the city is open to at any point in time to large lawsuits.

Uh, my first year in the Bowser administration, the city settled a $50 million lawsuit with the fire union of long-running lawsuit about overtime pay.

So we're not having to settle large losses, not new.

Setting aside revenues being generated is new, and not having that money be put into a budget.

So those two combined to about 400 million dollars that under sort of prior rules, I'll say, would have been available to be incorporated into the budget.

Now, the CFO, like their job is to make sure that we're able to pay the bills.

And in DC, if you can't pay a single bill, or you miss a payment or you miss a payroll or pension fund, it triggers something that hasn't happened anywhere else, which is a federal control board.

So they are every have every right to be concerned about our ability to do that.

The two things I'll just close out my response on is that the two I think things that we have asked in person at hearings.

Uh, one is to make sure there's transparency about how much cash we have and how much cash is needed, which really looks like what is our cash flows look like on a month-to-month basis, going out a number of years, if not week to week.

So we understand what the root causes are of cash swings that result in having to set aside this much money to pay bills.

And second, to give options to elected officials for how to do that.

Um, in other words, be able to come to the mayor, come to you and say, we need this much cash to pay the bills.

Here are different ways that we can make sure we have the ability to pay bills, each of which might have trade-offs.

As I said, we had in prior eras use short-term borrowing when we knew that, and basically in DC, we have a couple of months that we have huge cost cash draws on, one of which is the school advances.

Um, it had been for a while, pension contributions.

Uh, those are not in question.

The questions, what do you do with how can you smooth out those cash flows?

So we had done short-term borrowing, um, but there are other tools that can be used to be able to offer to elected officials to say, um, here are options, and here's the transparency that proves with evidence why we need to be able to have this much cash on hand.

But it's my long way of saying that there was about 400 million dollars that in prior rules would have been available to incorporate into the budget.

It is why actually the mayor put in the last slot of her budget presentation, um, her own version of the of a contingent spend list, um, the first item of which was um funding workforce investment, um, which is the very first item that if there's the ability to identify additional revenues or cash, it was the very first thing that the mayor put on that final slide of her presentation.

So let me just repeat repeat repeat back some of what I heard you say.

Um the um in putting together the budget, the mayor was looking at uh revenue from the uh tax uh decoupling legislation and uh the chief financial officer said you could not access that money.

Yes, yes, and in addition, um the mayor or you, the executive looked at the reserves which are over what our goal is, which is 60 days, and the chief financial officer would not let you access that money either.

That's correct.

And the two you think are roughly 350, 400 million dollars.

Correct.

Um, and that um the concern that you've heard from the chief financial officer is liquidity or cash flow issues.

Yes, um, and those cash flow issues are not this year, but are actually a couple years from now.

Correct.

Um, and that uh you've been looking for, I'll just say, because we've been looking as well for a more detailed explanation of what the cash flow uh problems are in a couple years from now.

Yes, given the implications of having to take off the table that much money, it's incumbent upon all of us, and quite frankly, folks in this room are here to advocate for funding, that there's evidence and proof that that much funding is needed to be held aside from being put in the budget, given the impact implications of that decision.

And that would uh, that's part of the reason, maybe the main reason for one of the subtitles in the Budget Support Act, which deals with payments to the retirement board, which are what a hundred and forty million dollars a year right now, that uh they would be made on I think it's a quarterly basis instead of a lump sum at the beginning of the year for cash flow purposes.

I think it's bi weekly.

Uh bi weekly uh with the payroll, basically, correct.

Uh to help with cash flow to address that concern, a concern which has not been fully explained in detail.

And I don't mean explained by you, I mean explained by the chief financial officer.

We have we have not yet seen sort of the when I say what's the you know, demonstrate and transparency demonstrate with evidence, it's really seeing being able to see monthly or weekly cash flow and understanding what are the transactions that make it change so much, because we can always, if we knew that, then we can have either rules, regulations, laws that smooth that out.

Um, and smoothing it out fundamentally changes how much cash is needed to be able to pay bills on the months and we have big draws on it.

You also mentioned short-term borrowing, which reminded me, the government used to borrow on a short-term basis.

It was called tax revenue anticipation notes, correct?

Yes, and we haven't done that in years, uh not since before the pandemic.

Not since before the pandemic, and as I recall, the um high point in that borrowing was like three or four hundred million dollars.

It could have been.

I'm not familiar with the exact high points.

Yeah, I just it was whispered to me the high point was eight hundred and twenty million dollars.

Now, this is short-term borrowing, and we pay interest on it.

Uh it's a low interest rate, but we pay interest on it, but it's meant entirely to deal with cash flow.

The concept behind the tax revenue anticipation notes is that I think at its extreme, the chief financial officer would uh borrow, take out these trans in October and pay them back the following September when the cash comes in.

You may have better recollection of the details than me, but if that's your recollection, I see questions.

Um, I suspect you did your research before asking me the question, so um you have um in the budget support act a um subtitle dealing with telework.

Um I think it's in Title One.

What are the issues that you're seeing that that subtitles intended to address?

The the primary issues.

The primary issue is the city is paying tens of millions of dollars for office space that it is not using on a regular basis.

Uh and that's just a waste of money.

Uh it is not using it because we leave space on the assumption of people being at work four to five days a week, when in reality, while the mayor's agencies must come in with that frequency independent agencies that are not subject to the mayor's mayor's order, um, will come in one or two days a week, sometimes one or two days per pay period.

Uh, if you walk into some of these offices as I have, um, you'll see half the office, three quarters of the office empty, and we are paying taxpayers our residents, our business are paying for all that office space.

So one intent is it is indefensible to any reasonable person to be paying for space that we're not using.

And we know we're not using it by our own policies.

But second is to also get people into work.

Um it is both after the COVID, um, most places have returned to work virtually full-time, which I say four days a week.

Um, and um, and that is true of governments, it's true of private businesses.

Uh, and it's also true of just the basic collaboration and ability to serve residents.

I do think, in my opinion, and then the mayor's has publicly talked about this that there's a service consequence to not being able to collaborate in real time.

And so the goal is to get people back into work, gives business businesses on the first floors of this building some, you know, uh extra funds because folks sometimes go to lunch.

But primarily is that we have office space that's not getting used by the policies of independent agencies, and we are spending millions of dollars on it, and and there's no justification for it.

So is the desired outcome that the agency will just give up that rented space, or is it desired outcome that we're gonna have employees in their offices and therefore in our commercial districts uh for five days a week.

Uh, it is the desired outcome to have people, our employees in the office four to five days a week.

Um, but I will say that as part of this, it's it's what I say to some of the independent agencies that have very flexible work schedules is that you can have both.

You either have to have people come in and keep your office space, or you have to give up the office space for the not coming in.

And right now, agencies are insisting on both.

They want the office space and they want the ability to not come in.

Uh and no one can look a taxpayer in the eye and actually justify that.

But the primary outcome given those two choices is to get people back in the office.

You also have a uh subtitle, dealing with the paid family leave program for district government workers.

What's the issue you're seeing there?

So part of the challenge that we have had and we have seen over a number of years is that we have um folks that are taking uh advantage of this leave, right?

They're utilizing this leave, and as a result, we are having to spend uh a significant amount of funding in overtime costs to backfill those positions.

So as you know, we have many agencies that have what we call mandatory staffing levels, and those agencies have to have those seats filled, regardless of how many people you know call out sick or are on leave.

What we have seen is that there are a lot of people who are utilizing this DC paid family leave program, which is very well intended, but we need to put some guardrails around it to make sure that we have not only more staff available on a regular basis to fill positions, but that we are we are aligning it more with how the other paid leave programs work by putting in some modifications to when you can first take leave, what kind of commitments you have to take upon returning from leave, uh as well as what uh qualifying conditions uh result for leave.

Is the goal here that we want to minimize the benefits, or is the goal that we want?

To um how do I want to put this ensure that the employees who are taking this leave are actually taking it for the purposes intended.

So I think it's such as their own medical needs or because I think that's one of them more family.

So the intent here is to strike a better balance between certainly the need for employees to have access to leave for for the variety of um IDA issues that could require it, but also the need to make sure that we have enough staff to carry out the functions at agencies.

So we're really trying to strike a better balance here that still allows access to leave for employees, but also then still provides the ability for the agency to provide its essential services every day that it needs to provide, and us not having to rely so much on overtime in order to fill those um those positions.

Why does this require legislation as opposed to regulation?

Um the the uh legislative, the program is currently authorized in statute, and so we need to make some adjustments in the legislation in order to be able to actually carry out um these adjustments to the program.

And based on those changes, you could do appropriate rulemaking.

That's right.

Give me a second.

Um I don't have any other questions for y'all.

Now that doesn't mean that I don't have questions about parts of the budget, but the committee of the whole has had, I think this is our ninth hearing, so um I think uh getting into some of the details what we've already done and the other committees have done with their hearings that they've had.

I do want to thank you for um your work on the budget, but also thank you for your collaborative efforts.

So we've been working together for the last uh if this is May, the last four months, um, identifying where you've had some challenges uh and um how the legislative branch could be helpful.

So I want to thank you for that.

Thank you and good luck today.

Thank you.

So now what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna turn to um the witness list.

It's my practice.

If people are in person, which I love, uh, when I fill up the table, I sort of stop.

There'll be some people who may be participating virtually, and as I call witnesses, you may not know notice this, but there's a little birdie in my ear who says online or not online.

Um so that's how we'll get through this.

Um, Derek McNeely, DC Community Wealth Builders.

James Mompoint, Sam Bonar, also with community wealth builders, Caroline Meyer with Community Wealth Builders.

Sirium Sridharan.

Sridharan.

Vinny W.

So we get the names off of how people register, and this person registered as Vinny W.

You are.

Is he online?

Yeah, Sam Bonner is online.

I mean Sam Bonner's here online.

Oh, it's in a meeting.

Wait a minute.

Don't go anywhere.

Sir, don't go anywhere.

I just said he's in a meeting, so it's asking how we can do it.

All right, and your name again is Abby.

A B ICJ.

ABI.

S H A K.

UR.

And sir, you are.

And you are.

Angel or Angel Neil.

Liz de Barros, who's president and CEO of DC Building Industry Association.

Mara Brofi, who's president and CEO of the NOMA bid.

You are.

All right, we will stop there.

Derek McNeely is not here.

James Mompoint is online.

He's not accepting.

So Mr.

Shakur.

You're up.

Let me also mention there are clocks everywhere.

I think there's a clock underneath me.

I'm looking at a clock.

You don't see that.

There's a clock on the table.

Three minutes, and I'm gonna try to be strict about it, even though I hate cutting people off because there are just a lot of witnesses.

So you're up.

And good morning.

Lovely.

Thank you so much.

Hello, Chairman Mendelssohn.

Again, my name is Abby Shakur.

I'm a resident of Ward One, a D.C.

native, a longtime community organizer, and the coalition manager for DC community wealth builders.

I'm here to ask you to help our group create more revenue for the city, to keep businesses open, and to shift the economic autonomy into the hands of everyday DC residents.

Yes, I said it.

We can do all of those things at once.

Um our coalition is building shared ownership, locally rooted wealth, and an economic strategy that supports local infrastructure instead of corporate incentives.

Our proposals are to dart to start a DC public bank and or a DC land bank to use the city's existing resources to finance community needs at rates that community-driven institutions can afford.

And we're asking to create a tax incentive and technical assistance grant to facilitate cooperative conversions, or when business owners sell to their workers, allow them to become owners themselves.

Now, we're uh not pointing any fingers, but I think there is a strong feeling in DC of policymakers selling us out.

This has been the case for quite a while.

We see new housing crop up every day that everyday residents can't afford.

We see big businesses coming in, taking up space but paying workers barely or less than livable wages.

Uh and we see small and local businesses uh leaving and closing down.

Um DC Community Wealth Builders understands that the city uh needs to develop, it needs to sustain more growth and increase revenue to meet those growing needs.

The weekend the DC can meet those needs by doing more to empower residents as collaborative wealth builders, empowering our base of consumers as owners, not just as workers.

Again, as I mentioned, the D.C.

Public Bank and Land Bank can do this especially by putting the city's existing resources uh to work, investing in things that we know our communities need.

Um we could, for example, use this, uh, use the existing funds and our cash reserves to uh finance projects like affordable housing co-ops, like third spaces east of the river, like grocery stores, but particularly with an eye for those being owned by the people who live there, or at least driven by the people who are actually in those communities and use them every day.

Similarly, would facilitate the creation of businesses that are owned by those same workers.

They have the power to, you know, decide what happens in their day-to-day.

They're not just at the whim of their bosses, and they are building wealth all the while.

This is part of a broader vision, a DC where the worker or the residents are empowered, they have the economic uh control over their own lives, and the city's uh building revenue with a stronger consumer base and investments that they can yield the return from.

Uh thank you.

Thank you, and thank you for staying within your time.

Caroline Meyer.

Hi, thank you for the opportunity to testify.

Um, I'm an architectural designer based in Alexandria, Virginia, and a volunteer with DC community wealth builders as well.

Um I'm asking as an ally and neighbor for the city to put DC's wealth towards its own communities by establishing a DC land bank in conjunction with a public bank.

I believe decisions about how land is used in DC should be determined by the people who live in DC, not the highest bidder.

Speaking as a former DC resident who sees land access as a widespread and complex issue.

There is a clear need for improved communities, say when it comes to built works.

Putting city-owned wealth and land assets into an entity that is scalable and accountable to resident input is necessary for safeguarding the future success of DC's residents.

In my capacity as a DC-based designer, I followed a variety of projects through permitting and construction administration and noted a stark difference in the way high-profile projects are overseen and facilitated by the city.

We need improved transparency and agency for district residents when it comes to built works and land use.

Rapid expansion of high density developments have failed to appraise and accommodate the needs of DC's residents, have contributed to mass displacement over the last two decades, and of siphon public space.

Large privately funded land purchases displace families and communities in order to make way for commercial and not quite affordable multifamily projects, leaving vacancies that remain undeveloped for years as investors wait for the most profitable time to build.

This destroys the culture, vibrancy, and safety of surrounding neighborhoods by manufacturing blight.

Let me see.

The system that allows well allows well-financed projects to pay for expedited permits comes at cost, not only with regard to housing stability for those who are most vulnerable, but also in the form of building code violations that cause real harm to the health of DC's residents.

Tight timelines create pressure to fast track larger works, which leads to a lack of oversight on the quality of construction.

In contrast to this process and in conjunction with the public bank would create an avenue to help offset the scope creep of projects that abuse the system by putting control into the hands of the people, granting DC's residents the ability to have improved oversight on the types of projects that are implemented, oversight on the standards that apply to these projects, and oversight on the management of completed projects.

I believe in DC community wealth builders' mission to provide a greater degree of agency to the city's residents who must be empowered to have authority over land use and standards for built works, empowering DC's residents to have the saying how their communities are designed as necessary in order to protect their collective right to life, safety, welfare, and dignity.

Thank you.

Thank you, Ms.

Meyer.

Shri Ram Shridharan, I believe is not here.

Vinny W.

Hello, my name is Vinny.

Um I am a World One resident.

I consider New Street, but also Columbia Heights and Adams Morgan in my communities.

I'm also a volunteer with DC Community Wealth Builders.

We're trying to build shared ownership, locally rooted wealth, and an economic strategy that supports our local infrastructure instead of corporate incentives.

Just like Caroline, I'm here to ask you to put DC's wealth to work through a public and/or a land bank.

A public bank would put DC's cash reserves into a public entity that can then make loans to serve our city's needs at an interest rate that uh community groups can actually afford.

There's hundreds of millions in these cash reserves.

Um a land bank could do the same with the city's vacant properties and or tax liens in which there are billions.

Um the money's already out there, uh, so this would be revenue neutral, um, which I'm sure is uh is a big thing that you might be curious about.

Um, but I'm making this ask because uh I think it will start to solve issues in our community that really just aren't being solved by our present system of giving incentives to rich developers to build things in DC.

Um, just from my personal experience, um, just looking at like the housing prices, for example.

Um, I currently live with 10 roommates.

Um, I still pay a thousand um in rent.

I that's more than I ever live with in college.

Um I see new apartment buildings going up all the time.

They charge 2200 for one bedroom and then they end up mostly empty.

Um is that really like a good use of our land?

Uh food prices are also going up.

I work with a lot of mutual aid groups, and every week there's more and more need.

Meanwhile, expensive restaurants and grocery stores pop up that people can barely afford to shop at.

Um also energy prices, electricity bills are going up across the district.

Um, PEPCO's profits have gone up 25%, uh, meanwhile, 25% of the district's residents are in debt.

Um, so once again, like these things are unaffordable, these things that we need.

Um, but how would a land bank or a public bank address these?

I think what it does is it puts the control back in the hands of the actual community, um, putting and puts wealth back into the community.

So, for example, I could fund things like permanently affordable housing, which would house people who need it, but also would put downward pressure on other rents.

Um we could actually fund affordable grocery stores or support our groups that are already doing this type of work.

Um, what if we had grocery stores, for example, that could like allocate food to community members who couldn't afford it instead of developers extracting this profit or energy?

What if we were to invest directly in solar and then people wouldn't have to pay all this money to Pepco?

Um so it and nowadays solar basically pays for itself in savings.

Um these are all like pretty small examples.

There's so many things you could do with this funding, um, but they're all better than the current system we have where we basically give developers incentives and then they skim off the top by charging higher prices.

Um, if we use these people's banks to finance community institutions, especially cooperatively owned businesses and housing, wealth can stay in the community, be controlled by the community, and get us away from this exploitative profit incentive.

So, because of that, I'm asking you to put DC's wealth to work through a public andor land bank.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Uh Angel Neil.

I'm gonna read off my phone if that's all right.

Hello, Chairman Mendelson.

My name is Angel.

I'm a DC resident in Ward 1 in the Columbia Heights neighborhood, though I also consider U Street as part of my community and a volunteer with CWB.

I'm here today to ask you to keep DC's wealth local and stop businesses from closing by creating a technical assistance grant and a tax incentive for cooperative conversions.

Every time a small or local business owner wants to retire, they think the only feasible way to do so is to close.

This leaves every employee who poured into the business who sustained it as it sustained them, jobless, and it rips away another part of DC's local economy that keeps wealth and resources flowing through our communities.

Working in food service, I've seen one place I've worked previously close down and another get sold.

I've seen people's lives turn upside down once the owner felt like it was time to move on, and I've been one of those people.

Now more than ever is the time to make DC's wealth stay in and work for DC, to make businesses staying in our communities and being run by our communities not just a feasible option, but the most viable one, and to bring it from the exception to the norm.

Cooperative conversions allow that reality to exist, which is why I'm here to ask you to create a technical assistance grant and tax incentive for business owners to sell their workers and to create co-worker cooperatives.

The grant could do the grant could go to a technical assistance provider to increase their capacity to work with future cooperative owners, while the tax incentive can offer some relief to business owners who choose the sustainable option.

Our coalition would love to talk more with you about the specifics.

I think you called his name earlier.

Yeah, but he has is he in person?

All right, uh, I'll call you in a minute.

Umgel Neal.

Are you with community wealth builders as well?

Uh yes, I'm affiliated and I'm a volunteer.

Okay.

Um I have any questions.

Okay.

Uh, I don't have any questions for any of you, but you're all thank you for your testimony.

Uh, you're excused.

Uh let me go back to uh James Mompoint.

Why don't you come forward?

Uh let me just say uh for those who are here and those who are not yet here, so I'm not sure this does any good.

Uh I'm not going to go back too far in the witness list if people come in late, but I'm still on page one, and you're on page one, so that's why I'm calling you.

Don't start yet.

Um Liz Taveros, and Maura Brofi.

Um, Laura Haygood with the D.C.

History Center.

Barricette Salasi, managing partner and co-founder with Rift Valley Capital.

Uh head of multifamily land acquisition and development at EYA.

Randy Marcus, Director of State Relations for DC, Virginia, West Virginia, CSXT.

Stefan Rodiger, managing partner and co-founder of Rift Valley Capital.

Sir, you are uh Randy Marcus, he's actually perfect.

Uh I think I called Stefan Rodiger, also with Rift.

Uh Emily Alexander, developing manager, development manager, Jair Lynch Real Estate Partners.

None of these people are in line.

Uh Lily Goldstein, uh Vice President of Portfolio Management at LEO Impact Capital.

Ruth Wong, Senior Vice President of Development at Jair Lynch Real Estate Partners.

Nancy Drain, executive director of DC Access to Justice Commission.

Eric Mulata, Vice President of Development and Dalian Development, or Dalian Development.

Yesham Sayin, executive director of the DC Policy Center.

Leona Aguaritas, who's executive director of the Golden Triangle Bid.

Don Dalton, Executive Director of DC Coalition Against Domestic Violence.

Michaela Deming, Policy Director, DC Coalition Against Domestic Violence.

I'm told she's online.

Teresa Poor, PUHR PERR, Policy and Systems Engagement Manager, DC Coalition Against Domestic Violence.

Scott Goldstein, Executive Director in Power Ed.

He's online.

Margaret Dwyer, Ward 3 Housing Justice.

The next two people, if they're virtual, if they're in person, then I will stop because we only have four seats.

Kuby Naj.

I apologize.

President CEO of District Alliance for Safe Housing.

Tyrell Holcomb, Vice President of External Affairs of Jubilee Housing.

I'm going to stop there.

Mr.

Monpoint, you're up.

Again, clocks, pay attention to the time.

Thank you.

Good morning, Council members.

I appreciate the opportunity to come here.

I know the work you guys do is very uh is difficult.

Uh and it's uh it's hard work on behalf of the people of uh Washington, DC.

Uh and also I'm a volunteer with the community uh walk bait uh builders, and so uh I'm a bit nervous.

Uh I'm not I'm not familiar with the we won't bite.

Thank you.

Uh I appreciate the opportunity.

Uh again, uh across the city, uh, we see vacant and underutilized properties um sitting idle while families struggles to find affordable housing and community uh and communities fight to stay intact.

A land bank uh gives us the uh the powerful tool to uh change uh that reality that allows the district to acquire matter, manage, and repurpose these properties in a way that benefits the public, not uh uh speculation.

Uh a properly um property structured land bank uh can help uh stabilize neighborhoods, reduce uh right, and create pathways to home ownership.

It can uh prioritize uh deeply affordable housing, support local developers, ensure that longtime residents are not uh pushed out of communities they help built.

Uh this is also about equity uh for long, uh, disinvestment and displacement uh have uh display disproportionately impacted uh black and brown communities in Washington, DC, a land bank and uh if implemented with transparency and community oversight, can bring uh to correct those imbalances by putting a land bank into the hands of the people.

I urge this council to uh ensure that this land bank includes clear affordable uh uh requirements, community inputs, and decision making, strong anti-dispacement protections, uh, opportunities for land and minority development.

Uh, we have an opportunity to turn vacant spaces into thriving homes and community assets.

Uh that's not missed this moment.

Thank you for your time and I appreciate it.

Thank you.

Uh thank you.

Um, and Laura Haygood, I believe, is not here.

Barrett Salasi, I believe is not here.

Robin Peterell, I believe is not here.

Randy Marcus.

Good morning, Chairman Mendelson and staff.

My name is Randy Marcus.

I am the director of state relations for DC, Virginia, and West Virginia for CSX transportation.

Uh, thank you for the opportunity to provide testimony today on the FY27 uh budget support act.

Uh, I'm testifying today to urge the council to not include funding for the implementation of the railroad carrier fees in the FY2027 budget for the Department of Energy and Environment.

Uh, the railroad carrier fees conflict with federal law, raise constitutional concerns that are already being challenged in federal court.

Uh safety of CSX's highest priority, including the protection of communities where we operate and safeguarding our employees.

CSX works closely with DS with DC's first responders and agencies to plan, train, and coordinate for potential incidents and to respond quickly if an accident does occur.

Our safety record in the district is strong with only three FRA reportable accidents at DC over the past 15 years.

Uh CSX strongly opposes the railroad carrier fees or border fees, as we call them.

These fees charge 60 cents per rail car entering, exiting, and transiting through the district without stopping and 60 cents on each commuter rail car entering the district.

Uh DOE claims these fees will support the operations of the railroad safety and emergency response program.

Uh uh despite the division already being funded for multiple fiscal years without these uh additional funds.

Uh recently, the Association of American Railroads brought suit challenging the borders fees.

The complaint states the fees unlawfully regulate interstate rail transportation and impose discriminary burden on rail carriers.

Um the Interstate Commerce Commission Termination Act grants federal government exclusive jurisdiction over rail transportation, preemptive state and local laws regulating rail transportation, and these fees fall squarely within that type of regulation.

The act prohibits border fees also conflict with the Hazardous Materials Transportation Act.

The act allows states to levy fees related to hazardous materials if the fees are fair, meaning applied evenly across competing modes of transportation.

DOE border fears apply only to railroads and not to trucks or other freight transportation modes, which means they're not fair and in as required by uh federal preemption, um, federal law.

Uh finally, the border fees violate the commerce clause of the U.S.

Constitution imposing a charge with a train enters or exits the district, functions as a tax on interstate commerce.

Um, and uh the courts have consistently held such measures to be uh unconstitutional because they burden interstate activity while leaving interstate activity untouched.

Um, uh border fees are fundamentally flawed policy if DOE's goal is to fund safety emergency response.

Costs should be shared across all relevant sectors, targeting one industry to force competition, undermines the efficiency of their broader transportation network.

Uh, quarterly, I urge the council to block funding for the implementation of these fees.

Uh, encourage the district to pursue alternatives that are equitable legally seems to consistent with federal requirements.

Uh, thank you, Mr.

Marcus.

Nancy Drain.

Good morning, and thanks to each of you for the opportunity to testify today.

Twenty years ago, this council created the access to justice initiative because it recognized that giving people access to legal help makes our community stronger and more resilient.

The mayor's proposal to fund the initiative at 4 million undermines this investment and betrays the government's sacred commitment to fairness and justice for the most vulnerable.

We urge the council to restore initiative funding to 31.7 million, consistent with funding received since FY 23.

Our testimony includes a summary of last week's budget oversight hearing and other materials that demonstrate the program's value and its irreplaceable role in our civil justice system.

The immediate consequences of this funding reduction will be stark.

With no civil right to counsel, 38,000 DC residents could lose access to legal help in a system one witness last week described as being trapped in a maze that I couldn't navigate alone.

Grantee organizations could be forced to remove 240 DC client-facing workers, and entire organizations or established projects might be forced to shutter.

This will have a direct impact in each and every ward.

180 government agencies and community organizations will find themselves without a trusted partner, like the director of Med Star Cancer Institute, who said last week that integrating lawyers into his health care team reduced legal barriers like access to benefits, employment issues, and housing stability that quote meant patients were getting to chemotherapy on time, undergoing surgery without delay, and could stay in their homes while fighting for their lives.

But these are only the most direct consequences of the mayor's proposed reduction.

It fails to recognize the average of seven dollars saved for every $1 invested in civil legal aid, Medicaid dollars, recouped public benefits, intergenerational assets, and the many more examples listed in our testimony.

It turns its back on the idea that prevention helps people solve problems before they become bigger and more costly community crises, when we know that there are better outcomes when people have access to legal help.

As one grantee said, each case we handle is the story of a human being in crisis who just wants to be safe.

It turns vulnerability into stability.

Failing to invest in civil legal aid also squanders opportunities to unleash other private resources, like the 2,000 pro bono cases placed last year valued at 74 million.

And this comes at a time when community needs are increasing.

The initiative served 9,000 more people in 2025 than the year before.

Legal Aid DC already reports a 36% increase this year, the highest intake level in their history.

And just today, another organization told me their intakes are three times as great.

For these reasons and many more, we urge the council to prioritize access to justice and restore funding to FY26 levels.

Thank you.

Thank you, Ms.

Train.

Um, Michaela Deming.

Okay.

Ms.

Deming, please proceed.

Good morning, Chair Mendelson.

My colleague will talk about our funding requests.

Um I am the policy director for the DC Coalition Against Domestic Violence.

In addition to the request that you will hear in a moment to restore funding for domestic violence to victim services and the broader social safety net.

We ask for council support for a number of BSA subtitles to ensure that all district residents, especially survivors of domestic violence, can access services.

Protecting survivor specific information is especially critical right now.

We ask council to address survivor privacy and confidentiality concerns and OVSJG grant agreements through a VSA subtitle to confirm existing federal and VC code protections for all survivors accessing services and resolve the serious threats to confidentiality.

MPD is also sharing information of individuals, not an MPD custody with federal immigration enforcement agencies.

That includes victims and witnesses of crime.

This leaves domestic violence survivors fearful of reaching out to the police and unable to receive the full benefit of MPD's extremely well funded services.

We believe it is necessary to codify protection of victim and witness information through the BSA to ensure all DC residents can benefit from MPD's budget and services, especially when domestic violence and domestic violence homicides in DC are rising.

The TANF program enables many domestic violence survivors to support themselves and their families, especially when they're establishing a safe living arrangement.

We ask council to approve subtitle that ensures domestic violence survivors participating in the power program to be fully eligible for the range of TANF benefits uninterrupted in addition to the specific domestic violence survivor support services available under power.

Domestic violence services are funded by multiple local and federal sources with requirements that follow best practices in the field but might conflict with HSRA.

To avoid any potential disruption to DHS funded services, we ask the council to support a subtitle to address and protect the specific program requirements and benefits of domestic violence service providers funded by DHS for FY27 and Into the Future.

We also remain concerned that DHS intends to remove EHV designated vouchers for domestic violence survivors from those specific services.

These are the only permanent supportive housing vouchers in the domestic violence housing continuum and must be preserved.

We also ask yet again this year for OBSJG to be required to comply with the Transparency Act of 2022.

It is of heightened importance now as we collectively face the threat of federal funding restrictions that would impact service providers to support the most marginalized and under-resourced communities in DC.

In conclusion, we ask Council to restore the cuts made to domestic violence and victim services, restore the cuts made to the social safety net.

We support Fair Budget Coalition's platform, including progressive revenue raisers necessary to fund critical services.

We stand with a Fair Budget Coalition and the LGBTQ Plus budget coalition.

And ask Council to take further action to preserve and improve services for survivors by adopting those VSA subtitles.

Thank you, Chair Mendelson, for the opportunity to testify, and I'm happy to answer any questions.

Thank you, Ms.

Deming.

Don Dalton, I believe, has come.

Please proceed.

Thank you, Chairman Mendelson and staff for the opportunity to testify.

My name is Dawn Dalton and I am the executive director for the DC Coalition Against Domestic Violence, the federally recognized statewide coalition of domestic violence service providers here in the district.

Our member programs serve upwards of a thousand victims of domestic violence on a given day across all eight wards of DC.

DV homicide rates are rising in the district, and the demand for domestic violence survivor services is increasing.

DC must invest in safety and support for survivors of domestic violence.

The mayor's proposed cuts to the very programs and services domestic violence survivors rely on are appalling.

Council must restore $5.6 million to OVSJG victim services and $685,000 to DHS domestic violence services and provide the additional $4.4 million in funding necessary to maintain current service levels and meet the needs of targeted communities, including people of color, LGBTQ individuals, immigrants, and their families.

The proposed cuts across the social support network will also directly impact survivor safety.

These cuts to child care, paid leave, SNAP, and TANF benefits, legal representation, and emergency housing assistance impact survivors.

Removing the very resources necessary for domestic violence survivors in their families to become independent from their abusers, puts lives at risk and undermines broader community safety.

We support the TANF is a lifeline platform.

Council must preserve and strengthen funding for domestic violence services and a broader social safety net to prioritize the lives, safety, and stability of survivors and their families.

Supporting survivors and communities is community safety.

The MPD budget includes a 15% increase, including funding for a fully staffed force and the overtime that is largely needed because they are not fully staffed.

Victims are being asked to sacrifice life-saving services when not all victims feel safe accessing police services in an emergency.

We ask the council to protect DC's vital services for domestic violence survivors, restore $5.6 million to OBS JG victim services, and $685,000 to DHS domestic violence services.

Preserve the social safety net.

We join the victim assistance network request to fund victim services at 59.6 million and protect the full OBS JG portfolio, including the Access to Justice Initiative and re-entry grants.

We also stand in solidarity with the Fair Budget Coalition and the DC LGBTQ Plus budget coalition platforms and revenue erasers for more socially just and equitable DC.

Thank you, Chairman Mendelssohn for the opportunity to testify, and I'm happy to answer any questions that you may have.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Scott Goldstein.

Good morning.

The last year has presented the district with enormous challenges.

The federal government has attacked our sovereignty and our budget.

We are united in pushing back on those threats.

And still the test for local leaders is to ensure our policies and budgets protect DC residents from that harm and not exacerbated, exacerbate it.

And that test is not easy for you to pass in a year in which the mayor has sent you a budget that would cause deep harm to the community.

While Empowered is focused on investments in our education system, we know that every other aspect of this budget has deep effects on education outcomes.

We stand with the Fair Budget Coalition and their set of recommendations that will help DC protect the people in DC.

If students don't have food, they can't focus on learning.

So we must restore funding to SNAP and the 186,000 cut from the alternative school breakfast program.

If students are suffering from trauma and mental health crises, they cannot be focused on academics.

So we need to reverse the incredibly backwards plan from DBH to bring school-based behavioral health and champs in-house, which would deprive thousands of young people of clinicians in the coming year.

In a year where everyone in the council says we have to just try to preserve what we have, somehow MPD is getting an additional $89 million.

Students won't be present in school if they don't have stable housing and live in poverty.

So we need you to redirect that MPD money into ERAP, restore funding for homelessness for homeless youth, and restore early childhood pay equity and child care subsidies.

Young people deserve real safety.

So we need the council to stop focusing on strategies that are proven by all independent research to increase harm like curfews and instead invest deeply in this budget and proactive supports like extended night and weekend hours at DPR out of school time programs, funding Councilmember Robert White's mentorship bill, and creating a post-secondary success hub consolidating opportunities for students.

In the education sector this year, we must lean into the investments that work.

The early years are critical for young people, and despite the mayor's sinister insinuation otherwise, early childhood educators are real teachers.

The majority of them are black and brown women.

We must fund the pay equity fund and child care subsidies.

Second, we must fund community schools, a proven model that provides wraparound supports like medical, dental, and vision care, food pantries, clothing and laundry, baby supplies, transportation support, and so much more.

We know from DC's implementation and others across the countries that community schools models effectively reduce chronic absenteeism and increase student achievement.

We must fund both the Aussie community schools grants and refund the connected schools model in DCPS.

In difficult times when young people need adult mentors in their lives even more, we must ensure educators stay in their schools.

So we must fund $300,000 for Aussie's educator wellness grants to continue, an educator retention fund to help schools, especially especially small charter LEAs with high turnover to retain their grade educators, permanent substitutes for our schools with the higher teacher absences, fund differentiated teacher professional development, and our immigrant educator pathways to residency.

And if we want students to come to school, we need to make that experience one that feels relevant and exciting for them, which is why one of the most effective government funding programs doing this, the Bridge the Gap Fund, needs $700,000 in this year's budget.

Finally, in a year where the needs are so high and cut so deep, you will likely not be able to address all of this without adding revenue.

I ask you to put ideological blinders to be able to do that.

Cut you off.

Sorry.

Thank you.

I know from your testimony you know about clocks.

Good morning, Margaret Dwyer here for Ward 3 Housing Justice and Affiliate of Empower DC.

So it's possible to love WAMATA for transit, and uh, and in fact, I do.

They got me here this morning.

I'm grateful.

Uh, and to object to its behavior as a landowner and a developer.

We are here today to object to the WAMATA Joint Development Properties Tax Abatement Act of 2026, embedded in the BSA on page 30.

That provides a 20-year tax abatement for approved joint development projects that WAMATA undertakes that are near Metro stops, two of which are um prominent sites in Ward 3 in Friendship Heights.

We object to it on so many levels.

First, it's not a deal, it's a gift, and it's like a triple dip gift because we already pay 38% of WAMATA's budget.

We already pay um our fares.

The two sites in Ward 3 that they're that they will be redeveloping are um have already are about to be upzoned, and the upzoning will allow them to include three million square feet of increased density.

The buildings can be 150 feet tall from these small buildings that are on the sites now.

That would be tax-free under this abandonment.

All that new wealth would be tax-free.

I lost my train of thought.

It changes the language.

It says that the affordable housing has to be up to an average, it says it has to be an average of 60 or 80 percent.

That's not the language of IZ regulations.

They say up to.

If it's going to be an average, it's going to open the door to people with higher incomes being counted in for those apartments.

Um, so finally in Ward 3, WAMATA hasn't shown a lot of interest in meeting with us.

It's met with us once, one community meeting in three years since it's owned the new property at Lord and Taylor.

It's allowing it to deteriorate.

We don't know anything that's going on.

And we really feel strongly that WAMATA should pay its taxes like everyone else, or make an extraordinary contribution above and beyond I Z at these properties that it's going to be redeveloping and communicate with the property and with the with the community.

And we hope that the council will reject this this gift to WMATA.

Thank you, Ms.

Dwyer.

Um, to Barros.

Good morning.

Good morning, Chairman Mendelssohn, uh, members of the committee of staff and council member Fruman.

Uh my name is Liz de Barros.

I'm the CEO of the District of Columbia Building and Building Industry Association.

I have submitted uh full detailed testimony for the record.

Um I'm here to support the budget that's before us.

The budget is a one that's focused on growth uh that can expand the tax base and uh increase uh and ensure funding for the social services that the city needs.

First, I want to mention the uh downtown conversions hid and office to anything.

There are three provisions in that that we support the the new bedroom definition, it's a game changer for converting oddly shaped offices and uh office shelves into housing.

The CBE flexibility, we support the changes in CBED and urge us to let us meet the 35% goal through construction operations or both.

Um first source.

We removing the requirement for the conversions is the right move at this time.

Um tax abatements, uh we support the workforce, the WAMATA and the federal land.

Um the these abatements are essential to unlock the stalled uh sites like WAMATA and the former federal land uh that face massive infrastructure and remediation costs.

Um we support the workforce housing abatement, the eight 80 to 100% MFI, the missing middle, uh, that is currently underserved, uh, and also on vacant to vibrant.

We urge the committee to fund Section 302B.

We need a permanent reclassification framework so buildings under conversion are taxed fairly during construction.

Uh funding for this provides a predictable definition of uh building permit aligning uh with the CFO uh Department of Buildings and uh developers.

Um appreciate the opportunity to testify.

Uh thank you, Mr.

Veros.

Um let me see.

I've gotten everybody at the table.

There's some folks who've come in, so they'll be called at the next um group.

Um I'm trying to avoid asking questions just because there's so many witnesses, but I have two or questions for two people.

Mr.

Marcus, I shouldn't put it this way.

I have no idea what you're talking about.

So I came to our budget director.

Um this is uh um Ms.

Budoff is the budget director for the council, and she's poked around.

We don't have an idea what you're talking about.

Yes, this was so last um, is this so last November there was there was a uh final uh final rule that was issued by the Department of Energy Environment that uh created these rules.

This goes back to uh an act in the like this 2017, 2018 range um that uh allowed DC to get into a federal partnership with the FRA to be able to do some state inspections and um uh in the uh activities there.

Uh there was a there was a notice of proposed rulemaking in 2022, um, that uh uh we submitted significant comments to, and then it kind of went quiet until this popped up back in November, um, as a as a final rule.

So we've we have met with Councilman Allen about it.

Um, you know, we we have um so that's that's that's the gist of it.

But so if I remember if I heard correctly, it was 60 cents per train car.

Yes, so and you have your trains have what a hundred cars?

More than that sometimes, yeah.

That it would so long.

Um and uh so you're saying that the 60 cent fee is in the rulemaking by the Department of Energy.

Yes, sir.

Yes, sir, Mr.

Chairman.

Okay, I have a copy that I can give to the staff if you like.

Yes, you should uh give us uh some background information.

Yeah, yeah, 100%.

Um we understand a little better.

Give me a second.

Um, all right, and then I had a question for Ms.

Drain.

Um, I think you I heard you say there are 180 organizations that get access to justice funding.

So no, so there are 30 organizations that receive access to justice funding, but then there are another 180 that have some type of partnership with those 30 organizations.

So those are district agencies, other community nonprofits.

So there might be a lawyer co-located there.

They could do a training for staff or clients.

There's a range of different types of partnerships.

And the 30.

Yes.

Um, do you mind sharing who some of them are?

Uh Bread for the City, Legal Aid DC, legal counsel for the elderly, uh, first shift justice, neighborhood legal services program.

Uh, a long list of organizations.

They use the money to pay for attorneys who are not getting um Wall Street wages.

Uh they are not.

And uh pay for attorneys who provide legal representation.

Correct.

To indigent and low-income clients.

Correct, correct.

These are all nonprofit organizations.

Um, you know, the your average first year associate at a law firm makes 225,000.

Uh lawyers at legal services organizations, 60, 70,000 with considerable legal uh debt, um, that they are law school debt, I should say that they are carrying.

Um, they offer their services for free to low-income district residents who otherwise could not afford the average rate, I think, for a lawyer in DC is $400 an hour.

There's no way these people could afford to hire a lawyer without paying for it.

And so if I'm a low-income tenant, and uh I need um I'm I'm being faced with eviction, I could go to Breadford the City, and uh they would provide legal services for me and landlord tenant court.

Correct.

And uh what are my chances of success if you know if I don't have an attorney in landlord tenant court?

Much lower.

So studies have shown, for example, that um tenants often have a defense to an eviction case.

Let's say there are housing conditions in their home.

Um studies have shown that they are six times more likely to raise a defense like that if they have a lawyer.

Um they are if if they don't have a lawyer, they're often intimidated, they don't know to raise it, they may not even know the right moment to raise it in a hearing.

Um legal help makes a huge difference in the domestic violence context, if I may, um domestic violence survivors are two and a half times more likely to receive a protective order if they have legal counsel.

There's it's very clear that access to a lawyer is a game changer in terms of outcomes for individuals.

What about with um government uh I'm gonna say subsidy programs?

I'm talking about like SSI or TANF, even SNAP.

Um, what difference does having an attorney make?

This is typically where the benefits are being denied, or the benefit level is not what the individual thinks they're entitled to.

What's the what difference does it make to have an attorney?

Considerable difference.

So what we see is um often there are errors, mistakes in benefit denials or benefit reductions.

Um but it takes filing an appeal or navigating a very complicated district agency to correct those.

And what we see time after time is that having a lawyer is a is makes the difference in being able to correct those errors.

In our testimony, I think on page five, we list um uh numerous examples of monetary returns that lawyers have um have accrued for their clients.

Um SNAP benefits, SSI, um uh avoiding foreclosure, um, all sorts of public benefits or um economic benefits that lawyers help individuals secure.

And if I heard your testimony correctly, beginning in 2023, fiscal year 2023, we were funding access to justice at about 30 million.

At 30 billion, yes.

And the year prior to that it was 22 million.

So 20 uh in FY23, 24, 25, 26, at 30 million.

31.7, correct.

And what is the mayor's proposal?

4.5, a little under 4.5.

All right.

Let me just see if there are any other questions.

Um I don't have any other questions for any of you.

Thank you all very much.

Uh I'm gonna turn this over in a minute to um Councilmember Fruman.

Okay, um, Maura Brofi.

If you would come forward, and Laura Haygood, if you would come forward, and I believe Robin Betterell, if you would come forward.

Oh, I'm gonna run into a seat problem.

Uh Emily Alexander, I believe, is here.

Anybody else besides um, who is in person?

Lily, Lily, I don't know if you'll have to tell Matt.

Give me just a second.

So we're having a changing of the guard.

Um, Councilmember Fruman's gonna take over for about an hour, and then I believe Councilmember Parker is taking over for about an hour.

Give me just a second.

I thank you very much.

I think Ms.

Brofie were you first up.

Good morning, Councilmember for men and staff.

My name is Mara Brofi.

I'm the president and CEO of the NOMA business improvement district.

It's nice to see everyone this morning.

I'm testifying today in enthusiastic support of the mayor's inclusion of $50 million across financial years, fiscal years FY 27 and 28 for the construction of the Third Street Metro entrance in NOMA.

I have been advocating for this project since 2021, and I can tell you with confidence that the need for the project has never been clearer.

It's hard to imagine now, but when the station was initially proposed, many people thought that bringing a station to NOMA was a crazy idea.

There was simply no development or activity that seemed to necessitate a transit station.

Metro defended the project with projections saying that one day 10,000 people would pass through the station on a daily basis.

These days we are seeing ridership upwards of 30,000 rides a day.

We hit that number for the first time in 2025, and we hit it 13 times in 2025.

Just so far this year, we've hit that number 11 times, and the station has become the fifth busiest in the metro system.

We're thrilled, but not surprised.

Due in large part to the station itself, NOMA has become a destination neighborhood in DC.

The problem is that Metro designed a station that was projected to serve 10,000 daily passengers.

Now that the station is seeing more than triple the amount of ridership and still growing, the fact of the matter is that this station simply cannot meet growing demand.

Thankfully, the new entrance on Third Street will solve this capacity issue.

The NOMA Bid has worked diligently with local stakeholders, DDOT, and elected leaders like yourself over the last years to address these challenges and develop plans for the pedestrian tunnel that we are exceedingly eager to see to fruition.

We have also garnered support from the surrounding communities in wards five and six, as well as the immediately affected ANCs, ANZ5D and 6C, which have previously passed resolutions endorsing the project.

We're grateful that this year the funding is included in the mayor's proposed budget and are sensitive to the challenges of this budget cycle.

However, we urge the council not only to maintain this funding, but to keep it as proposed at $5 million in FY27 and 45 million in FY28.

This project has been in development for years and it will ensure that we leverage an existing public asset to advance the district's vision zero goals, expand our transportation network, and foster continued economic growth and development in NOMA.

The longer the project is delayed, the longer it will be for the district and its residents to benefit from this project that will bring much needed uh improvements to revenue and safety.

The ability to maintain mixed-use transit-oriented neighborhoods throughout the city is crucial, and the uh third street pedestrian tunnel will contribute significantly to the district's ability to continue to grow.

Thank you for the opportunity to testify.

I'm happy happy to answer any questions that you have.

Thank you very much.

Councilmember Freuman, members of the committee, and staff.

Uh, my name is Laura Brouwer Haggood, and I am the executive director of the DC History Center.

I'm here today to request the inclusion of a $350,000 grant for our organization in the fiscal year 27 Budget Support Act through Events DC, as you have done in the past in varying amounts.

Focused on neighborhoods all across Eight Wars, the DC History Center is the only community-based nonprofit dedicated to serving as the district's memory bank by exploring, preserving, and sharing DC's history.

Through our exhibitions, public programs, and educational resources, and historic collections, we have made a tangible difference for over $155,000 Washingtonians and fiscal year 25 alone, doubling the number we reached in fiscal year 20.

Our work has also gained national attention as it was featured in a recent episode of Netflix's Queer Eye.

I hope you saw it.

We are grateful to the council for including funding through Event CC in previous years budget support acts, and this continued investment has enabled the DC History Center to build a comprehensive suite of programs such as the continued activation of the Carnegie Library, including our long-term exhibition, class action education and opportunity in the nation's capital, which we will continue to enhance over the next four years with field trips, guided tours, and public programming.

The DC History Center, which you attended, Councilmember Fruman, is the largest annual gathering of local history practitioners with over a thousand attendees each year.

And K-312 education programs aimed to help educators connect students with the history of their communities and families through initiatives like National History Day and teach the district a professional development workshop for teachers.

The DC History Center is also proud to be a lead partner in hometown DC, a DC 250 community-based project presented with Humanities DC, the DC Public Library, and the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities this summer.

It is the only community-driven semi-quincentennial initiative of its kind that will showcase the voices, stories, and lived experiences of district residents through oral history interviews, outdoor installations at eight DC public library locations, and free public events.

We have also expanded resources for district teachers implementing the State Board of Education's new DC social studies standards, including free curriculum and lesson plans on the history of home rule and statehood that have been very well received.

However, as participation in programmatic activity have expanded, so too have the costs associated with staffing, collections, event production, and delivering free public programming at a consistently high standard.

On top of that, federal grants are no longer a reliable source of support as many long-standing programs have now been significantly reduced, outright eliminated, or carry ideological priorities that make it difficult for organizations like ours to operate under.

As we recognize the semi-quincentennial, a historic milestone for which I am proud to serve as member of the DC 250 Commission, I ask the council to continue its investment.

I'll just stop there.

All right.

Thank you very much.

I think I get the right.

Ms.

Betterall.

Good morning.

My name is Robin Betterell, and I'm a Ward 3 resident and head of multifamily development and acquisition for EYA, and I appreciate the opportunity to testify on the fiscal year 2027 budget support act.

I'm here today specifically to provide feedback on Title II Subtitle E Wamata joint development properties.

The tax abatement, which we are fully supportive of and very happy to see the legislation that is created in this subtitle is not a gift, but a critical tool for creating mixed-use projects that support ridership housing production, including affordable housing production and economic growth across the district.

An example of this is my company EYA's Tacoma Station Development, which I will note we have been trying to find a path towards redeveloping for nearly 20 years now.

This project seeks to transform an underutilized WAMATA site into a vibrant mixed-use community with more than 434 residential units, new retail, including a small grocer, and significant investments in infrastructure, sustainability, and public spaces, including a nearly one-acre park.

As drafted, though, several provisions in the Wamata Joint Development Properties subtitle pose development challenges for our project and could undermine the financial feasibility of projects like ours that stand to benefit from the tax abatement.

I'm asking the council if we could talk about three modifications to the subtitle to ensure that it supports and rather than impedes the delivery of much needed housing on projects like mine.

We have to get this right.

First, I urge the council to amend the language requiring WAMATA to retain ownership of the property throughout the term of the tax abatement.

Currently, subtitle E states a property is only eligible for the abatement if the property is owned by WAMATA every year of the abatement term.

However, this is contrary to the subtitle's definition of a joint development agreement, which includes the sale of a property to a developer in many cases.

We propose changing the language to make properties once owned by WAMADA and then sold to a developer subject to a joint development agreement.

Second, I recommend modifying the first source and CBE requirements to only apply to the private development components of a project and not to infrastructure created or rehabilitated for Womata's use.

As an interstate compact agency established by the District Maryland, Virginia, Wamada is not subject to local hiring and procurement requirements.

So this broad application adds cost and complexity to delivering this essential public infrastructure.

Limiting these only to private development would help improve project's feasibility and reduce the costs of developers providing WAMATA infrastructure.

Finally, I urge the council to extend the allowable term of the tax abatement from 20 to 25 years.

The legislation already allows the mayor to determine the appropriate term based on project economics, so you're not automatically giving away 25 years.

But expanding the maximum term provides much needed flexibility, particularly for projects that have significant upcrop front costs.

I'm running out of time, so thank you very much.

Thank you for your testimony.

Emily Alexander.

Good morning, Chairman or Councilmember Fruman and members of the committee and uh of the whole and staff.

My name is Emily Alexander.

I am a senior development manager at Gire Land Real Estate Partners and award five resident.

Thank you for the opportunity to testify on the fiscal year 2027 Budget Support Act of 2026.

I'm here today to urge the council to include the Reservoir District Tax Exemption Emergency Amendment Act of 2026 as a BSA subtitle so it can take effect permanently.

Council Member Parker introduced the emergency legislation and it was passed by the full council unanimously at the last legislative meeting.

The reservoir district is a transformative mixed-use development that reflects the district's commitment to housing production, economic development, and effective private public-private partnership.

We are extremely grateful for the council of passing the tax abatement uh last year in the fiscal year 2026 Budget Support Act.

However, a misalignment between the rent assumptions in the project tax abatement financial analysis, the TAFA, and current inclusionary zoning rates threatens the economic feasibility of delivering the planned housing.

As you may recall, the TAFA of parcels two and four of the reservoir district was structured using rent rates based on the US Department of Housing and Urban Development, HUDs multifamily tax subsidy project income limits.

In February of 2026, the Department of Housing and Community Development published updated inclusionary zoning rates.

The updated rates do not match the rent rates based on HUD's multifamily tax subsidy project income limits.

This creates a problem because the statute granted granting the reservoir district project tax abatement exemption requires the project to use inclusionary zoning rates, even though the project's financial underwriting was structured using rent rates based on HUD's multifamily tax subsidy project income limits.

If the project is required to operate under the current inclusionary zoning rates rather than rent rates based on HUDs, the resulting revenue shortfall would render the development economically infeasible.

The proposed amendment offers a narrowly tailored solution by allowing the project to operate under HUDs rates.

You will restore consistency between the statutory framework governing the tax exemption and the assumptions used in the financing the development.

This amendment would not alter the existing tax exemption or provide any new subsidies.

It is a technical correction intended to address the discrepancy between inclusionary zoning rates and HUDS rates that occur after the project's approval.

Without the reservoir district tax exemption emergency amendment, the project was at risk for delays that would have hindered the delivery of much needed housing and undermine the district's broader development objectives for the reservoir district.

Incorporating this amendment into the budget support act is the most efficient mechanism to resolve the issue of permanently and maintain project momentum.

I urge the council to add this amendment to the budget support act, ensure the development of the reservoir district can proceed without disruption.

Thank you for your consideration and the opportunity to testify.

I'm happy to answer any questions.

Thank you very much for all of your testimonies.

Not questions, but just to make sure fully understand Ms.

Brofi, this is funding that's in the budget, you want to protect it.

Correct.

Okay.

Ms.

Hagid, this is money that is not in the budget that has been restored in other years.

You want to get it.

Uh Ms.

Betterall, uh, I think you've given this testimony also in front of me a couple of times.

Uh we need it in writing.

So if you can submit it for the record, that would be great.

And thank you, uh Ms.

Alexander.

And we will now move to our next panel.

I got a text.

All right.

So we we have some folks who were on the list and have since arrived.

Um, I think is Bericet Selassie here.

Um Steven, Stefan Rodiger.

Stephen Rodiger did this to it.

Oh no.

Uh Lily Goldstein and Eric Mulata.

Okay, there are yet others who have arrived, and we will get them uh as we work our way through.

Oh, when you are ready, uh, Mr.

Silassie.

I believe you are the first uh Mr.

Rodegert, if you want to go first.

Good morning.

Uh good morning, Councilmember Fruman, members of the committee and staff.

My name is Stefan Rodiger, and I am the co-founder and managing partner of Rift Valley Capital.

I appreciate the opportunity to offer testimony on the fiscal year 2027 Budget Support Act of 26 and fiscal year 2027 Local Budget Act of 2026.

Rift Valley Capital was selected through a competitive process to lead the transformation of the Chevy Chase community center and library site into a modern multi-use local anchor that will include a new 23,000 square foot state-of-the-art library, a fully rebuilt uh 21,600 square foot community center alongside approximately 177 units of mixed income housing.

It will also create 8,000 square feet of ground ground floor retail space, and most of the parking will be on-site parking will be below grade.

This is an incredibly important public land redevelopment opportunity for the district.

It replaces aging facilities that are more than 50 years old with modern infrastructure while also advancing the district's housing goals in Ward 3.

By combining public amenities with new housing, the project creates a long-term community asset that serves both current residents and future generations.

This project also advanced several of the district's key policy priorities, including housing supply and high opportunity neighborhoods, delivering mixed and mixed income housing, and modernizing critical community infrastructure.

The Chevy Chase campus has long served as an important neighborhood hub, and this redevelopment ensures that it continues to meet the needs of residents for decades to come.

We were pleased to see the inclusion of a workforce housing opportunity tax abatement in the Budget Support Act, as our project can deliver units to further the program's goals.

As you'll hear from my colleague Barricat, access to subasement would help alleviate gap financing and support the project's housing goals and long-term feasibility.

This is a unique opportunity to deliver new housing, modern public facilities, and neighborhood serving retail as part of a single coordinated redevelopment.

We appreciate the district's partnership to date and look forward to continuing to work with the council to move this important project forward.

Thank you for your time and attention.

Bericette and I are happy to answer any questions.

Thank you very much, Mr.

Silasie.

Councilmember Fruman, members of the committee and staff.

My name is Berikit Selassie, and I am the co-founder and managing partner of Rift Valley Capital.

I appreciate the opportunity to offer testimony on the fiscal year 2027 Budget Support Act of 2026 and the fiscal year 2027 Local Budget Act of 2026.

As Stefan, as Stefan mentioned, Riff Valley Capital was selected through a competitive process to lead the redevelopment of the Chevy Chase Community Center and Library, a complex project that will replace aging public infrastructure while advancing the district's housing goals in a high opportunity area.

We've been transparent over the course of this project's development that it carries a significant funding gap of approximately 40 million dollars in order to develop the housing retail library and community center at the quality and scale the district expects.

Currently, the district's budget accounts for some of the development costs associated with the library and community center in the develop in the Department of Parks and Recreations budget and in the public library's budget.

To successfully secure public financing, it is important that gap funding be structured in a way that it that can be committed directly and upfront to the project.

Lenders and investors evaluating the project must be able to see committed capital within the project's financial structure.

Without that commitment, the project continues to face a significant funding shortfall, which makes private financing impossible to secure.

This is because capital providers will not invest in projects that do not demonstrate an ability to either repay a loan or earn an acceptable return on their investment.

As Stefan has mentioned, in addition to having gap funding allocated upfront, providing access to the workforce housing opportunity tax abatement included in the budget support act would further support the project's financial feasibility.

This tool would help close the remaining gap while advancing the district's housing goals.

This is a unique opportunity to rebuild a local campus that serves both current residents and future generations.

Ensuring the necessary financial tools are available now, will allow the district to realize the benefits of this redevelopment in a timely manner and allow us to break ground in 2027.

Thank you for your time and attention.

Stefan and I are happy to answer any questions.

Thank you very much for your testimony.

Councilmember Fruman and members of the Committee of the Whole and staff, my name is Lily Goldstein, testifying on behalf of Leo Impact Capital, JBG Smith's impact investing platform focused on affordable workforce housing.

We have over 3,200 units in our portfolio, including more than a thousand units here in the district.

I urge the council to include the 151 Q Street Residential Economic Development Real Property Tax Exemption Amendment Act of 2026 as an amendment to the Budget Support Act.

This legislation was developed in close collaboration with Councilmember Parker, and we are grateful for his leadership and the commitment of his team to this effort.

The Gale Eckington is a 603 unit apartment community located in Ward 5, a large family-oriented property with over 250 family-sized homes and many residents supported by DC Housing Authority vouchers.

Since acquiring the property and a joint venture with the Jonathan Rose companies in December 2022, we have committed to 99 years of affordability with 350 total affordable units, 48 restricted to households at 60% of AMI and below, and 302 at or below 80% of AMI.

The scale of affordability is directly aligned with the district's housing goals and was funded with over 215 million dollars in private capital at no direct public cost.

However, the broader challenges now facing multifamily housing operators across the district have made it increasingly difficult to sustain this level of affordability at this scale.

The legislation amends the previous tax abatement for the property under DC Code 47-4618 and would provide a 100% real property tax abatement for 10 years beginning in tax year 2031, and it includes accountability measures, including requiring owners to complete capital improvements and address code violations.

And because this legislation amends a tax abatement currently in the DC code, we believe it does not require a TAFA.

Under current ownership, the Gale Eckington has undergone meaningful investments in sustainability and operational efficiency, spending nearly five million dollars to date on installation of rooftop solar, water saving systems, LED lighting, roof replacements, and infrastructure upgrades.

However, rising operating costs, mounting tax burdens, and income loss from non-payment of rent, have pushed a property into a deficit.

And without a credible path to recovery, that deficit will deepen and long-term affordability becomes untenable.

Including this legislation is about more than future than the future relief.

It is about unlocking capital now.

Equity investors require confidence that the environment will support a return to stability before they commit additional resources.

And this abatement provides that signal, enabling us to secure equity needed to stabilize the property today.

And without action, the property risks bankruptcy, and with it the loss of its affordability covenants.

The Gale Eckington offers a real rare opportunity to protect over 350 affordable homes in a single legislative action, leveraging more than 250 million dollars in private capital and 99 years of affordability commitments already on the table.

We respect respectfully urge the council to include this exemption, and I'm happy to answer any questions.

Thank you very much for your testimony, Ms.

Mr.

Malan.

Good morning, Councilman Furman.

Members of the committee of the whole sorry.

Good morning, Councilmember Furman, members of the committee of the whole and staff.

My name is Eric Lotta and I'm the Vice President of Development at Dallian Development.

I appreciate the opportunity to offer testimony on the fiscal year 2027 budget support act of 2026.

I'm here today to provide feedback on Title II, subtitle D, development of former federal properties in subtitle Federal Properties Tax Fund.

Earlier this year, Dallian Development purchased the former GSA administration's regional office building, also known as the RLB building, from the federal government.

This purchase was a first of its kind and represents a meaningful step towards transforming underutilized federal assets in the district.

As drafted, several provisions, subtitles D and F pose challenges for our redevelopment of the ROP building.

I'm asking the council to make three modifications to subtitle D and F to ensure they support rather than impede the redevelopment of former federal buildings across the district.

First, I urge the council to change the qualification date in subtitle D from October 1st, 2026 to January 1st, 2026.

This change would allow the ROB building, the former federal property we purchased in March of this year to qualify for the tax abatement available under this subtitle.

Without this change, the federal property development tax incentive created by this subtitle excludes the only former federal property being redeveloped, undermining the policy's intention and will hinder our ability to make this redevelopment economically viable.

Second, to maintain consistency with the change in subtitle D, I recommend modifying the definition of covered former federal property in subtitle F.

Presently a covered former federal property is a property that, among other requirements, was disposed of by the federal government to the district after October 1st, 2026, or disposed of or ground lease by the federal government to a private entity after October 1st, 2026.

Revising this date to January 1st, 2026 would ensure consistency across the two subtitles and allow our property purchased in March of 2026 to qualify as a covered former federal property.

Third, I urge the council to amend the language allowing the federal properties tax fund to be used for infrastructure improvements, civic projects, redevelopment, and property acquisition in the central Washington area.

Instead, I ask that the council amend this provision to direct that monies in the fund be used exclusively for improvements, projects, and redevelopments within the same business improvement district from which those funds were generated or in abutting business improvement districts.

We have discussed this proposed change with the deputy mayor's office and counselor member Furman, and we believe that as the first and only contributing project, it is both reasonable and equitable that these funds be reinvested in the neighborhoods where they originate.

Tying the use of the bid district to the where they are generated or an abutting business district ensures that the infrastructure and public realm improvements necessary to support the successful redevelopment crew to the community where they produced.

Thank you.

Thank you very much for your testimony.

Mr.

Slassi and Mr.

Radiger.

Well, let's keep up the conversation on this.

I don't think we'll do it here.

You testified to the similar effect at our hearing.

And let we'll follow up with you.

Uh Miss Goldstein, thank you very much for your testimony.

Just to be clear, is the tax abatement that you seek, is it currently in the budget, or is it a thing that you're hoping to have included?

No, we're hoping to have it included.

It's not in there now.

Okay.

And Mr.

Morato, we have spoken before on the dates issue.

I think that we are good on the where the dollars go question.

I think I'm not sure exactly where that stands.

I need to talk with my staff, but thank you again for your testimony.

And with that, we will turn to our next panel.

We're still catching up with folks who uh arrived a little bit late.

Oh, uh Leona Agordis and Kubi Nagage.

And I will say, it's probably not relevant to the people who are in the room now, but uh we can't have standing and noise in the room.

It's lovely to see the children.

Please take comfort that we've created an overflow room so that they can be children and we can have our hearing, and when their time comes, they will come and testify that we want to make sure that we keep noise to a minimum so that we can hear from our witnesses.

Uh let's let's fill out the table with uh.

He's here now too.

Uh Terrell Holcomb.

Great.

And Ethan Fitzgerald.

No, uh Lynn Amano.

Okay.

And Leon.

Who?

Okay, great.

Uh when you're ready, Lynn Leona.

Okay, good morning.

I'm Leona Garitas, CEO of the Golden Triangle Bid, and thank you for the opportunity to testify.

I've submitted more detailed remarks for the record, but today we'll focus on three priorities.

First, we strongly support the Golden Triangle Bid Amendment Act in the BSA.

This amendment provides technical clarification confirming the bid's authority to implement a 3% annual increase in bid tax rates consistent with long-standing council intent.

For years, the council expressly authorized a 3% increase, thus allowing us to continue delivering essential services despite things like inflation and rising costs.

This increase was erroneously removed in 2023 when the bid renewed its charter.

During the hearings, the CFO's office testified that this language was not necessary because the law already provided authority.

The council then removed the language during markup.

While the legislative history demonstrates that the authority was to remain intact, the removal of the language created ambiguity and uncertainty, which this amendment clarifies.

Second, we're disappointed that the Safe Commercial Corridors program is not funded in the mayor's budget, despite its impact on safety.

For our bid, these funds have filled a critical gap post-pandemic.

Safety and quality of life challenges are more visible and complex than ever, yet they're no longer foot patrol officers on our busy streets.

These funds enable us to hire safety specialists who respond to medical emergencies, overdoses, and mental health incidents, coordinate with fire, EMS, and behavioral health teams, assist businesses with recurring safety concerns, conduct wellness checks, and maintain a daily presence for workers, residents, and visitors.

While not a replacement for police, the program is central to downtown operations and recovery.

Finally, we encourage the council to support public realm investments by including 1.9 million for the DuPont South overlook in the outyears of the Capitol budget.

In 2018, DDoC closed the slip lane on Connecticut South of the Circle.

The bid installed a temporary plaza with barrier seating, landscaping, and art is proof of concept.

While successful, this installation remains temporary and lacks infrastructure for long-term use.

A permanent plaza would create a more functional and welcoming space with improved landscaping, terraced seating, lighting, and opportunities for art.

The bid would oversee activation and maintenance, creating a great gateway to the growing residential and hospitality node south of DuPont.

Thank you again for the opportunity to testify.

Thank you very much for your testimony.

Councilmember Freeman, Council members and staff, good morning.

I'm Kubain Gade testifying today as the co-chair of the Victim Assistance Network Policy and Advisory Committee, also known as the VAN, representing more than 55 organizations across the district as a DC Access to Justice Commissioner and President and CEO of the District Alliance for Safe Housing Dash.

Thank you for your continued leadership and partnership during what we know is an extraordinarily difficult fiscal period.

Over the past several months, the council has heard a consistent message from residents, survivors of domestic and sexual violence, providers, and public safety partners across the district.

The fiscal 27 budget cannot preserve public safety while simultaneously weakening the infrastructure that safety depends on through cuts to OVSJG and DHS.

Victim services, housing stabilization, legal advocacy, and community-based supports are core public safety infrastructure.

The council already has the van's detailed fiscal 27 recommendations, data and funding requests.

Today I want to emphasize one point.

This is not an expansion request.

It is a preservation request for a system that is already in capacity.

Providers across the district have already reduced staffing, consolidated operations, and streamlined services to maintain supports to thousands of survivors while contending with rising costs, growing need, and declining federal and philanthropic funding.

When survivors and victims of crime cannot access housing, trauma-informed care, legal support, or stabilization services, the costs do not disappear.

They shift downstream to shelters, emergency health care systems, law enforcement, and other higher cost crisis interventions.

And survivors do not experience this system separately.

OBSJG, DHS, and community-based public safety investments function as a coordinated continuum because survivors move across our systems simultaneously in search of safety and stability.

The van urges the council to hold a line in fiscal 27, fund OVSJG victim services at $59.6 million, the minimum needed to sustain the district's existing survivor safety infrastructure to preserve the full OVSJG portfolio, including access to justice at 31.8 million, justice grants at 20.2 million, and to protect critical DHS survivor supporting investments, restore domestic violence services to 3.299 million, restore transitional housing youth to 12.563 million, and maintain permanent supportive housing for families.

And the van agrees.

The question before council is whether survivors and families will continue to access safety, stable housing, and supports when they need it most in fiscal 27.

Thank you again for your leadership and partnership, and I'm happy to answer any questions.

Thank you very much.

Mr.

Holcomb.

Uh good morning, uh Chairperson Fruman and others of the council.

My name is Tyrell Holcomb, born raised and still residing here in Ward 7, and I serve as Vice President of External Affairs at Jubilee Housing.

Thank you for this opportunity to testify on the FY2027 budget.

I've been coming to City Hall since I was 14 years old.

Back then I didn't fully understand the process, but I understood that decisions made in this building shaped uh what people experience in their neighborhoods.

Years later, still sitting here, sitting here now, that hasn't changed.

The decisions made in this budget will show up in whether residents are able to stay in their homes, whether young people have somewhere to go after school, and whether returning citizens have a real chance to rebuild and if communities feel safe or invested in.

I also want to acknowledge the constraints the council is navigating.

We understand the competing demands and the realities of limited resources.

At the same time, budgets are more than numbers.

They are moral documents, a compass for us to be guided by.

They reflect what we prioritize and who we show up for.

This budget should deliver for everyone in our city, especially those who rely on these investments the most and those who work to keep our city going.

Yesterday, Jubilee residents testified before the committee on housing and spoke clearly about what affordable housing means in their lives.

Today I want to uplift broader Jubilee budget priorities, which are not separate acts, they are connected pieces of the same strategy to keep residents housed, supported, safe, and moving forward.

First, the housing reduction trust fund must remain a serious investment.

As members of the coalition, we also support the fund being $120 million.

We understand that this is a proven tool.

Jubilee has some of the very first buildings ever financed through HBTF, and we see every day what happens when the system performs.

Second, resident services must continue to be funded alongside housing.

Housing is the foundation, but stability comes from what happens after someone gets the keys.

Workforce pathways, financial stability, youth engagement, and reentry supports are what allow folks to remain housed and keep moving forward.

And ERAP is a tool for residents as well.

On out of school time funding, Jubilee as members of the OST coalition stand in solidarity that after three years of flat funding, the council must both preserve and increase grant funding to keep pace with the rising cost of doing business.

On OVSJG and reentry jubilee as a member of the DC RAN supports the acts for the restoration of the OVSJG budget from the 30% that was cut from this current fiscal year that we see.

This budget is more than numbers.

I want to reiterate that again.

It is about whether the district continues to invest in the full ecosystem that allows residents to remain in place, young people to stay connected, families to feel invested, returning citizens to rebuild, and communities to stay whole.

Thank you for the opportunity to testify.

Thank you very much for your testimony.

Thank you, Councilmember Freeman, for giving me the opportunity to testify.

I am Lynn Amano, the director of advocacy for Friendship Place.

Friendship Place is a premier provider of housing and services for more than 5,400 individuals who have experienced homelessness in Greater DC.

I'm speaking to you today because this year's budget is especially harsh on those experiencing homelessness.

Drastic cuts to the social safety net across the board and local budget cuts, including a 14 million cut from our continuum of care, have left many residents with nowhere to turn for relief.

We support the Safety Net Housing and Homeless Services As of Fair Budget Coalition, the coalition, and the Way Home campaign, which take into consideration the quantifiable need of our unhoused neighbors.

We encourage the council and administration to pursue proven and cost effective interventions, including shared housing, targeted financial support, and rapid employment program models.

Friendship Place has developed and presented nationally recognized models in each of these areas.

Shared housing for individuals and cash-advanced programs for youth have shown notable success in helping people build sustainable lives.

Rapid employment, like our core program at AIMHIRE can help formerly unhoused residents retain their benefits and step closer to self-sufficiency with dramatically better and faster results than DHS's current TEP and SNAP programs.

We get people hired in less than 90 days by building trust with employers and providing participants with the support they need thanks to matching private funds.

We ask you to consider this option as you pursue efficiencies in the current budget.

Additional low-hanging fruit includes an increase in the PNA to 300 per person and using available dollars to provide immediate access to non-congregate housing where possible.

The PNA increase would open more spots and assisted living for survivors of homelessness, so those who need it could get extra care and release their current housing to fellow survivors.

Noncongregate shelter could bring people inside in time for likely federally driven encampment clearings this summer.

Both interventions, especially when combined with additional permanent supportive housing vouchers, would create flow of housing for individuals stuck in a stagnant system.

Please help us move these additional cost-effective and life-saving approaches forward.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

PA.

Personal needs and allowance.

Okay, great.

Alright, well, thank you for your testimony.

Thank you all for your testimony.

I take it with all of the testimony.

This is about restoring things that are not there.

It's not about protecting things that are there.

Alright, thank you very much for your testimony.

Adam Barrahan Smith.

Cecil.

Cecily Jenkins.

Couldn't she go just right now?

She's further down.

She's here.

Oh, she's too late.

Luanda White.

She's here in person too.

Okay.

Mr.

Barrahan Smith when you are ready.

Good morning, Councilmember Fruman and staff of the committee.

My name is Adam Berigan Smith, and I'm the director of public affairs at EduCare DC.

For years, I have advocated alongside families, their children, and their educators for the district to invest in our early childhood education system as the public good it is.

Today I do so from a personal place as my husband and I prepare to welcome our first child later this year.

Like every soon-to-be parent, I am navigating a seemingly endless stream of decisions and questions that come with expecting your first child.

The mayor's proposed budget would only deepen that uncertainty for families with young children and threaten the early childhood system we rely on.

The DC Council must fully fund the pay equity fund and child care subsidy program to protect the stability of the system.

One of the first major decisions of parenthood is who we will rely on to care for our daughter when we return to work.

Like all parents, I want what's best for her, which means I want her early childhood educators to be highly skilled and able to meet the unique needs of infants and toddlers during the most rapid period of development and life.

Thanks to your investment in the pay equity fund, experienced early childhood educators are valued, earn salaries commensurate with their expertise, and can afford to be teachers and build their lives here in DC.

In early childhood, learning depends on stable relationships.

Children need continuity of care to form secure attachments with their educators.

That is why stable funding for the pay equity fund matters.

When compensation is unstable, so is the early childhood workforce.

And when teachers leave, the relationships and continuity of care children depend on are disrupted.

I want my daughter's first teachers to be able to care for her without being preoccupied about whether they can pay their bills and care for their own families.

If the pay equity fund is cut, we will see greater instability across the early childhood education system.

Fewer teachers will enter and remain in the field, fewer programs will remain open, and fewer families will be able to access the care they depend on.

For families on the child care subsidy wait list, which went into effect yesterday.

Access to care will remain out of reach, and they will be forced out of the workforce.

This will turbocharge wealth and education disparities as care becomes a luxury that only wealthy families can access and afford.

Early childhood education is a public good, and it needs to and it needs robust public investment.

As I prepare to become a father, I am worried about the future of the district's early childhood system and my daughter's early learning experiences.

On behalf of my family and the many thousands like us, I urge you to fully fund the pay equity fund and child care subsidy program so children in DC have the strongest possible start in life.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Um Jovi Polius.

Good morning, Councilman of Fruman and members of the council.

My name is Jovi Pollius.

I am back before you today to urge you to fund the Pay Equity Fund and Child Care Subsidy Program because families like mine are counting on the council to continue investing in early childhood education.

I know this budget season is forced to have difficult decisions on the council.

I understand that many programs are competing for limited resources, but I also know firsthand what is possible when DC chooses to invest in children, families, and educators.

My youngest daughter, Io has been enrolled at Educare DC for more than two years.

When you see her today, you see a joyful, curious four-year-old who loves her teachers, thrives in her classrooms, and looks forward to school every morning.

However, her story began very differently.

Iowa was born 23 weeks premature.

She spent the first six months of her life in the hospital, followed by months at home, dependent on medical equipment to help her breathe and continue developing.

Every milestone felt uncertain, and as her father, I carried constant fear about whether she would have the support she needed to truly thrive.

So when it came time to consider child care, I was hesitant.

I worried whether anyone outside of our family would fully understand her medical history, her developmental challenges, and the level of care she required.

What changed everything for us was Educare DC.

From the very beginning, her teachers and the support staff approached my daughter with patience, compassion, and expertise.

They took time to understand her needs, partner with our family, and create an environment where she felt safe, supported, and encouraged to grow.

Today, because of that care, I was reaching developmental milestones that have once felt very far away.

She's building confidence social skills and a love for learning that will stay with her long after she leaves preschool.

And because she's in stable high quality program, I have been able to continue my own education and better support my family.

That kind of progress happens because experienced educators are showing up every day to do incredibly demanding and important work.

The pay equity fund and the child care subsidy program helped make that possible.

They allow centers to retain skilled teachers and ensure families like mine can access the care our children need.

I do not want families coming behind mine to lose access to these opportunities.

If funding is cut, we will lose educators and children with complex needs like my daughters will be left with little to no options that could support them.

Early childhood education changed the trajectory of my daughter's life.

It changed the trajectory of my family's life.

That is why I strongly urge the council to restore and protect funding for the pay equity fund and the child care subsidy program.

Please, I implore you to continue investing in DC's children, families, and educators.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you for your testimony, Cecily Jenkins.

Good afternoon, Councilman Fruman, and members of the Council.

My name is Cecily Jenkins, and I am a proud grandmother of a five-year-old in Ward 7.

I am back here today to urge you to continue funding the Pay Equity Fund and to support the early childhood educators our families depend on.

My granddaughter Charlie is currently enrolled in pre-care at EduCare DC, and she is truly thriving.

Every day she is supported by dedicated, high-quality teachers who are helping her learn, grow, and build a strong foundation for the future.

I have seen a difference in her confidence, her curiosity, and her ability to connect with others.

Before Charlie enrolled at EduCare DC, I cared for her while her mother worked during the mornings and attended classes in the evenings.

During that time, I gained a much deeper appreciation for those for how important their early years are in a child's development.

Even at two years old, Charlie kept me on my toes.

She had already figured out how to use my iPod to play games and search for her favorite songs.

Favorite songs.

As much as I loved caring for her, balancing full-time caregiving while trying to manage my design business was difficult.

When Charlie started at EduCare DC, her teachers welcomed her with patience, warmth, and genuine care.

They helped her build confidence, independence, and important social and emotional skills.

Watching the impact they had on Charlie gave me an even greater respect for early childhood educators.

These teachers do far more than supervise children.

They help shape who the children become during the most important years of their development.

The work requires patient skill and commitment.

The pay equity fund helps make that possible.

It allows sinners to remain experienced, to contain, retain experienced teachers and give families like mine access to stable, high-quality care we can trust.

Without the funding, we risk losing talented educators, increasing classroom turnover, and making it harder for families to access the support our children need to survive.

So today, I once again urge the council to restore and protect funding for the pay equity fund and to stand with the educators who make such a lasting difference in our children's lives.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you very much for your testimony, Ms.

Jenkins.

Luanda White.

Good afternoon, Councilmember Fruman and members of the council.

My name is Lawanda White.

I'm here again today as both a mother and a business owner to ask you to fully fund the child care subsidy program and the early childhood educator pay equity fund.

So families like mine can continue to have stable, reliable care.

My family and I are part of the EduCare DC network where our son receives before and after care through the subsidy program.

Because of the support, I know he is in a safe and consistent environment every day while I meet my responsibilities at work.

That peace of mind is everything for a working parent.

When educators are paid fairly, programs can retain strong teachers and children benefit from that consistency.

Without stable care and dedicated educators, my son would not be learning, he would not be building relationships or growing the way he is.

Before my son enrolled at Educare DC, I did not have that stability.

I had to constantly adjust my schedule, delay work, and sometimes bring my son with me to professional commitments when care fell through.

I remember trying to respond to emails, take calls and keep him occupied all at the same time.

It was stressful and distracting, and it affected my ability to show up fully from my work and my clients.

So as a business owner, access to reliable child care directly impacts my ability to earn a living.

When I can depend on care, I can plan my day, focus on my work, and grow my business.

That stability allows me to contribute to the district's economy and support my family.

If funding is reduced, families like mine will lose that stability.

Programs may be forced to cut services, and educators may leave.

I would be pushed back into a position where I have to choose between my work and my child's care.

I do urge the council to fully fund the pay equity fund and increase funding for the child care subsidy program so parents like me can continue to work and our children can continue to thrive.

Thank you for the opportunity to testify.

Thank you for your testimony.

Thank you to all of you for your testimony.

I have a feeling that today we will hear a lot about the pay equity fund and the child care subsidy.

Obviously, a high priority for many district residents and many members of the council.

Thank you very much for taking the time to come out and have your voices heard.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Ann Gunderson.

She's hearing the first.

Okay.

Kate Coventry.

I saw her before I think she was.

Maria Monsan Sansala.

Yeah.

Teryn Morrissey.

Erica Williams.

There she is.

Okay.

So this may uh feel a little odd because while you're testifying, I suspect Councilmember Parker will come back and he will take my place.

But let's get started with Ms.

Gunderson.

Councilmember Fruman, members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to testify.

My name is Ann Gunderson.

I'm a senior policy analyst with DCFPI and a member of the Under 3 DC coalition.

Today I'm asking the council to significantly increase funding to support the pay equity fund and the child care subsidy program to ensure that every district family has access to affordable high-quality care.

The pay equity fund requires $94.2 million in FY27 to re-establish pay parity with DCPS educators.

And the subsidy program requires 177.1 million in FY27 to eliminate the need for an enrollment freeze and wait lists.

The PEF has made significant strides in increasing the number of qualified educators in district child care facilities serving district families, despite lawmakers making reductions to the program for the past two years.

Thanks to this council, we have not lost the program entirely, but these cuts undermine the efficacy of the program and send a message to early educators that their pay and benefits are not secure unless they show up here every year to beg for the compensation they deserve.

The funding required for PEF is not indicative of a program with costs growing out of control, but rather a program in which costs grow when it's successful.

Even with a wait list in place for new facilities seeking entry into PEF and after making cuts, the number of educators is increasing because participating facilities are retaining their educators at a higher rate, and they're attracting new educators to their facilities, which means they serve more children.

PEF educators are also increasingly attaining higher credentials, which cost the program more, but also means that children they're serving are receiving higher quality care and education.

These are good things and intended outcomes when the council created the program.

Importantly, the pay equity fund is yielding a real return on investment year after year.

23% under the direct payments model and 21% in FY24.

We continue to support millions of dollars into police signing bonuses and tax abatements for developers without ever asking what these investments return to the district's economy.

And yet the PEF is constantly on the chopping block.

What we do know is that affordable accessible high-quality child care is foundational to local economies because when families have safe supportive environments to place their children, parents can work, they have more money to spend at district businesses, and child care providers can overcome tight margins, hire more staff, and improve their facilities.

DC voters support full funding for early childhood programs.

72% support fully funding the subsidy program, and another 69% support fully funding the PEF because voters want district leaders to invest in programs that build towards a brighter future for all.

This council has shown their commitment to delivering high quality child care to district residents, and I'm asking you to maintain that commitment and fund our early education system.

Thank you for the opportunity to testify.

I'm happy to take any questions.

Thank you for your testimony.

Next, we will have Kate Coventry.

Councilmember Parker, thank you for the opportunity to testify today.

My name is Kate Coventry.

I'm the director of legislative strategy at DCFPI.

My rural testimony focuses on the need for PSH vouchers, expanded capacity at the Aston, and increasing the personal needs allowance and simplifying the proof of residency process for residents experiencing homelessness.

My written testimony written testimony also outlines our health care alliance asks.

Black residents bear the burden of problems with homelessness.

Just over 76% of unaccompanied adults count in the district in the 2025 point in time were black.

This is the result of the enduring legacies of structural and individualized racism that for years have prohibited black families from equitably accessing the housing and employment markets.

I have good news.

The Department of Human Services housed 1,322 households in FY2025, the highest number ever.

The agency's pace for the first half of FY26 is even higher.

And they've also reduced the average length of time that individuals experience homelessness.

But lack of housing resources threatens this process.

The agency had no new vouchers for individuals experiencing homelessness in FY26, and we have absolutely no vouchers for anyone in FY27.

And additionally, we've got issues because we have locally funded PSH vouchers that weren't properly budgeted in the out years, and so we will have we have people at risk of losing their housing, and we won't have a turnover opportunity, meaning that when someone leaves the program, the program will shrink rather than adding a new person in need.

I also want to flag that there are two federal funding pressures that seem to not be addressed in this budget.

The first is emergency housing vouchers, which we received during COVID from the federal government.

Those are supposed to go through till 2030, but rent costs are so high across the country that the money has run out.

And we have about 500 households there with no funding to sustain them, meaning they're going to be terminated from housing and services.

We also have another issue with shelter plus care households, and that could that is another federal cut that may be coming down the road that could lead to 200 people losing their housing.

We're urging the council to allocate funding to make sure that people are not evicted and that turnover vouchers remain being able to be turned over.

My testimony also talks about making it easier for unhoused residents to obtain identification.

The Department of Human Services has made it much harder for folks to get a completed proof of residency form.

This is the form that you need to prove your residency to get a photo ID.

And people experiencing homelessness often struggle with this because they don't have a resident, they don't have residence, right?

They live in a shelter, they live outside.

And DHS used to let more than 30 homeless services providers fill out these forms, and now they've essentially got it down to three places.

Two of them are in men's shelters where women do not feel comfortable going, and the third one is the downtown day service center, which is a vital service, but also is quite overwhelming for people.

So we're asking the council to urge DHS to make it easier to get this form.

It used to be easier.

Why are we making it harder?

Thank you so much for the opportunity to testify.

All our human services asks are in my written testimony.

Thank you for your testimony.

Next, we'll have Maria Manasalo.

Councilmember Parker, thank you for the opportunity to testify.

My name is Maria Manensala.

I'm a policy fellow at the DC Fiscal Policy Institute, and I also co-chair the TANF is still a lifeline coalition.

The mayor's fiscal year 27 budget maintains major cuts to TANIF that will hurt 16,000 families with children.

My testimony outlines why these changes are harmful, misguided, and should be reversed.

To begin with, the mayor's budget proposal maintains the elimination of TANF's cost of living adjustment, which will freeze TANF benefits at current levels.

By fiscal year 2030, the same $803 that a family of three currently receives will be worth 9% less due to inflation.

This is particularly concerning because inflation disproportionately harms low-income households, and yet lawmakers continue to fund inflationary adjustments that primarily benefit middle and higher income residents.

The mayor's budget proposal also maintains increased sanctions for TANF enrollees who can't meet work requirements.

Evidence from other states overwhelmingly shows that work sanctions fail to improve employment outcomes.

That's because they do nothing to address the structural barriers TANF enrollees face to securing employment, including inaccessible child care, physical and mental health challenges, and a limited supply of jobs that offer adequate wages.

On top of maintaining increased sanctions, the mayor's budget proposes significant reductions to the TANF employment and education program.

Although sustaining investment in an underperforming program may not be warranted, it's fundamentally unfair to impose stricter work sanctions on TANF enrollees while simultaneously making it harder for them to meet work requirements.

Finally, the mayor's budget proposal eliminates TANF benefits entirely for families who have hit the time limit beginning in fiscal year 28.

Imposing a time limit is a flawed policy because it unrealistically assumes that families can achieve lasting stability within just five years.

In reality, the barriers that keep families in poverty are rarely short-term, and financial security can quickly unravel due to sudden emergencies.

Thus, time limits can sever support not when families have fully stabilized, but simply when they've reached an arbitrary cutoff date.

A robust hardship exemption policy may mitigate some of these harms, but we are not confident it will reach all eligible households due to implementation challenges.

For all these reasons, the DC council should reverse the cuts to TANF beginning in fiscal year 27 and reject the deeper reductions the mayor proposed.

I would like to end my testimony by emphasizing that this is not an issue that just a small group of advocates care about.

Last week, the TANF is still a lifeline coalition delivered 1,000 postcards to Councilmember Fruman from residents across all eight wards.

In those postcards, DC residents called on lawmakers to reverse the TANF cuts and to protect our district's most vulnerable residents.

Thank you, and I'm happy to answer any questions.

Thank you for your testimony.

Kate, did you submit your testimony?

If you can make sure you submit it so we have it.

And then next, we will have Erica Williams.

That's good to see that.

It's a DC FPI hour.

Thank you for the opportunity to testify.

Mayor Bowser's budget proposal would usher in the greatest local safety net cuts in a generation and fails to offer revenue strategies that put the district on stronger footing over the financial plan.

DC is a perfect storm of slowing revenue growth due to in part the lingering harms of the pandemic, as well as local recession triggered by federal layoffs and a shredded federal safety net.

Lessons learned from past recessions underscore that more public investment in residents' well-being can speed up recovery by keeping people economically active.

A cuts-heavy approach, on the other hand, harms people, slows recovery, and hampers the economy.

DC lawmakers must use all the tools at their disposal to triage the fiscal year 2027 budget and stabilize revenue over the long term.

We have three recommendations for doing this.

One is to permanently decouple from federal tax cuts, tap reserves, and recoup dollars from events DC.

So council can go further than what the mayor's proposed in decoupling from federal tax cuts.

Static or fixed date conformity would ensure this and any future federal tax changes get a full vetting through the legislative process before being adopted.

This would allow us to restore the CTC, the EITC boost.

Maybe it could help us fund access to justice and reverse cuts to TANF cash assistance.

Council can also revert reserve standards back to the 60-day 60 days and leverage the apparently 220 million dollars in local funds that it would be free that would be freed up for mitigating this year's cuts to things like the pay equity fund, emergency rental assistance, and housing vouchers, of which there are none in this budget.

Council should ensure that DC recoupes funds owed to the district by events DC, the 68.7 million identified by the DC auditor could help to restore this year's harmful cuts to paid leave.

We also recommend that council shift dollars away from ineffective unproven spending that my colleague Sharon Markov will discuss further that could fund community schools, domestic violence programs, and other needs, and that we shift funds away from excessive increases for things like MPD overtime, also to mitigate cuts.

And third, finally, we suggest piggybacking on the federal net investment income tax, which we've called a wealth proceeds tax.

That tax at the federal level helped to fund federal health care coverage under the Affordable Care Act.

At a low rate of 2% here in the district, we could raise 121 million annually, which would give us resources to fund alliance coverage and things like child care subsidies.

In addition, we recommend that the council move a feasibility analysis of the business activity tax for the district so that this proposal can be fully considered by council for future years and to further stabilize our revenues.

As was mentioned, DC voters support all of these actions, and we are happy to answer questions.

Thank you for your testimony.

It was so compelling.

I think that's it for this panel.

We don't have anyone online, I believe.

I did just want to quickly ask a couple of questions.

And if you could just elaborate on what some might argue are the costs associated with that, that it may hamper development across the district, it may hamper our ability to grow our economy, et cetera.

What might be your response to that?

Well, I would say first we don't have actual proof that those abatements are needed, and that they aren't paying, you know, providing assistance to developers to do what they might have already done in the you know in the without the subsidy.

Um I do think that there is a the CFO's team will be putting out a report at the end of this year that evaluates the effectiveness of the program in catalyzing conversions.

Um I don't see any reason we would move forward with some of the massive increases in the cost of that program without having some of that evidence at our fingertips.

But I would also say that there are 13 projects that are underway in a time of scarce resources.

Recoup some of those dollars that haven't been used yet for other programs and other needs that we know we have today.

Thank you for that.

You know, I have said, and I believe there are others on the council that believe that we should scrutinize our abatement proposals more.

And I'll just leave it there.

Um can I say one more thing about that?

I had another question.

So, okay.

Uh I wanted to talk about TANF, because sometimes there's three different proposals, but they are often spoken about as one.

Uh one, you have the step-down policy, the sanctions, as well as this cola increase.

Um if we had to prioritize, because budgets are about choices.

Uh, do you have a perspective on which of those three we should prioritize first?

I would be hesitant to pick between the three because they all work together in tandem.

Yeah, I was gonna say that.

Um, but I do think moving forward that instead of prioritizing one fully and then eliminating the other two, that perhaps we could strike a balance between the three.

So for instance, instead of fully eliminating the cola, which would make it a lot harder to bring it back again, perhaps we could decrease it instead of a full elimination.

Um, that way that we could fully protect the time limit or reverse the time limit and reverse the sanctions policies.

Likewise, you could also reduce the proposed sanction from 25% to amount a lot lower.

So I think there is a balance that can be struck there without fully needing to commit to just one of the three reversals.

Okay.

Um I just to put it in perspective uh at the DHS hearing, um, I believe the estimate was roughly 12 million dollars to undo the step down in fiscal year 26 alone.

Yeah.

So if we just focused on the 60 month step down for fiscal year 27, that's roughly 12 million, and then it balloons to over 20 million and 28 and beyond.

And so we're talking about significant cost pressures, that again, just realistically, we're gonna have to make choices.

But the point you make is well uh made and taken in terms of supporting our most vulnerable residents.

Uh, but I want to say thank you all for your testimony, um, and then we're gonna move to our next panel.

Alright, next we have Eric Jones, Vice President of Government Affairs for D for DC commercial AOBA.

Then we have Betty Gento, Senior Director of Advocacy and Public Policy of Some Incorporated.

There's been a request to move Ann Chauvin, executive director of Whitley House up.

And we will oblige.

So Betty Gento, then we'll have Ann Chauvin.

And then we'll have Dominique Moore, community organizer for Empower Ed.

And she's online.

Is Betty Gentle here?

Oh, there you go.

Is Ann Chauvin here?

Okay.

Is Eric Jones online?

He's here.

Lee Blackman.

You could join us.

Julia Ward, Chair of Legal A DC Union.

There we go.

It's Troop D.

Patel here.

Shroop D.

Pertel, Chair of Advisory Neighborhood Commission 2A.

Is Dr.

Kofi Anuma here?

He's downstairs.

Not in the chamber.

Okay.

So we'll stop there.

Um, and if you're tracking along, we're at uh number 46, Troop D.

Patel is not here.

So let me go back.

Uh Eric Jones, you may uh provide your testimony.

Good afternoon, Council members.

My name is Eric Jones, the fourth generation Washington Tonian, Karen Ward for a resident who serves as Vice President of Government Affairs DC Commercial for the Apartment Office Building Association Washington, or AOBA.

For over 50 years, the YOBA has represented commercial office in multifamily residential real estate here in the district, with members' political members' portfolios totaling over 166 million square feet of commercial space and over 480,000 rental units in DC, Maryland and Virginia.

In the city proper, it's more than 75 million square feet of commercial space and nearly 120,000 rental units.

I'm not here today just as a voice of property owners and managers, but someone whose family fully knows firsthand the hardship to the district.

You see, my great-grand aunt, Murder Williams, ran the Cadillac Hotel in Logan Circle in 1941.

She was one of the first black women to own a hotel in the district.

Her and her sister owned several hotels in the district, and during that time, my family birthed more than a hundred residents, of which only two homes are still owned by members of my family.

One my wife and I currently own, we purchased about a decade ago, and the one that my grandmother grew up in that her sister currently owns.

Although this may not seem directly relevant to the FY2027 budget, it's essential to our daily lives.

You see, much of this council's work involves conversations about low-income families, those with low to moderate income or blue-collar backgrounds and long-term residents.

Yet those such as my neighbors' friends and family members aren't being listened to.

This is why I'm before you today, asking that instead of snatching items under the F5 2027 BSA to make political points, or to send messages to the 535 members of the legislative circus at the far end of Pennsylvania Avenue, or the Nemesis across the street, we're asking you to have service.

We're asking you to respect the budget, our work and our investment in the district, and the necessary items we've invested in.

This ensures that everyone, not just those you want to attract to the city, can live, work, and play here.

This means items such as the net zero delay and the BEPS delay, both outlined in the BSA, aren't removed.

Anything else would be a smack in the face, considering that this body extended those exact same delays to district owned properties in February being an emergency.

Council members.

Around 60 to 80 years ago, it was a federally operated government that implemented targeted policies that unfortunately had a negative impact on many minority families who were a big part of the district.

These actions didn't just hinder growth and development of generational wealth, but he also concluded the ongoing cycles of poverty that caused social and psychological PTSD that have affected countless older families across all races, beliefs, and economic backgrounds in the district.

Fadily, today, it isn't just the federal government doing so.

It is our local legislative and regulatory measures, largely pushed by individuals who move to our city based on what we have created that will again hurt those long-term businesses, long-term families, and their new neighbors who call the district home.

You all can do something about this by working with us rather than simply looking for new ways to tax increase fees or demand more funding, which largely go to people who live outside the district.

Instead of simply seeking to fund programs, you also need to consider where those funds come from and how your decisions affect those who provide them.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And if uh if you haven't already done so, if you could submit your testimony, uh that would be helpful.

Uh, next we'll have Betty Gentle.

Greetings, Chairman Parker and members of the committee.

Thank you for the opportunity to testify today.

My name is Betty Gentle, and I serve as a Senior Director of Advocacy and Public Policy as Sum Incorporated, a nonprofit organization that has worked for more than 50 years to break cycles of homelessness and poverty for district residents.

The proposed FY27 Grow DC budget erose critical parts of the district's safety net, including housing, health care, behavioral health and human services.

For the residents Some Serves, these systems are deeply interconnected.

When support is reduced across multiple areas at once, the consequences compound.

While my written comments address broader concerns across the safety net, my remarks today focus on one proposal that illustrates the danger of disinvesting in community-based behavioral health crisis response, eliminating all community-based psychiatric crisis stabilization beds in the district.

We also want to note that providers are not informed on this proposal until after DBH's public oversight hearing for public witnesses had already taken place, limiting the opportunity for meaningful public discussion of a major change to the district's behavioral health crisis response system.

Community-based crisis beds help stabilize residents before crisis escalate into hospitalization, incarceration, emergency room utilization, or chronic homelessness.

They reduce strain on hospitals, connect residents to ongoing care and housing supports, and help people remain safely stabilized in the community.

Importantly, they are also one of the few non-law enforcement responses to behavioral health crisis currently available in the district.

At a time when the district should be expanding community-based crisis response, eliminating these beds alongside eliminating youth crisis services, moves us backwards.

Some has operated Jordan House, one of only two crisis bed programs in the district since 2005.

The second is Crossing Place, operated for nearly 50 years by our longtime partner Whitley House.

DBH proposals replacing these programs with crisis observation beds through CPEP, but observation beds are not the same as residential crisis stabilization.

They serve a different purpose, operate under a different model, and cannot replace this level of care.

The proposal also relies on a future relocation site at 35K Street Northeast that has not yet been constructed and does not have a confirmed timeline for operation.

In the fact the district has eliminated an existing crisis response system before a comparable alternative exists.

This is not continuity of care, it is a gap in care.

And residents in crisis will feel the consequences.

This proposal will not eliminate need, it will simply push residents into more expensive and more restrictive systems after crisis worsen, including emergency rooms and patient hospitalization, shelters, and too often incarceration.

Today, some in Willie House respectfully urged the council to reject the elimination of community-based crisis stabilization beds and restore funding for this essential part of the district's continuum of care.

And the stakes of that decision extend far beyond any single program because ultimately the question before the council is simple.

Will the district continue investing in community-based care that helps people stabilize before a crisis escalates, or wait until their crisis becomes far more dangerous, traumatic, and costly for everyone involved.

Thank you for the opportunity to testify.

Thank you for your testimony.

And next we'll have Ann Childman.

Good afternoon, Councilmember Parker and committee staff.

Thank you for the opportunity to testify today and for letting me do it next to Betty.

Since our founding in 1958, Woodley House has provided dignified housing and critical support services to tens of thousands of DC residents with behavioral health disorders.

As part of our continuum of care, we opened a community-based residential psychiatric crisis bed program called Crossing Place nearly 50 years ago.

Crossing Place and Jordan House, which is operated by our close partner, some demonstrate fidelity to the same service model, which has been replicated across the country.

The proposed Department of Behavioral Health budget cuts include the elimination of the contracts for all 16 community-based crisis beds serving adults affected October 1, 2026.

The department proposes to consolidate crisis services and bring this level of care in-house using the CPEP crisis beds.

These are two different forms of crisis beds with different regulations, different models of care, different levels of staffing, different environments, different intentions, and different costs.

Our community-based crisis beds are voluntary, unlocked residences, providing a warm, home like trauma-informed environment with a focus on stabilization and ensuring connection to ongoing care, including behavioral health services and housing support.

The model allows for a maximum of eight residents at any given time in each home with trained staff on site 24 7.

Our proven model requires coordinated cross-system support and allows the person in crisis to gently return to the community with the tools and resources they need to continue their recovery without hospitalization.

In contrast, the crisis beds at CPEP are in the institutional government setting of the district's crisis center with emergency and police personnel escorting residents in and out.

The CPEP crisis beds are designed to observe and treat adults in crisis who may be waiting for a bed in a locked ward or otherwise need chemical or physical restraints.

Our community-based crisis beds make effective and efficient use of local health care dollars.

Community-based crisis beds have fixed costs regardless of the number of residents at any given time.

Any crisis bed provider, private or government, is only paid when the beds are filled and authorized.

As private providers, Woodley House and some must absorb the non-reimbursed program costs of our unfilled beds.

In contrast, if CPEP beds are not filled, the fixed costs must continue to be covered with taxpayer dollars.

Further, more than 80% of costs for crisis beds are paid for by Medicaid, not by district funds.

Between Woodley House and Sum, our two crisis bed contracts are worth approximately $600,000 annually.

We know that this is taxpayer money well spent on better health outcomes and greater health care system efficiency.

Today we ask for the council's help in ensuring that Woodley House and SUM can continue serving our most vulnerable neighbors through our crisis stabilization residences, and we respectfully ask that the council reject this proposal and restore funding to preserve community-based crisis stabilization beds.

Thank you for your testimony.

Dominique Moore?

No.

Dominique is online.

You may provide your testimony.

Uh good morning, Councilman Parker and staff.

My name is Dominique Moore.

I'm an educator and a community organizer for EmpowerId.

Over the course of this budget season, I've appeared before multiple committees with a consistent message that student outcomes, family stability, and public safety are all interconnected.

Children and families' success are shaped by whether a child can access breakfast before school, whether their family can afford child care, whether there are trusted adults at the safe spaces available after school, whether schools are resourced to provide wraparound support, and whether educators can merely afford to stay in the profession.

The fiscal year 27 budget proposal requires a deeper alignment to what district families are actually experiencing and in need of.

At a time of increasing federal overreach into local governance, workforce instability, and economic uncertainty for residents.

Now is not the time for us to disinvest in proven supports.

I urge the council to prioritize the following.

Fully restore community and connected schools.

These are prevention investments.

Second, fully fund the pay equity fund.

Third, protect and expand investments in the professional development educator fund.

Fourth, support the Breakfast Program X.

That one's only 186,000.

Fifth, maintain out of school time programming.

I lost my friends though.

That seems to be happening a lot today.

Fifth, expand out of maintain and expand out of school time programming.

Community safety is not created solely through enforcement.

It is created through investment.

As conversations around youth and education intensify across the district, I urge the council to not only respond with reactionary measures while underfunding the very systems proven to stabilize young people and their families.

Working families need relief in order to thrive.

We need affordable health care.

I'm sorry, well, we do need health care.

But affordable child care, strong schools, stable educators.

They need meals, mental health support, after school programming, and coordinated services.

These are not luxuries, they are foundational conditions for a healthy city, healthy children, and healthy families.

I urge the council to realign spending where necessary, including reviewing vacancies, non-essential contracts, discretionary consulting, and other lower impact expenditures before balancing this budget on the backs of children, educators, and working families.

This is an opportunity to produce a budget that reflects not scarcity but our priorities.

Thank you for your time, leadership, and continued commitment to district families and educators.

Um I have more in my written testimony that I will submit.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next, we'll have Lee Blackman.

Good afternoon, Councilmember Parker and uh committee staff.

My name is Lee Blackman.

I'm the director of the NAGE Federal Division.

I'm testifying on behalf of the co-chief negotiators for compensation units one and two, which include myself, Mr.

Wayne Enoch, Executive Director of ApsMe Council 20, and Mr.

Otis Johnson, National Vice President of AFGE District 14.

I appreciate the opportunity to testify before you.

However, I must be clear on the outset, we are at a critical moment that demands decisive action from the council.

The employees of compensation units one and two, which represent approximately 10,000 of the operational backburn of the District of Columbia.

These are not abstract roles.

These are the workers who ensure that the city functions every single day.

They include the employees of the Department of Public Works, who are responsible for trash removal and sanitation services, the Office of Unified Communications, who answer the 911 calls for police fire and emergency medical services, the Department of Corrections who ensure the safety and operations of our correctional facilities, the civilian support staff of the Metropolitan Police Department, who enable public safety operations to function effectively, the District Department of Transportation, who maintain our streets, sidewalks, and transportation systems, and many more.

These services are often unseen, but they are indispensable.

Without them, or if they are performed at a diminished level, the district cannot function effectively.

Every day, these workers deliver essential services that residents and visitors depend on when trash is not collected or when a 9-1-1 call is not answered, when streets are not maintained, when public safety systems are not operational, it becomes, it is because, excuse me, of the workforce.

If the workforce is destabilized, the impact will be in immediate and felt across every single ward.

There is no contingency plan that replaces the experience, institutional knowledge, and commitment of these employees.

The proposed budget includes a pay freeze and fails to provide the funding necessary to support meaningful wage negotiation.

Let me be very direct.

Without funding, collective bargaining becomes performative rather than meaningful.

Workers are being asked to absorb rising costs while the wage remains stagnant.

This is not sustainable.

These employees are already under significant financial strain.

The district's restrictive telework policy, which limits most employees to one day a week, one day a week, even if positions where additional telework could be effectively utilized, has significantly increased the financial burden and thousands of workers.

Employers are now facing higher transportation costs, and the mayor's proposed budget seeks to reduce important support such as the paid family leave benefits.

These combined policies disproportionately impact working families and lower paid employees who are already struggling to keep up with rising costs living in the district.

Due to time limitations, of course, I'm happy to pause or I can continue and provide my as provided in my written testimony.

Thank you.

We have we have it.

Um, but for the sake of time, we will move to our next uh with the.

Happy to answer any questions that you may have.

Absolutely.

Uh Julia Ward.

Good afternoon, Councilmember Parker and members of the council.

My name is Julia Ward.

I am a Ward 6 resident, a senior staff attorney at Legal Aid DC, and the chair of the Legal Aid DC Union, which is part of the national Organization of Legal Services Workers UAW Local 2320.

Thank you for the opportunity to testify today and to explain why access to justice funding and clear funding are essential, not only to our work, but to our livelihoods and to the district residents we serve.

Across the five unionized organizations that comprise NOLSW in DC, we submitted joint written testimony in support of maintaining clear funding and increasing access to justice funding.

We work every day to serve district residents experiencing poverty and systemic injustice.

We are attorneys, legal assistants, DC resource bridge intake specialists, administrative staff, and more.

Legal Aid DC's union alone represents 90 members.

More than two-thirds of us live in the district across all eight wards.

Our members are not only highly skilled professionals, but we are deeply rooted in the district community.

Our members include immigrants themselves, multi-generational Washingtonians, and community members with lived experience in poverty who bring these perspectives to their work every day.

Access to justice and clear funding are fundamental to our work.

At legal aid, ATJ funding supports eviction defense, family law and domestic violence representation, public benefits advocacy, consumer protection representation, immigrant defense, and more.

It sustains legal aid DC's core services.

Clear funding supports our efforts in defending immigrant neighbors at a time of unprecedented hostility and rapidly changing federal policies.

The mayor's proposed budget would cut ATJ funding by approximately 85%.

That single decision would be devastating to us.

ATJ makes up roughly one-third of legal aid DC's total budget.

Clear funding, which was left out of the proposed budget entirely, must at minimum be maintained at its current level.

These are not abstract numbers.

ATJ and CLEAR directly fund our jobs.

Cuts of this magnitude would result in widespread layoffs and the dismantling of legal protections for tenants, immigrants, and survivors of violence, precisely when the need for these services is growing.

Supporting these programs means protecting workers, supporting unionized labor, preserving critical services, and standing with the most vulnerable residents of the district.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you for your testimony.

How many residents are served at Wootley House and Jordan House?

If you could hit the microphone.

Each year, I think it's over 300 or 350 on average between the two programs.

For which one?

Between the two programs.

So we can only serve eight at a time at any given time.

So we each serve between, well, we serve like 150, and I think Jordan House.

Maybe serves a little bit more, maybe 160, one.

Is that fair?

Yeah.

Okay.

Per year.

You're saying you can only serve eight at a time.

At a time.

Because that's the capacity of the facility.

And that's also the regulations.

That's also the regulation.

There can't be more than eight.

The maximum is eight residents.

Do both of those facilities currently have eight individuals?

So eight at Jordan House, eight across the place.

Oh, as of today?

Yes.

Yes.

Yes, we each have eight.

Sorry.

Um, you know, I know my colleague, Councilmember Henderson is laser focused on this and the Committee on Health.

Uh, I would just say publicly that I'm skeptical of DBH's ability to bring all of these services in-house, and that it's certainly something we're looking at.

Uh, but I think your testimony is compelling in the sense that it it speaks to uh the consequences if we don't have resources to meet uh these residents and the most severe needs.

It seems like you were gonna jump in there.

Oh no, just just agreeing.

And also, too.

Like we said there with their plan with the 35 the new 35k street location.

I know they're in a performance oversight here and they had even created the plans for the design with DGS just yet, but our contracts are set to be eliminated October 1.

Yeah.

Um, thank you for your testimony.

It is something we are working on, and it is really urgent.

Um, I wanted to come quickly, and I know we have a lot of people, so I'm not gonna belabor the point.

Uh, but on the cuts to ATJ and Clear.

Um the 30 for ATJ or access to justice, uh cutting from 31 uh million to about four and a half million.

Do you have a translation to what that might mean in terms of uh residents served?

And it's fine if not, but I don't have that information in front of me right now.

I do know that my colleague is testifying later.

Um, and so I can flag that for her and hopefully she'll be able to testify to that number exactly.

Um I'm obviously testifying on behalf of our union, but our union does echo all of the sentiments that legally DC has submitted um on this this point as well.

But we can also make sure that we're getting those numbers to you in writing.

Very clear, and then clear you were on the on clear, you were um clear about the 3.5 million uh benchmark, like at a minimum, that is what you're proposing.

Is there a minimum you would say uh the council should fund access to justice?

I think at minimum we would like to maintain it at the funding that it that it should be.

I knew you were gonna say that.

Yes.

I just wanna keep in mind we have to make choices.

So while I know we want to shoot high, um it does help us when we're having to make choices and trade-offs to just have insight.

Um so if you can follow up, if there is a baseline that you think might maintain services for folk, uh that would be helpful.

Yes, of course, awesome.

Um and then um Ms.

Blackman, I wanna thank you uh for your testimony.

Similarly, um taking care of our workers is paramount, and I know that is something we are actively looking at.

Um last but certainly not least.

Uh Mr.

Jones, you talked about the net zero and the BEPS delay and making sure that we keep those uh proposals in the budget uh as a means of supporting business.

Uh I don't want to get ahead of my colleagues, but uh I can say that um uh your feedback is well taken and I I believe um it aligns with some of the conversations that we have as a council have had uh in an effort to keep making progress and support our business community.

Uh with that I'm gonna move to our next panel, but I really appreciate your testimony.

And Mr.

Jones, again, if you can submit your written testimony, that would be helpful.

Next, we have Dr.

Kofi Anuma, first vice president, AFG local 2725.

In person, Joseph Alexander, DC Department of Corrections Labor Committee.

Kimberly Harrington.

Shearer Markov, director of economic policy at the DC Fiscal Policy Institute.

She's a person.

What about this person?

Trying to go more than four and two.

Okay.

I'll just stop there.

All right.

Um, why don't you begin?

With your testimony.

Uh, Dr.

Anuma.

Chairman Parker.

Members of the committee of the whole and staff.

My name is Dr.

Kofi Onuma.

I'm the first vice president of AFGE Local 2725.

I come before you on behalf of union members, our coalition partners, and 10,000 district workers in Comp 1 and Comp 2, as well as district residents who depend on our labor.

I'll be brief on compensation because my president and many of my coalition partners will speak to it in further detail.

But I do want to say this the 127 million dollars removed during active negotiations with over 10,000 workers is not good faith bargaining.

And when you combine it with roughly two billion in reserves, it raises a simple question.

What are we prioritizing?

What I want to focus on is what this budget means for people's everyday lives.

Let's start with paid family medical leave.

The proposal to remove grandparents and siblings, that's just not a good policy.

It's a dangerous value statement because many communities, especially black and brown communities, intergenerational care is not optional.

It is survival.

Grandparents raised children when systems failed and institutions attacked us.

Siblings step in when parents are absent, incarcerated, gone, or just unable.

So whether this harm is intentional or not, the impact is real.

When you remove grandparents and siblings, you are saying those types of families don't count.

And we simply cannot accept that.

And let's ground this in who we are talking about.

These are the same workers who showed up during COVID.

When the risk was real and the outcome was uncertain.

We showed up through crisis, through recovery, and through everyday service.

And we showed up again on January 29th, 2025, when the Black Hawk helicopter and the American Airline flight 5342 collided over the Potomac River, taking 67 lives.

Workers from several DC agencies, including DC Health, responded.

We showed up to pick up the pieces and support grieving families.

That is public service.

Now let's talk about telework.

The proposal to cap telework at one day per week is not grounded in modern reality.

We are not in 1979.

Work has changed.

Workers are productive, we save time, we save money.

Tellerwork improves quality of life.

In many cases, we are doing more with less because we're not losing hours commuting.

And in this economy, telework is not a luxury.

It is a workforce stability tool.

So when we reduce compensation, limit workers who counts and rolls back family, uh, we are increasing pressure on the people who are already carrying the city.

And here's the part that we have to be honest about.

The government sets the rules, it sets compensation, it directs work, and workers cannot by law strike.

So when resources are removed during negotiation, workers have limited recourse.

And if this were any other relationship, the other side controls the resources and set the rules and shapes outcomes, we would call that relationship inequitable because it is.

So with closing, uh these budgets are moral documents.

It tells us who matters.

Thank you.

I appreciate the hard stop there.

I appreciate it.

There are some people that just kind of blow through the the bill.

No, thank you for your testimony.

Uh I will have some questions for you.

Next, we have Joseph Alexander.

Chairman and members of the council, good afternoon.

My name is Joseph Alexander, and I serve as the chairman of the fraternal order of police labor committee for the DC Department of Corrections.

I'm here today speaking on behalf of the men and women of the DC Department of Corrections, including our officers, case managers, uh, maintenance staff, records personnel, and time and attendance staff who show up every single day to keep our facilities safe, secure, and operating.

I want to speak to you directly and honestly.

The proposed pay freeze is not just the budget decision, it is the decision that will be felt inside our facilities and our housing units and the people who are already carrying the weight of the system that is stretched in.

Right now, our workforce is exhausted.

Officers are working long hours, being hailed over for overtime and returning to work with little to no recovery.

Staffing shortages continue to put pressure on every post, and despite these challenges, our members continue to perform their duties with professionalism and commitment.

However, there's a real cost to operating under these conditions.

Fatigue increases, morale declines, and the environment becomes more dangerous.

We're already seeing the consequences.

Incidents are becoming more serious, and violence inside our facilities is increasing.

And one incident and also was viciously stabbed while simply performing his duties.

That is not something that anyone should accept as part of their job.

Yet it is the reality the men and women of the DC Department of Corrections face.

Even with the reality they continue to report to duty, stay in their posts and support one another while serving the district.

When those same employees hear that a pay freeze is being proposed, it does not come across as simple financial measure.

It feels like the workforce, their risk and their uh sacrifice are not being fully recognized.

We are not all we are already facing challenges with recruitment and retention, and we are losing experienced employees at a time when we need them most.

A pay freeze will only make their situation worse by increasing vacancies, placing more strain on the workforce and then creating even greater risk within our facilities.

This issue goes beyond compensation, is about maintaining a stable, capable working uh workforce that can safely perform the responsibilities required of them.

The men and women of the DC Department of Corrections are not asking for anything unreasonable.

They are asking for fair compensation that reflects the reality of their work and the risks they take every day.

They are asking for value in a way that matches the responsibility they carry.

As chairman, I speak with our members regularly.

I hear their concerns and I see the impact this job has on their families and them.

They take pride in their work and remain committed to serving the district, but they also need to know that their efforts are recognized and supported.

I respectfully urge this council to reject the proposed pay freeze and prioritize the meaningful cost of living increases.

Investing in our workforce is essential to maintain the safety, stability, and effective operation of our system.

Thank you.

Thank you for your testimony.

Next, Kimberly Harrington.

Good afternoon, good afternoon, Councilmember Parker and Committee staff.

My name is Kimberly Harrington.

I'm a longtime D.C.

resident in Ward 4 and 20-year employee of DC government.

I'm a clinical social worker and a member and delegate of 1199 SCIU United Healthcare Workers East.

I work for Department of Avery Health School Behavioral Health Program, and I'm placed at Sword Hobson Middle School in Ward 6, where I've worked for 10 years.

I am here today regarding Mayor Bowser's fiscal year 27 budget, which includes pay freezes.

This will negatively affect DC's workforce to include social workers who provide vital services to our city's children.

At a time when more and more people cannot afford daily expenses, eliminating the overdue pay raises for DC's workforce will inevitably leave people to choose to leave DC government employment.

One aspect of my job.

Our school's mental health team started a youth mental health ambassadors club this year.

Yesterday, we took nine of our male ambassadors to a field trip at the Russell Senate building to listen to a congressional briefing on boys' and men's mental health.

We learned that while boys and men account for 80% of deaths by suicide, they account for only 20% of people who contact 988 and the crisis text line.

It is public health crises like this that are addressed by DBH clinicians providing school-based therapy and mental health education.

City leaders at all levels and areas continue to act and express that life is normal.

Just a little difficult these days.

That is manifestly untrue.

The District of Columbia continues to be under occupation by the United States military.

Our neighbors continue to be harassed and disappeared by the alphabet of federal agents, assisted by the Metropolitan Police Department, and we continue to face a public health crisis of youth suicide.

DC Council has the opportunity to ensure that DC workers will receive pay raises they work hard for, and by doing so, provide stable workforce for the city.

This will ensure that the children and families of our city continue to receive the services they need to support their well-being and mental health.

Thank you for your attention, and I'm happy to answer any questions you may have.

Thank you.

Shera Markov.

Um, Councilmember Parker and committee staff, thank you for the opportunity to testify.

My name is Shira Markov, and I'm the director of economic policy at the DC Fiscal Policy Institute.

For years, DC lawmakers have chosen to heavily invest the district's limited resources in tax breaks and subsidies for developers and corporations, claiming all residents will benefit through more economic growth and jobs.

Yet years of trickle-down economic strategies have not trickled down to DC's lowest income residents.

DC has the highest inequality rate in the country, a climbing child poverty rate, and stark racial disparities.

With DC facing a challenging economic and fiscal environment, Mayor Bowser's budget proposal doubles down on the same failed strategies.

DC can't afford another budget that squanders millions on top-down expenditures while not investing in workers, children, and the most vulnerable residents.

My testimony highlights opportunities for the council to redirect funds from inefficient tax breaks towards proven programs.

Unless we address economic disparities in DC, many residents will continue to be unable to afford the cost of living and need income supports to make ends meet.

To tackle these disparities, economic development investments need to foster inclusive growth with a focus on growing workers, families, and small businesses' income.

Instead, the mayor continues to bank on disproven trickle-down strategies to grow DC's economy, like subsidies for sports teams, even though research shows that they don't drive significant local growth, and sinking more resources into unproven tax abatement programs without third-party evaluations demonstrating that these incentives aren't just subsidizing activity that would have happened regardless.

The mayor's budget also undermines existing programs that help address racial disparities.

For example, she would cut DC workers off from accessing universal paid leave benefits if they or a loved one has a serious medical condition in FY27, even though data shows that black workers disproportionately use these types of leave.

The mayor would also strip first source requirements from office to anything, a program that so far has had no take up.

Instead of admitting that this program is ineffective and redirecting funds, the mayor wants to change program rules to entice take up at the expense of DC workers.

DC FPI identified 191 million in foregone revenue over the financial plan for the gross strategy, including tax abatements and reductions in business fees.

For example, the proposed business fee reductions would mostly be too small to impact businesses' bottom lines, but will cost DC 12 million dollars.

Eliminating this inefficient spending as identified in my written testimony could free up money for proven programs.

I'll conclude by saying that there's a stark contrast between the minimal vetting that goes into the millions expended on tax abatements, while programs with extensive research evidence like paid leave and the pay equity fund are being cut.

With DC needing every bit of spare money to plug budget holes, I urge the council to apply strict scrutiny to all of the spending under the mayor's growth strategy.

Thank you for the opportunity to testify.

I'm happy to take questions.

Thank you for your testimony.

A few quick questions.

Mr.

Alexander, what is the staffing currently at the corrections facility?

Uh if you could.

Are you talking uniform or non-uniform?

Let's say both.

And I'm asking because in your testimony, you make the point that uh foregoing these increases will worsen staffing.

And so, just curious where staffing is today.

Uniform and non-uniform approximately 800.

Um let me ask differently, how many vacancies are there?

It is about 15%.

Okay.

And I'd think the point is we'll uh take in that foregoing these increases will have an impact.

And so that's why I'm asking.

Um, Dr.

Anuma, I wanted to come to you.

You uh push back on some of the proposed changes to the leave policy for government workers.

Um, one of the agencies that my committee oversees would say that workers currently can call out an hour before their shift and request leave andor goal on leave, which makes it really difficult to plan and operate.

Uh, one of the changes being proposed would require 180 days of continuous district service in order to be eligible for this leave.

Um, can you just speak to that?

Because it seems reasonable to me that in a high need agency, we would want workers to have a little bit more than an hour of notice or to give more than an hour notice that they may be out for the next three months, for instance.

I wish people could predict when they're going to have a catastrophic injury.

Broke my shoulder, broke my wrist, ended up in PT for uh extensive period of time.

I didn't have that on my calendar.

It wasn't on my bingo card.

So needing to call out sometimes an hour before is something that we just cannot plan for.

So it should stay, it shouldn't be tinkered with what you're doing is suggesting that we can imagine that we have insight into how our health is going to come into peril at any second.

Okay, that's fair.

Uh and then on telework.

Sure.

It's my understanding that the policy is more so extended to independent agencies.

This one day a week telework.

Um, and uh what I take from your testimony is that I'm assuming there should be.

Are you suggesting it should revert back to full telework for all government workers or just those in independent agencies?

Um I'm suggesting that I'm sure there's gonna be a bevy of opinions here, but I know that when we had two days of telework, and I've been very vocal about this outside of this council, that that was a more of a balanced approach.

If you break in the week out into 20%, you got 60% where we're in office, and then you have 40% when we're able to go to work in our pajamas, essentially from our computer, and we're saving time because we're not commuting uh back and forth up the beltway to wherever we have to go to do these things, and we end up working longer oftentimes uh because we are starting early earlier, we're taking less breaks, and we're finishing those last things at the end of the day that we often would close our laptops when we're in the office and leave.

So the one day is restrictive, and I would echo what uh Lee Blackman said it is it is it is the the least amount that we can do.

We can do a whole lot better, especially in this economy where gas is $5 almost a gallon.

Six, six.

It's it's insane.

Like we we have to do something to balance our budget and stop treating the employees.

I just want to make sure you're advocating for all government workers to have those two days.

I would advocate for the people under my purview understood.

Um, at minimum of two days, okay.

Thank you.

Um then uh for our friends at the DC fiscal policy institute, I think your points are well taken.

We've heard from several others, and I appreciate the focus on data.

Uh one thing I would just flag, I noticed you had in your materials the supermarket tax incentive expansion, which I believe is being used to ideally expand food services east of the river.

And so while it's framed as a corporate uh benefit, some might argue it's needed in order to allure, you know, secure a grocery store east of the river.

What might you say to that?

Yeah, I mean, I I understand the framing.

I think I know that's the intention of the uh the incentive.

I mean, what we've seen is this this credit has been in place for years, and we still have a lot of people who don't have access to grocery stores east of the river.

And so I think what we're trying to say is instead of putting more money towards this and changing the rules, we need to really rethink what we're doing.

We absolutely believe this is important that we need to make sure there's adequate grocery access east of the river, but to just sort of throw more money at it without like actually figuring out what we're doing is addressing the problem, doesn't make sense.

I think what we need to do is really listen to the community and overhaul this in a way that actually makes sense and truly brings sustainable options to East of the River.

Thank you for that.

Uh and I agree with you in many ways.

Uh uh we'll leave it there for the sake of time, and we'll go to our next panel.

Thank you.

Next, we have to executive director of community services agency of the Metropolitan and Washington Council, AFIL, CIO.

Apologies if I mispronounced your name.

Say it again.

SIG.

Okay.

Abi Shakur, Coalition Manager of D.C.

Community Wealth Builders.

Arthur Slade, Vice President of Ask Me Local 2743.

Carolyn Pryor, Director of Policy and Power Building at Empower It.

Yeah, I think that's a good question.

I'm sorry, just we are going to do a switch while you are testifying, but SIG, you can proceed with your testimony.

Great.

Good afternoon.

My name is Sigmais.

I am a Ward 5 resident, and I'm testifying today as the executive director of the Community Services Agency of the Metropolitan Washington Council, AFL CIO.

At CSA, we work to empower working families to make their communities better places to live, work, raise their families, and retire.

Some of our programs include an emergency assistance fund for workers experiencing economic hardship, workforce development programs, and trainings.

We help hundreds of union workers, DC residents and their families navigate some of the most challenging days of their lives.

And having fully funded social safety net programs helps keep DC workers and their families in their homes, the lights on, food in the fridge, and have access to opportunities for economic advancement.

I am deeply concerned with the mayor's proposed local budget that cuts millions and millions of dollars from our social safety net programs while simultaneously increasing the police budget.

Adding more and more police to our streets is a line from the current federal administration's playbook, and it makes DC less safe for DC residents, especially black and brown residents, people who are immigrants, our youth in historically marginalized communities.

The grossly inflated MPD budget as proposed with the increase must be cut, and those funds should be used for essential programs that actually keep DC residents safe.

We also need a wealth tax so that the wealthiest residents pay their fair share.

More than any other bill, workers who come to CSA for help are seeking rental assistance.

And I strongly urge you all to restore and expand funding for the emergency rental assistance program.

At a time when DCA is experiencing one of the highest unemployment rates in the country, this budget does not adequately address the challenges faced by DC working families today and in the months to come.

Today, the cost of living is too high.

Today, thousands of residents are struggling to access housing, pay their bills, afford healthcare transportation, and the list goes on.

So I urge you to invest in the residents of DC and restore the child tax credit, make the earned income tax credit whole, restore funding for the pay equity fund, increase funding for housing vouchers and programs and aimed at homelessness prevention, make no cuts and keep the DC paid family leave program, fully fund raises and union workers' collective bargaining agreements, fully fund uh the AOG's budget for uh workplace rights and domestic worker grant programs, fully fund access to justice grants, protect food assistance for those who are at risk of losing their SNAP benefits amongst the federal program changes, make Metrobus free because you know what good is a job, a training program, health care, enjoying a city park if you can't afford to get there.

CSA is a proud member of the Fair Budget Coalition and supports their recommendations as outlined in their FY27 budget platform.

Mayor Bowser's budget as proposed for FY27 is a moral failure.

It's committing policy violence to DC residents and does not protect the most vulnerable populations of our communities and working people or adequately fund necessary programs that make it possible for us to survive and thrive in this city.

Thank you.

Uh thank you.

Apologies.

All good, I'll say it.

Chairman Mendelson, my name is East Peterson Trujillo, and I'm a Ward 4 resident and the interim organizing director at DC Jobs with Justice.

To call Mayor Bowser's FY27 budget an attack on low income and working people is a vast understatement.

This budget cuts services and opportunities for working people at every turn.

Access to justice over the past two decades has provided crucial legal services to low and moderate income residents on housing, family law, domestic violence, economic security, public benefits, education, consumer protection, employment, and more.

DC Jobs with Justice has the pleasure of conducting outreach to tenants facing eviction, communicating their rights, and supporting them in accessing legal resources under these grants.

Chairman Mendelssohn, you have invested in access to justice in past budgets, and we are grateful for that support.

And this year we encourage the same and a council-wide effort to restore funding.

The council must also restore the outreach grant cuts for the OAG, which are the only program of their kind.

Both of these grants should be restored fully within the Judiciary Committee by repurposing the $89 million in new MPD funds.

Fund access to justice at $31.8 million, and OEG worker and domestic worker outreach grants at 1.1 million.

Over the past year, we've brought you the stories of thousands of alliance health care patients who lost their coverage.

Our total ask for alliance health care restoration is at least $54.9 million to remove the moratorium on new enrollees and bring the eligibility up to 215% of the federal property level.

This also includes restoring medical care, including specialty care and non-emergency transportation for all adults.

Council must also restore DC's paid family leave program, which grants workers paid time away from work to heal and care for themselves and their families.

The mayor's proposed changes eliminate medical and family leave benefits for FY27, permanently cap the maximum weekly benefit at $1,000, and permanently reduce benefit length.

Council must reverse these changes and restore full benefits, which have already been paid for by an employer tax.

Much like with paid family leave, the mayor swept the funds from the Sustainable Energy Trust Fund, which are dedicated to go to low and middle income Washingtonians to provide free energy efficiency upgrades to their homes and should be restored with at least 10 million dollars.

To fund all of these programs, additional revenue is needed.

We urge the council not to shy away from taxing DC's wealthiest community members who benefit from the incredible city we have because of working people who operate our trains, work in restaurants, teach our children, care for our sick, keep DC clean, construct buildings, and more.

DC's wealthiest residents pay a smaller share of their income and taxes, and wealthy people just received a huge tax break from the federal government.

DC council should create taxes to adequately tax investment income and inherited wealth, including a wealth proceeds tax, income taxes on the highest DC earners, and capital gains tax changes.

To make business taxes more fair, council should implement a business activity tax, and council should also consider a land value tax to create a dedicated revenue source for Wamata.

Thank you.

Sorry to cut you off.

Thank you for your testimony.

I understand Sam Bonar's testifying for Abi Shakur.

Hello, thank you.

Yeah, we switched uh earlier, but appreciate you being flexible.

Um I just submitted my longer testimony, but I'm gonna try and do a shorter version here now.

So thank you, Chairman.

Um, Sam Bonner again to testify on behalf of community wealth builders, uh grassroots volunteer coalition, uh building locally rooted wealth community ownership, and an economic development strategy uh that uh is about local uh financial infrastructure and not just corporate incentives.

We're asking for two um high-level things.

Uh, one would be a dedicated FTE.

Um we've made asset a couple different places, but I think the CFO makes a lot of sense, but also the city administrators' office uh to do the interagency coordination uh to move forward from the studies of the public bank and the land bank that the city did uh in 2020.

Uh, working across the different agencies that might be involved, or that might, you know, be a starter version of it.

Secondly, as we spoke at the CFO hearing, I think it would be great to have a BSA subtitled Giving the Mayor Clear Legal Authority to Direct Those Agencies to design and begin to plan and even organize what it might look like as well as to implement the suggestions in the study that could be started without any legislative things.

So again, not another study that goes nowhere, but an actual plan and um you know proposals uh to move forward for whatever legislative changes are needed.

To take a step back though, you know, DC's economic development strategy keeps coming back to the same attract and retain motto, right?

Begging corporations to locate here, trying to protect them with tax breach, counting the jobs at the ribbon cutting uh and calling it a success.

But we don't really follow through when they break their promises.

And a lot of projects when we do the cost per job don't actually make it seem like it's a good deal for the public.

Corporate incentives are fragile, they fuel inequality, which is bad for the economy, and they breed resentment in communities that absorb the disruption without seeing the benefits.

The alternative is infrastructure, financial infrastructure rooted locally, that the city actually owns, and that the community owns.

Uh DGS did a study of all of our vacant land, um, and you know, the land bank with a real disposition authority that gets all these properties, two thousand three point five billion dollars worth of assessments, which they did back in those at least the numbers back then, it would be great to get those properties back on the tax rolls faster and through a process that's more transparent than the 12 to 38 months that it usually takes.

Public bank, we already talked about, you know, we manage tons of money.

Um, you know, we buy uh we we pay for other people to buy our debt service or to buy our debt, and we might save a lot of money by uh creating financial infrastructure that may so we can buy some of our own municipal bonds.

And even if we didn't, uh the Bank of North Dakota, which has been operating for 100 years reports 192 million in net income back in 2023.

Uh, this stuff works.

Um, and given that the federal government is pulling back and we have all these vulnerabilities, uh, we really think it's a necessity to start to invest in this future forward uh financial infrastructure.

So we're hoping for an FTE and a BSA subtitle.

I mean, I have to cut you off.

No worries.

Thank you, though.

Um, Arthur Slade.

Good afternoon, Council Chair Mendelssohn and members of the committee.

My name is Arthur Slade, vice president of ASME local 2743.

And today I'm here to advocate for union members and request that the council keep intact the paid family leave act with 320 hours, as well as the definition of grandparents and siblings be included in that legislation.

I'm also advocating for the restoration for the FY26 amended budget of 70 million dollars and the FY27 budget of approximately 127 million dollars.

That total figure is approximately 197 million dollars that has been budgeted and allocated in previous budgeting cycle in 1978, the CMPA.

That money's for what?

That money is for the workforce investment fund.

Okay, okay.

In 1978, the CMPA was designated and declared in the District of Columbia that collective bargaining was in the best interest of the city.

And now we've seen attrition in comp units one and two, as well as the growth in executive level management within the District of Columbia government.

I would also ask that the council audit certain management level employees who receive bonuses directly prior to the release of the mayor's proposed budget for FY27.

This was prior to the April 10th or April 12th release.

Also, I'm also advocating for the union members to have telework days as mentioned in previous testimony and some of the uh city administrators' concerns this morning about independent agencies.

We have several union members that are not at independent agencies, and we're looking to expand that to two days a week because, as the mayor has previously said, Vision Zero was designed to control the pollution levels within the District of Columbia.

And I think that that will be helpful and to ensuring that we have telework capabilities as well as minimizing costs for workers within the district with car fees, taxes for parking, and things of that nature.

I also want to bring to light some of the city administrators' comments about the uh liquidity issues coming out of the pandemic, and I would like to note that $2.4 billion was approximately uh allocated to the ARP plan from the Biden administration, and there now has been 60 days of liquidity issues that you brought up earlier that typically we exceeded that, but now we're down to 60 days, and we were able to previously borrow funds on a short-term basis until those on a short-term basis until the revenue projections were filled with the District of Columbia tax gains.

And I would just hope that the council would take into consideration the overall impact that this is going to have on district residents who work with the District of Columbia and our property tax owners.

Thank you for your allowing me to testify and available for any questions.

Thank you, Mr.

Sladen.

I do have a copy of your statement.

Caroline Pryor.

Good afternoon, Chairman Mendelson and staff.

My name is Caroline Pryor.

I'm Director of Policy and Power Building at Empowered.

We come to testify before the council today in solidarity in coalition with those who fight for the city, the Fair Budget Coalition, the Under 3 DC Coalition, the Youth Power and Safety Collective, and more.

We could not have predicted in full all the ways this past year would test DC.

We expected a federal occupation, but it came swiftly and brutally.

We expected to be under hostile federal microscope, but it brought with it a broader culture of fear and preemptive compliance than we anticipated.

Last year, facing a recession and hate filled federal directives, you were asked to budget for the unexpected.

How well did last year's budget shelter DC's residents?

How did it enable or allow the federal government to profit and police over people?

What lessons are we taking from that experience?

This year, our schools have seen students criminalized and harassed by local and federal law enforcement, have had to stretch budgets to cover greater needs, been forced to hold students, educators, and families alike through great trauma.

We've seen families fleeing, teachers desperately organizing mutual aid and pro bono access, social safety net shrinking, and against all odds, we've also seen students in schools thrive and build communities of joy learning and care.

But that takes time, energy, and resources that the mayor's FY27 proposed budget depletes further.

Instead, how can we set ourselves up for success?

In addition to the suggestions from young people and the youth pride and safety collective, and in addition to the Fair Budget Coalition's full FY27 platform, Empowered Educators are asking you to protect student joy.

And I'll also note that my numbers are in my written testimony, but for sake of time, I'm just gonna speed through.

Now more than ever, we need to expand opportunities for young people as opposed to limiting them, replace and expand the bridge the gap fund for experiential learning, replace funding for DPR cuts, maintain proposed out-of-school time funding levels, and implement youth programming suggestions, support the educator workforce.

The backbone of our education system requires trusted adults and educator professionals whom the budget must not leave behind, replace and fully fund the pay equity grant fund, replace the educator wellness grants, implement a targeted educator retention fund, and replace funding for DCPS immigrant educator visa pathways, as well as implementing a professional development fund, strengthen the ecosystem and school-based services.

A whole child approach requires a whole school approach.

Reverse the elimination of community and connected school cuts, strengthen trust by transferring safe passage out of DMPSJ and into Austin, undo the cuts to Sunbucks, the alternative school breakfast program, fully fund the child care subsidy, and protect student mental health with the school-based behavioral health program and champs.

Last year's budget made the decision to kick the can down the road by not raising revenue.

Had we implemented the BAT or other progressive revenue raisers three years ago, we would not have to contemplate such brutal cuts this year.

So we must think of DC's future and make the responsible choice to ask a little more of those who can afford it.

Thank you.

Thank you, Ms.

Prayer.

I think that's uh everyone for this panel.

I do not have questions for any of you.

Thank you, though, for your testimony.

Uh Gabriela Silva, senior program manager with PAVE.

Heidi Ellis, Director DC LGBTQ plus budget coalition.

Kate Crossen Crosson, Director, Department of Behavioral Health Psychologists Union Locals 3758.

Kenyatta Smith.

Rachel Feinstein, who is director of DC government and community relations with the Jewish Community Relations Council.

Farah Fossey, who is community development director with Empower DC.

And if she's here, we'll pass next panel.

So we'll stop with Farah Fossey.

Ms.

Silva, you're first.

Good afternoon, Chairman Mendelson and committee staff.

My name is Gabriela Silva, and I'm the senior program manager at PAVE and award to resident.

Today, four members of the DC community sit before you.

If we replace this panel with four DC students, only one would be on grade level in math.

If someone stepped away from that panel, only one would be on grade level for literacy.

Let that sink in.

For every group of children you meet, only one out of three is on grade level in literacy, and only one out of four is on grade level for math.

So what do we do about this?

Well, luckily we don't have to invent the wheel.

We know what works, and now we just have to fund it.

And in some cases, it's free.

Today I'll highlight the key investments that are backed by research, which pay parent leaders have advocated for tirelessly this budget season.

The data is clear.

Research shows that HIT is one of the most effective ways to improve student achievement, improving DC students' math and reading proficiency, as well as their attendance.

We're grateful to see the mayor's proposed FY27 budget includes $3 million for HIT, and we're asking the council to maintain this investment.

In addition to supporting academic achievement through tutoring, we need to make sure our students receive the best possible instruction in the classroom.

This is achieved through ongoing professional development for educators in instructional best practices such as the science of reading.

We know what works to support teachers in providing high-quality evidence-based instruction.

And we already have programs like the DCPS Reading Clinic and the Letters Training at Friendship Public Charter Schools that are doing the work and have seen results.

What we need now is the funding to implement the recommendations of the early literacy and math task forces and to expand the programs that are making differences so that all teachers across both DCPS and the charter sector have access to ongoing professional development so they can provide the best possible instruction.

We must demonstrate our commitment to ensuring a strong curriculum is used in every classroom by increasing transparency around where high-quality instructional materials, HQIM, are being used across the district.

Pay of Parent Leaders are asking the council to update the implementation of the Early Literacy Education Task Force Recommendations Act to require Aussie to collect and publish data on literacy curriculum used by each LEA for all grades K through 12, indicating which curriculum meet their standards for high quality instructional materials.

They are also asking the council to create similar legislation to implement the Math Task Force's recommendations that all LEAs adopt HQIM for math courses in all grades K through 12, requiring Aussie to collect and publish data on the curricula used by LEAs and whether or not they meet the standards for HKIM.

Aussie's reporting should be easily accessible to the public so families can use this information as they decide which school to choose for their children.

This is a no-cost ask that will make a big difference to our kids as we ensure that all students are being taught with high quality evidence-based curriculum.

Pave parent leaders have students in both DCPS and DC public charter schools, and they were concerned to learn that in the proposed budget, charter schools were receiving approximately two thousand less per student than their peers at DCPS.

Parents want to know that wherever their children go to school, they have the resources to thrive.

This requires equitable funding across sector, closing the gaps between DCPS and DC public charter schools to ensure all students have access to the funding that their schools need to thrive.

Pave parent leaders were also deeply concerned about their drastic cuts to the school-based mental health program.

And I'm looking at the time, so you can refer to their feelings on that in my written testimony.

Thank you so much for the opportunity to testify.

Thank you, Ms.

Sylvan, good to see you again.

Heidi Ellis, who is at the table.

Hi.

Good afternoon, Chairman and Committee staff.

My name is Heidi Ellis.

My pronouns are she her, and I'm here on behalf of the DC LGBTQ plus budget coalition, a group of 20 plus LGBT LGBTQ plus led and serving organizations and individuals working to advocate for better policies and investments for queer residents of DC.

Today, today I'm here because the mayor's proposed FY27 budget is not simply a fiscal document.

It is a statement about who the city believes deserves safety, dignity, housing, health care, and opportunity.

Across the country, we are witnessing coordinated attacks on LGBTQ people, particularly transgender and gender expansive people through efforts to strip access to health care, restrict employment protections, erase identity from schools and public life, and dismantle diversity and equity initiatives.

In this moment, Washington, D.C.

has an opportunity and a responsibility to lead.

Our coalition submitted a detailed priority letter, but today I want to highlight some key areas of focus that require urgent action from the council.

Around housing and youth homelessness, the proposed cuts to the youth homelessness system are deeply concerning.

The FY27 budget reduces funding for extended transitional housing and transitional housing programs by more than 2.2 million dollars combined, eliminating at least 28 youth housing beds in a system that's already operating at capacity.

We are especially concerned about the impact on LGBTQ specific programs operated by organizations like SMILE and the Wanda Austin Foundation, as LGBTQ youth represent 30% 37% of unhoused youth ages 18 to 24 in DC, according to the point in time count.

We are asking the council to restore the funding for extended transitional housing and transitional housing programs, protect LGBTQ specific specific housing beds, and affirm housing providers from disproportionate reductions, prevent the loss of these 28 beds, and ensure DHS provides transparency and contingency planning regarding how these proposed reductions would impact youth housing, youth trying to access housing.

Lastly, I'll just close and I submitted my testimony, but I'll close with the major thing that we're asking for.

After the mayor's office of LGBTQ affairs was consolidated, we lost over $600,000 in grant dedicated grants for the queer community.

We are asking to establish a fund so that does not allow major dedicated dollars to be cut just by the stroke of a pen by whoever is in charge.

We want to establish a private public partnership with an organization like the Greater Washington Community Foundation to protect these dollars and also have the ability to build on these dollars over the years.

Thank you.

And be sure to give us a copy of your statement.

Yeah, I submitted it.

Okay, good.

Kate Crowson, who is online.

Yeah.

Hello.

My good afternoon.

I am Dr.

Kate Crowson.

I'm representing concerns of the DBH Psychologist Union.

I've been a clinical psychologist working in the public sector in DC for over 15 years.

The current 2027 proposed budget does not allow for necessary increases in the salary for our psychologists employed by the district to ensure that we're able to compete with comparable facilities in the DMB area and the federal government.

This non-competitive salary has been identified by DBH leadership as a significant issue in our ability to recruit well-trained psychologists and maintain our current experienced psychologists.

The union has collected data to compare the salaries, which have shown that DBH significantly underpays their psychologists by tens of thousands of dollars a year compared to other jobs in the area.

Specifically, a DBH psychologist's maximum salary is several thousand dollars lower than many starting salaries at federal government agencies or neighboring state government positions.

The psychology union covers clinical forensic neuropsychologists that work throughout DC public schools, DC courts, outpatient centers, the DC jail, and St.

Elizabeth Hospital.

The hospital psychology department's vacancy rate is currently the highest it's been in the last decade.

Currently, St.

Elizabeth has a third of their psychology positions vacant, and that's been the case for over two years now.

That means less people to provide treatment, assess safety risks, carry out necessary evaluations, create behavior plans, promote staff and patient safety.

The current psychologists still have to complete all the tasks necessary for the safety and security of the patients and the community, yet with your psychologists doing the work and creating a cycle of delay and burnout.

Despite our high staff vacancies, the malhealth treatment needs in the district and the admissions in the hospitals are only increasing.

Nationwide and in DC, the need for competency evaluations have increased every year.

Competency evaluations are used by the criminal court to determine if an individual is able to proceed in their legal situation.

The district has a wait list for individuals to be transferred to the hospital, which uh to be able to undergo competency evaluations, which places significant pressure on psychologists across the district because psychologists are the sole providers of competency evaluations in the DC court, the DC jail systems, and the majority of providers of competency evaluations and outpatient and inpatient programs.

Along with this competency crisis and the wait list from the DC jail is a trickle-down effect impacting mental health consumers in the district who are not involved in the legal system.

Patients remain at local hospitals that are only meant to be short-term.

Bed space that used to be reserved for civil admissions coming from these neighboring hospitals is now being reallocated to make space for pretrial individuals.

This increases the length of time consumers remain on a wait list, which decreases bed space of other hospitals and their ability to serve community members in acute psychiatric crisis.

So this lack of space also puts a burden on the community, families, and providers, and the amount of time.

Yes.

Yes, thank you.

Kenyana Smith.

Rachel Feinstein.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, Chairman Mendelssohn and staff.

I'm a WordSix resident and director of DC government and community relations with the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington.

We work with over 100 Jewish organizations in our region, including nearly 20 in the district alone, and we advocate on many issues, such as supporting the pay equity fund, advocating for more affordable housing, and for legal representation of those most vulnerable in our community, immigrants and refugees.

My testimony today will focus on support for reinstating the safe and secure DC grant program.

The program, which was authorized at 750,000 in FY26, provides critical funding to nonprofits at risk of hate crimes to bolster their security and pay for security personnel.

Over the last two years, the fund has dispersed about 1.25 million dollars in funds.

In FY26, 12 nonprofits received $750,000 in grants, ranging in amounts between 40,000 to a little over 100,000.

Over 50 security guards, and enhancements to physical security were covered by these funds.

This may sound unsettling, but the world we live in today obligates us as a society to invest in these measures.

Jewish organizations and nonprofits such as the Metropolitan AME Church, another grantee would be unable to run their preschools, host food bank and clothing drives, offer know your rights trainings, and more without adequate security, much of which is funded by the Safe and Secure DC program.

This program fills a gap left by the federal program, which intermittently covers costs of security personnel.

And a new note, it also provides vital funding for security for nonprofits who are concerned with new terms and conditions that have been placed for the federal nonprofit security grant program.

As of April last year, anyone who accepts a federal grant agrees to new terms set by Department of Homeland Security that they must eliminate any DEI or DEIA programming or discriminatory equity ideology.

And there are also different interpretations regarding whether grantees would be required to fully cooperate with federal immigration officials.

And these terms are simply unacceptable for many DC nonprofits, as is the associated risk of federal enforcement if found to be in violation of these terms.

I request on behalf of the DC Jewish community and with all nonprofits at risk of hate crimes to reinstate the safe and secure DC grant programming program, funding it at a minimum of 850,000.

That's a hundred thousand dollar increase from the 750, and it reflects the amount of supplemental funds that were provided by DMPSJ earlier this year.

Thanks for your consideration of this request.

I know it's a very difficult time for the district, and we want to ensure that our community continue to live fully Jewishly and with pride.

Thank you.

Thank you, Ms.

Feinstein.

Farah Fassi.

Good afternoon, Chairman Mendelssohn and staff.

My name is Farrah Fosse, and I'm the director of community development at Empower DC, a community organizing group focused on racial and economic justice.

The budget you received from the mayor, the budget that we as DC residents are being asked to take on is an attack on low income and working class families in DC.

We know that it will cause homelessness, displacement, and health equities.

Said differently, low income folks, primarily back residents and immigrant people of color will suffer and some will die.

This is a choice.

Wealthy residents in DC have more money than ever.

The Trump tax cuts in the one big beautiful bill transferred wealth upwards.

DC can recoup some of that money to ensure the health and safety of residents without impact on these taxpayers.

Advocates like me keep hearing that we need to buckle up and be ready for hard choices.

The reality is that we've been buckled up.

Our airbags are deployed, oxygen masks are on, all of that.

While DC has strong safety net programs, low income folks are making hard choices every day.

In our access to justice funded work, we're constantly triaging.

Empower DC brings resources to residents in wards five, seven, and eight who are facing eviction and displacement to ensure they can get legal services.

We never get to even half the people on our list.

When we do reach someone, we let them know they can get general legal advice, we can talk through their rights, resources, and options, but they may have to represent themselves in court because there are simply not enough attorneys.

We're already stretched thin.

Eviction prevention, which is homelessness prevention through access to justice and emergency rental assistance is critical and doable.

DC can care for our communities.

We can stem increasing inequality and displacement and reverse cuts to the social safety net, but the council will need to raise new revenue.

Pass a wealth proceeds tax.

DC significantly undertaxes investment income and inherited wealth, allowing the wealthiest households to pay a smaller effective share of their income.

A 2% tax would raise $122 million.

Increase marginal income taxes on DC's highest income earners.

A millionaire in DC pays nearly the same marginal income tax as a teacher or a nurse.

Making these rates both progressive is overdue and straightforward.

This could generate 109 million dollars annually while only touching those who can contribute.

Create a business activity tax.

Many professional service firms profit immensely from being in DC, but they pay little to nothing in business taxes due to a federal loophole where if owners live outside of DC, they don't pay these taxes.

This would be more fair to all DC businesses and create a land value tax.

Metro is the only major transportation authority in the country without a dedicated source of revenue.

And every year, Wamada has to come here and beg for money or consider service cuts, layoffs, and hikes.

A land value tax would tax the land of properties that gain value from high quality public services, including Metro, near them, returning some of the publicly created value back to the system.

Over time, after it becomes implemented, it would raise 505 million dollars annually.

Thank you, Ms.

Fosse.

Thank you.

I do not have any questions for you all.

Thank you very much for your testimony.

Some of you I have seen at other hearings, so I appreciate your testimony again today.

Aaron Larkin, who's director of access to justice unit at the DC courts.

Chris Weiss, who is with the executive director of the DC Environmental Network.

Aisha Williams, president of AFGE or FGFG Local 2978.

County Julian, who is president AFG local 2725.

All right, we will stop there.

Ms.

Larkin.

Good afternoon.

I'm Aaron Larkin.

I'm the director of the DC Courts Access to Justice Unit, and I'm here in support of the Access to Justice Initiative.

Every day at the DC courts, we see people facing evictions, domestic violence, child custody disputes, probate issues, and most of the time they're facing it alone with no attorney by their side.

And that's because in civil cases, unlike in criminal cases, there's no right to an appointed counsel.

And so if you can't afford to hire your own lawyer, you go without.

For example, in eviction cases in DC, about 88% of tenants go to court without a lawyer, whereas 95% of landlords are represented.

In domestic violence cases, child custody cases, divorce, the vast majority of the parties on both sides are going it alone and don't have a lawyer.

Every day in court, we see the consequences of the lack of legal representation.

People struggle to understand their rights, navigate court procedures, and effectively present their cases in matters that affect their housing, family, safety, and finances.

The DC courts are working to make the justice system more accessible to people.

In 2023, for example, we created the access to justice unit to reduce barriers and improve access to court services and information.

Last year alone, our self-help centers served more than 10,000 unrepresented litigants.

We've also expanded efforts to encourage pro bono service, and each year recognize the thousands of lawyers who volunteer their services through the capital pro bono honor roll.

Recently, the courts authorized a new community justice worker model that will allow legal service organizations to train and supervise trusted community members to help residents with legal matters, expanding help for underserved communities.

But the DC courts cannot close the access to justice gap alone.

In fact, we're facing extraordinary challenges.

Court filings have risen.

In fact, last year, filings in superior court increased 19% since 2023, and we have had flat funding since 1993 or 2023.

In addition, we have persistent judicial vacancies where two out of nine court of appeal seats and six and 13 of the 62 superior court seats remain unfilled.

In this environment, the access to justice initiative is more important than ever.

By funding legal services for low-income residents in civil, family, domestic violence, and probate cases, it helps close that justice gap.

It also supports online on-site legal resource centers that provided services to more than 2,500 people last year.

Thank you for your continued support of this important work.

Thank you, Miss Lark.

Chris Weiss.

Good morning or good afternoon.

Environmental colleagues, Chairperson Mendelson, other council members and staff.

My name is Chris Weiss.

I direct the activities of the DC Environmental Network.

At the DOEE DCSEU budget hearing, former council member Mary Chase started the hearing with this comment.

Again this year, the mayor proposes to sweep funds from the Anakasti River Cleanup and Protection Act and divert funds from the sustainable energy trust fund.

These are special purpose funds to be used for the purposes the council prescribes.

But with the mayor's sweeps and diversions, not only are the important intended benefits lost, but the council intent is thwarted.

The public hoodwinked, and we actually wind up losing money.

For example, with the SETF, we stand to lose a significant amount of federal matching funds because we didn't provide our local share.

We forsake millions of dollars, and as one person observed, leaving free money on the table is negligence.

I would go further, it is reckless and disgraceful.

This has to stop.

End of quote.

Mayor Bowser's cuts to DOE last year were massive at about 24%.

This year the mayor has cut DOE programs another 12%.

DOE Director Jackson testified that DOE's FY27 proposed operating budget was 181 million dollars, which by the way includes only 17.4 million in local funds.

This 181 million is only 0.01425% of the 12.7 billion general uh general fund budget.

This 181 million, primarily made up of special purpose revenue funds and federal grants represents just 0.00853 of the proposed 21.2 billion gross operating budget for the district.

The truth is for the last three years, this council has not done enough to support the programs that clean our air and water, restore our tree canopy, and reduce the carbon emissions that are killing our planet.

With little exception, the council has chosen not to do this hard work to reverse the hundreds of millions of dollars that have been swept.

Our environmental agency has been primarily self-funded with SPRFs, federal grants, and a very limited amount of local funds.

When Mayor Browser raids sustainability programs, she uses it to pay for programs in every council committee.

This council has chosen each time, with some exception, to accept the SWEP funds and not figure out a budget-wide strategy to make our environmental health programs whole again.

If the council does not work together this year to restore a meaningful amount of the hundreds of millions of dollars that have been swept by the mayor, far too many of our most important programs will be in danger of disappearing.

Thank you very much.

And you've got 16 seconds left.

Thank you, Mr.

Watson.

I have your full statement here.

Umisha Williams.

Good afternoon, Chairman Meldelson and members of the committee of the whole.

Thank you for the opportunity to testify today.

My name is Aisha Williams, and I am president of AFGE Local 2978.

I represent bargaining unit employees at the DC Department of Health and the Department of Energy and Environment.

I am here today on behalf of my members in opposition to the mayor's removal of funds to the cost of living adjustments in the FY27 proposed budget and financial plan.

These proposed cuts directly impact our union and countless public service workers who continuously serve the residents, visitors, and those doing business in the district.

Our members perform the essential work that keeps government running every day, delivering critical services and supporting the operations residents depend on.

As the backbone of district government, their hard work and expertise ensure agencies function smoothly and public needs are met without interruption.

Their work is vital to daily operations and the stability, safety, and well-being of the community.

Yet, despite this indispensable role, this proposed budget has turned its back on the very same hardworking people that keep the city going.

The mayor's decision is contributing to the dystopian reality many families are already facing.

Across the community, people are being forced to make impossible choices between filling their gas tanks and putting food on the table.

Wage increases are no longer a luxury.

They are a necessity to keep pace with the rising cost of living.

In today's economy, it is simply not feasible to live on wages that fail to reflect inflation and the true cost for survival.

For these reasons, this budget must be revised to ensure more equitable and effective reallocation of funds that reflects these urgent economic realities.

Labor priorities must be considered to guarantee a fair distribution of resources that supports workers and addresses the increasing financial strain on families.

Our members deserve a budget that keeps them in mind and doesn't exclude them.

Thank you.

Thank you, Ms.

Williams.

After the local 2978, what departments is that?

I'm sorry, you say AFG DC Department of Health and Department of Energy and Environment.

Thank you.

Mr.

Gilliam.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, Chairman Middleton and members of the committee of the whole.

My name is County Gilliam.

I'm the president of AFG Local 2725.

I represent district government employees across multiple agencies who carry out essential frontline operations throughout this government.

I want to be I want to be clear about what is occurring in this budget.

The proposed fiscal year 2027 budget removes 127 million dollars in funding for future pay increases tied to collective bargaining and workplace workforce compensation.

That is not a technical adjustment.

It is a policy decision that directly impacts approximately 10,000 district government employees covered on the conversations unit one and two collective bargaining agreements.

These are the employees who inspect buildings, protect public health, investigate dangerous conditions, maintain housing standards, inspect food establishments, protect the environment, and ensure that essential government functions continue to operate every single day.

Through this proposed budget, the executive is asking labor in the council to believe there's not enough money available to support worker compensation.

However, that claim does not align with the district's own fiscal realities or the statements made publicly by this administration.

During the mayor's budget presentation to the council, she stated that DC is not broken and the district has approximately two billion dollars in reserves.

If the district maintains approximately $2 billion in reserves, then the council must ask why frontline district government employees are being required to absorb the burden of budget balancing while those reserve levels remain untouched.

At the same time, the district continues to devote substantial funding towards economic development incentives, downtime revitalization initiatives, tax abatements, and other policies intended to stimulate private commercial activity, while workers are simultaneously being told there's no funding available for conversation.

We constantly hear concerns that businesses are struggling and that downtown commercial activity must be revitalized.

However, what is really addressed is why working class district employees and their families are expected to absorb the financial burden of those initiatives.

If the district wants business activity to return to pre-pandemic levels, then commercial rental costs for these spaces must also return to pre-pandemic levels.

I'm gonna have to condense my uh testimony, but you should have both uh both sections of my testimony.

Thank you.

I do right here in my right hand.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr.

Gilliam.

Um, Mr.

Gilliam, you said you uh your local represents across multiple agencies.

That is correct.

I got members at RC, Rental Housing Commission, Department of Health, uh, Department of Energy Environment, DLCP, and DOB.

And I also have DC Housing Authority, but they're an independent government agency.

Yeah.

All right, thank you.

Thank you, each of you for your testimony.

Alexandra Scott.

Gisela Hurtato, who is senior program director of EHS Community Sites at UPO.

Sharika Brownley, senior program director for in school sites at UPO.

Yanis Martinez, teacher with the United Planning Organization.

Alexander Scott's not here.

Microphone.

Good afternoon, Council Chairman, um, Chairman Delson and member of the council.

Thank you for the opportunity to testify.

My name is Gisela Utado, and I am the Senior Program Director for that United Planning Organization, UPO.

I am here to urge the council on behalf of the black and women, uh, black and brown educators working at UPO early learning centers whose careers, professional journeys, and livelihoods are at stake.

I want to tell you about an educator in one of our centers, who embodies the spirit of this workforce.

She started as a parent in our program who dreamed of becoming an educator for infants and toddlers.

She worked tirelessly on her goal to obtain her CDA credential, eventually earning a full-time position and working for us.

She didn't stop there.

She continued her educational journey working full-time while pursuing her associate degree in early childhood at Trinity Washington University, which she obtained in January 2026.

Today, she is working full time while pursuing her bachelor's degree in early childhood education.

She is bravely navigating a full-time job, family responsibilities, and classes in the evening, often stealing hours of sleep to complete her assignments.

As an educator, she gives her time, energy, and heart to provide the safe, nurturing and high quality environment for our youngest residents.

This educators is the backbone of the district's waterfalls.

The pay equity fund is what makes her journey possible.

If these cuts go through, she is standard to lose up to $20,000 in annual supplemental pay money that she uses to support her family, manage her household expenses, and finance her educational advancement.

Removing this fund is not just a budget technicality.

It is a direct reversal of the progress we have made in compensating our educators fairly.

It is a direct attack on the professional dreams of black and brown women who have given everything to DC's children.

We cannot ask our most vulnerable educators to build our city's future while we tear down their own.

I respectfully urge the council to protect this critical investments and prioritize the well-being of children, families, and educators in the district budget decisions and to restore fall fund full funding to the pay equity fund and honor the promise that we made to the educators.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, Councilman Chairman Delson and members of the committee as a whole.

Thank you for the opportunity to testify.

My name is Jerica Brownley, and I'm a senior program director at United Planet Organization.

I am here today to strongly urge the council to protect the pay equity fund and reject cuts to child care subsidies in the district's budget for fiscal year 2027.

These programs are not optional supports.

They are essential investments in children, working families, and the early childhood educators who make it possible for parents to work in our economy to function.

Cutting or eliminating the pay equity fund would have devastating consequences for our educators at UPO.

The Pay Equity Fund helps address long-standing wage disparities and recognizes the value of this workforce.

An educator shared with me that these funds gave her the opportunity to save money.

It alleviated the stress of living paycheck to paycheck and allow her to travel and enjoy personal activities and helped her pay off debt.

If the pay equity fund is eliminated, she will no longer have savings for emergencies and she'll be forced to go back to living paycheck to paycheck.

Our early educators nurture children during the most critical years of brain development and hold one of the most important jobs in our community.

They deserve wages that reflect the importance of their work.

Additionally, without these funds, our program faced the reality that being educators may be forced to leave the profession entirely in search of better paying jobs.

This would be detrimental to the child care workforce leading to classroom closures, longer wait lists, and fewer available child care slots for families across the district.

As a result, children will lose access to safe, stable, high-quality early learning environments that support healthy development and school readiness.

The cuts to child care subsidies would also place enormous financial strain on working families.

I know firsthand what it's like to have to spend a significant portion of your income on child care, which can lead to increased financial stress and limited household budgets.

If subsidies are reduced.

Families may be forced to choose between paying for child care, their rent, or leaving the workforce altogether.

Investing in child care is an investment in economic stability and the future success of the district because our children are the foundation of our future.

The pay equity fund and child care subsidies strengthen families, support our educators, and ensure children have access to the care and learning opportunities they deserve.

I respectfully urge the council to protect these critical investments, prioritize the well-being of our children, families, and educators in the district's budget decision.

Thank you for your time and thoughtful consideration.

Thank you, Ms.

Brownley.

Yanis Martinez.

Hi, my name is Chelsea Polite.

I'm stepping in for Miss Martinez.

Good afternoon, Chairperson Mendelson and the members of the council.

My name is Chelsea Polite Daniels, and I am an early Head Start teacher with United Planning Organization at our Anacasia Center.

My students benefit from the DC Child Care Subsidy Program, and I benefit from DC's pay equity fund.

I'm here today to urge you to protect child care subsidy funding and preserve pay equity for early childhood educators.

Although neither I nor my son participated in Early Head Start, I understand how essential this program is for families across the district.

It gives infants and toddlers from low-income families access to high-quality early education during the most important years of brain development.

It helps prepare children academically, socially, and emotionally so they can enter kindergarten ready to learn and succeed.

The combination of early Head Start and D.C.'s child care subsidy program also provide critical support for families.

Many parents rely on childcare so they can work, attend school, and provide for their children.

Without it, many families in DC would face impossible choices between earning and living and ensuring their children should receive a strong start.

Federal Early Head Start funds cover the most for part of the day, with the DC child care subsidy covering the remainder of the day while parents are at work.

I'm also here to speak about how pay equity has changed my life.

The pay equity increase has been truly life-changing for my family because of this increase.

I was able to buy my first home, something that I once thought was out of my reach as an early childhood educator.

I'm a mother of a wonderful son who has spina bifida and was born with bilateral glove feet.

He requires specialized equipment and ongoing therapy to support his mobility and development.

Thanks to the pay equity increase, I have been able to afford equipment that insurance would not cover, including his wheelchair, walker, and standard.

With my fiance, who is now my husband, lost his job.

My increased salary allowed me to carry the majority of our household expenses until he was able to return to work.

Without pay equity, we could have lost our home and our financial stability.

If this funding is cut and our pay is reduced, it will have devastating consequences for my family, and I will struggle to pay for my son's new medical equipment and therapies.

It will become harder to cover our mortgage, utilities, groceries, and transportation, other basic necessities.

We may have to be forced to postpone critical care for my son or take on debt just to make ends meet.

Cutting pay equity would also hurt the children we serve.

Early childhood educators deserve to earn wages that reflect the importance of our work.

Reducing our pay will cause many dedicated teachers to leave the field and creating more turnover and instability for young children who need consistent caring relationships.

Please protect these.

Please protect D.C.'s child care subsidy program and keep pay equity for early childhood educators.

These investments strengthen families, support children, help educators like me continue doing the work we love.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Thank you.

And give me your name again.

Chelsea Polite Daniels.

Chelsea is your first name, C-H-E-L-E.

C-H-E-L-S-E-A.

I was supposed to testify at 128, but then Miss Martinez had to do not make it so I stepped in.

And your last name is Daniels.

Polite Daniels is hyphenated, but I think it's on there as just polite.

P O L I.

P-O-L-I-T-E like the manor.

Except your better manners.

Thank you.

And uh Deborah Billick.

Good afternoon, Chairman Mendelssohn and Councilmember staff.

My name is Deb Kirsten Billick, and I'm the CEO of the Georgetown Business Improvement District.

Our mission is to partner with the city to keep Georgetown clean, safe, and accessible so that it can continue to be an economic driver for our city.

As a result of our work and the work of our partners, Georgetown is the most visited neighborhood in DC with more than 14 million visitors last year alone.

Georgetown's visitors come to the neighborhood to shop, to dine, to enjoy its historic charming character.

The dollars spent in Georgetown bring in vital resources that directly support the district.

I'm here today to stress the importance of three key areas that need continued support in order to maintain Georgetown success as DC's top retail destination.

They are public safety, public works, and transportation.

First, public safety is crucial to the vitality of our neighborhoods.

The bid strives to keep Georgetown safe through a direct investment in our safety, which has been afforded through the Safe Commercial Corridor Grant Program through the Office of the Deputy Mayor for Public Safety and Justice.

Disappointingly, this grant was not included in the mayor's budget.

I'm urging this council to add it back at the fiscal year 2026 funding levels.

This program is both cost effective and produces measurable improvements that I've shared in my written testimony, which has been submitted for the record.

Preserving funding for this program is not only a smart public safety decision, but also a fiscally responsible investment in the economic resilience and safety of Georgetown and the entire district.

I hope you will consider restoring the funding.

Second, regarding public works, we urge the council to increase funding for trash compactors and rodent-proof trash cans.

The current compactor in our district serves two bids and cannot handle the more than 100,000 bags of trash that are collected annually between the Golden Triangle and Georgetown neighborhoods, but it's essential for trash management of our city.

As for rodents, which is everyone's favorite topic, this problem can only be managed through containerization of trash.

We strongly support transitioning to enclosed rodent-proof trash cans throughout the city, but especially in high density commercial areas like Georgetown.

The bid cares so much about this issue that we have piloted two models of enclosed trash cans with significant results, but these cans are expensive, and budget support is needed to put more of them on the street.

Third, on transportation, strengthening the connection between Georgetown and the rest of the city is a major priority.

The bid supports the $92 million bus priority and efficiency allocation in the mayor's DDOT budget, but urges DDOT to extend the crosstown BRT study all the way to Georgetown, not just to RFK, in order to deliver true east-west connectivity for the city.

Lastly, we ask for expanded funding and flexibility for the reimbursable maintenance agreement between DDOT and our bids, so that bids can deliver a broader range of street services, both for our commercial corridors and perhaps outside of those boundaries as well.

In a tight budget year, it's crucial to support the areas that are reliable revenue generators for the city so that the city can continue to invest in itself.

We are grateful for the council's partnership, and I thank you for your consideration.

Thank you, Miss Pilwick, and I have your statement here.

I'm trying to remember if I have any questions.

I have a lot of witnesses, so I'm going to pass on questions.

Thank you all, though.

Maya Martin Cuddigan.

His virtual.

No, forget about you now.

Oh, yes.

Is she here?

Okay.

Lisa Rice, who's CEO with Grow Democracy DC.

Alfini Evans, who is community organizer with the Fair Budget Coalition.

Kenyatta Robinson, who's a member of the board of directors of the DC Bar Foundation.

We'll start with, oh no, let me see.

I've got four people there.

One, two, three, four.

We'll start with Miss Maya Martin Cuttigan.

Good afternoon, Chairman Mendelssohn, members of the Committee of the Whole, and Committee staff.

My name is Maya Martin Kaduggan, and I'm the founder and executive director of PAVE.

I'm also a Ward 4 resident, a sixth generation Washingtonian, and a mom.

This spring, PAY have hosted a series of conversations featuring national leaders around our parent leaders' top policy priority, academics, to hear about work being done across the country to drive student achievement and how DC stacks up.

Today I want to share some highlights from those conversations and our recommendations for how DC can better support all of our students in four key areas: literacy, math, workforce development, and AI.

Literacy and literacy, we spoke with the National Parents Union about the READ Act and where DC's policies align with their recommendations.

We're seeing gains in student achievement as DC policies are aligned with the science of reading, including requiring teachers to be trained in structured leadership literacy, requiring LEAs to adopt literacy curriculum based on the science of reading, and requiring Aussie to publish an approved list of high-quality instructional materials.

Now we need to take the next step of increasing transparency around HQIM.

We're asking the council to update the implementation of the Early Literacy Education Task Force Recommendations Act to require Aussie to collect and publish data on literacy curriculum used by each LEA for all grades K through 12, indicating which meet their standards for HQIM.

These reporting should be easily accessible to the public, and this is a no cost ask that will make a big difference for our kids.

Around math, we heard from the PI network about state policy math policy recommendations from their math multiplies working group, which is made up of representatives from organizations like the National Council on Teacher Quality, TNTP, and DC's own Empower K 12.

We need to prioritize making sure that educator professional development and math coaches are in our budget across the education system.

We've led the way in high impact tutoring, and we need to make sure we protect that in the budget, and we also need to improve transparency around HQIM and math, similar to our recommendation for literacy.

Around workforce, we met with Tennessee Score to learn about the work Tennessee is doing around their workforce development that's produced strong outcomes for students and position them as a national leader in this area.

We learned that the per-student funding for the advanced technical center through the UPSFF that is included in the mayor's FY27 budget is similar to the way that Tennessee invests in career and technical education pathways for their students.

This funding is the best practice that we know works and will help put DC on par with other states that are leading the way in preparing students for college and career success.

We're asking that the council protect that funding in the budget.

On the horizon is AI.

We need a coordinated response to AI and the huge changes it's going to create in how our education system operates.

In our conversation with the Center on Reinventing Public Education at Arizona State University, we learned that we've got a lot of discrete groups working on AI, but we need a coordinated response that brings all of those different groups together, and so we encourage the council to create a task force around AI and education.

According to the Just Released 2026 education recovery scorecard, DC is one of the few states that's leading the nation in education in education recovery.

So we want to make sure we're doing all the things necessary to keep that progress moving.

Thank you to the council for having us here today, and we hope we can continue to count on you in making sure our education works for every single student.

Thank you, Ms.

Kazagan.

Sofia Boss Sherry.

Please.

Good afternoon.

I want to thank the DC community for showing up today and being here.

My name is Sophia.

I'm the coalition organizer at the Fair Budget Coalition and award six resident.

Last year, the DC council was not able to pass their budget in front of the community.

Organizers directly impacted residents, and the black folks who happen to be sitting near us were kicked out of this exact hearing room for objecting to the violence being codified into law.

As council members voted to pass a budget that would push thousands into homelessness without pathways out, leave tens of thousands without access to health care, and so on.

We yelled that this budget would kill our neighbors.

We told this body that blood would be on their hands.

A year later, I sit here and I find myself deeply disturbed by the apparent apathy of this body.

As a result of the fiscal year 26 budget, I have attended funerals, memorials, vigils, and wakes of loved ones who fell with no safety net to catch them, or were murdered by federal officers in active collaboration with our local police.

I have many asks of this body today.

I would ask that we fund any housing vouchers.

There are currently zero, and some are even being defunded that currently exist.

I would ask that we fund ERAP at 30 million dollars to prevent 7,000 families from entering homelessness with no pathway out, that we save champs, reverse cuts to behavioral health services, community schools, victim services, TANF, SNAP, out-of-school time programming, pay equity fund, DPR, access to justice, and more.

It's a long list.

I will not choose one program to name here today because each one represents a component of the safety net that our community cannot live without.

But you and I both know that.

The question that weighs on me today is what will it take for this body to act with the urgency that this moment requires?

The programs I named are expensive, but we have the money.

What we lack is leadership with the political will to subvert the racist wealth hoarding occurring in this district to save our most vulnerable neighbors from harm.

Homelessness, police violence, and literal death.

How many more funerals will I attend this year, Chairman?

Will you be there with us?

Will maintaining the comfort of the extremely wealthy have been worth it.

To be clear, there are solutions.

You've heard them before, but I will repeat them again.

Tax wealth through a business activity tax, a land value tax, and tax wealth through capital gains, tax improvements, and/or a wealth proceeds tax.

Allocate those funds to key safety net programs.

Do not allow a budget to pass with a 15% increase or $88 million to MPD at the expense of our social safety net.

Funneling folks into poverty while criminalizing poverty and then funneling money into the police is a choice and it is a racist one.

I ask this body to choose differently.

We the people will do everything in our power to reverse these cuts.

And my question is: are you there with us?

Thank you.

Thank you.

Lisa Rice.

Hello, Jeremy Mendelson.

Oops.

Hello, Chairman Mendelson.

My name is Lisa D.T.

Rice.

I'm a native Washingtonian, former ANC Commissioner, Ward 7 resident, and the proposer of Initiative 83.

I am also an independent voter, and I'm here to ask you today to fully fund initiative 83.

We are reeling from the Supreme Court's decision to gut the voting rights act and facing a wave of redistricting that will strip millions of Americans of a meaningful right to vote simply because they belong to the wrong party.

Nationally, democracy advocates recognize this for the travesty that it is.

But a similar travesty is occurring at the local level, right here in DC.

I and 85,000 other independents ambarred from having any meaningful ballot because I don't belong to a political party, even though my taxpayer dollars fund the partisan primaries and the campaigns that exclude me.

Chairman Mendelssohn, I have heard you say independents are not disenfranchised because we can vote in a general election.

But that election is usually a foregone conclusion.

It's not a meaningful choice for voters, and Republicans will say the same thing about Cala.

Voters of color and Democrats can still vote, but we all know, don't we, that people are being deprived of a meaningful ballot.

While Democrats nationally protest the rollback of voting rights, the leaders of the DC state democratic committee are fighting tooth and nail to keep me from voting.

Last year, the council funded ranked choice voting but refused to give me the ballot.

Multiple council members have claimed that voters only wanted ranked choice voting, not semi-open primaries.

Two weeks ago on May 1st, we proved that wrong.

This year, more witnesses testified in favor of semi-open primaries than all of Initiative 83 last year.

So let's put that false talking point to bed.

Many people couldn't take another day off of work to plead for you to do the right thing.

I'd like to hear, I'd like you to hear from them too.

Alberto Ramos, award for resident, CEO of Veterans for All Voters, and a registered Democrat, noted that many veterans are independents.

In his words, quote, too often this country has asked people to sacrifice for our democracy before allowing them to participate in it, end quote.

As the daughter of a Black World War II veteran who fought for our freedoms, that sentiment is especially resonant for me.

Paula Edwards, ANC commissioner in Native Washingtonian, testified, quote, the worst excesses of the Jim Crow economic system pivoted around the taxation of black people to support systems in which they could not participate.

My ancestors and other black people pay for schools they could not attend and elections in which they could not vote.

To continue the system of taxing people for public services and not allowing them to participate, is to be moral heirs to the worst segregationist oppression, end quote.

Particularly chilling in the wake of Calais.

I want to emphasize the moment we are in.

Every single day.

The district is fighting for our independence.

Our leadership is questioned.

Our decisions overruled, and multiple members of this very body are pledging to defend us.

But how can this council have a shred of credibility on the question of democracy if you insist on violating basic principles?

Thank you, Miss Rice.

You're welcome.

Afini Evans.

Good afternoon, Chairman Mendelson.

My name is Afini Evans, and I'm the community organizer with the Fair Budget Coalition.

I'm here today because the mayor's proposed budget cuts to vital social services for DC's most launchable communities will lead to more crimes of desperation, make our communities less safe, and result in our children being thrown to the wolves in uniform, MPD.

This is happening while continue to while continuing to increase funding for our residents and their children's subsequent criminalization and incarceration.

Let's be clear.

DC is facing an economic crisis, and working class and low-income families are bearing the brunt of callous policy choices made by the mayor and this council.

MPD does not need more funding.

MPD does not need more training.

They do not need increased benefits.

There is no evidence that continuing to overfund the police has made us any safer.

Clearly, it has done quite the opposite.

Because while DC has a record number of police departments, federal uh and federal police intervention, Brooke Pento still finds the opportunity to put forth 1990 style crime bills to incarcerate black children and our um black people and our youth in the district.

Crime is a socioeconomic phenomenon.

And preventing crime means you have to prevent poverty.

This current budget proposal seeks to eliminate programs like Sunbucks, a program for food insecure children to access food during summer break.

Champs, a mobile psychiatric unit that responds to youth that are having mental health crises.

And it also adds no additional permanent supportive housing vouchers.

This budget is an attack on the working class black families and residents.

And to pass it is not only an abhorrent choice, but is a choice to uphold the racial and class-based hierarchy in the city.

The decision to turn our backs on our housed neighbors and the low-income community is not only a portrayal, but is an active and dangerous alignment with the interests of the fascist federal regime.

As President Trump has said, he's looking to incarcerate our unhoused neighbors for the crime of being unhoused and under-resourced.

The job of this council is to protect the people of DC and to provide everyone with the resources that they need, not only to just survive, but thrive.

Our children deserve better leadership than what is being presented.

They need recreational investment, not permanent curfews.

Our workers deserve a council that will actually fight for their wages, not vote against them.

Our parents deserve the support to keep their homes stable and not a pro-business bootstrap mentality that allows tax breaks for the wealthy and rugged austerity for the rest of us.

You have a choice.

And the question is: do you have the courage to choose the right path?

The community is enraged by these deep cuts and so many others.

This budget cannot be balanced on the backs of working class Washingtonians.

DC has the fourth highest rate in the country of concentrated wealth.

And contrary to what all these lobbyists tell you, there is no clear evidence that wealth taxes lead to capital flight.

This wealth is largely untaxed and could be used for investments in the community to make DC more affordable, culturally rich, and safe.

If our leaders have the curve, if only if our leaders have the courage to make the right decisions, I will thank you when you step up, but for now I ask you to be for be brave and fight for the real DC.

Thank you, Ms.

Evans.

Uh Kenyanna Robinson.

Yes, thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

Uh good afternoon.

Uh, Chairman Middleton and members of the committee.

My name is Kenyatta Robinson, and you probably know me for the work that I do in my day-to-day professional capacity.

But today I come before you to testify as a non-attorney board member of the Board of Directors for the DC Bar Foundation and as a DC resident.

Since the council first created the access to justice initiative in 2007, your investment has been a huge factor in building a more coordinated and responsive local civil legal aid system in the district.

Today, that work hangs in the balance by shifting greater social and economic costs on the families, communities, and an already strained public systems, an 86% budget code will undermine years of progress and destabilize a highly effective system that DC residents will long-come depend on in moments of crisis.

Last year, the DC Bar Foundation's grantee partners served more than 44,000 DC residents, including seniors, children, people with disabilities, and survivors of domestic violence.

The access to justice initiative ensures these neighbors can get legal help when they face serious threats to their health, safety, and economic security.

It's what makes equal justice possible in our city, and it saves the city money by eliminating the need for more costly services when people can't solve their legal problems.

For example, the initiative Civil Legal Council's Projects Program is a critical line of defense for DC residents facing homelessness.

In 2025, your the program helped 3,000 tenants facing eviction exercise or legal rights.

42% of these tenants had children at home, and 21% had no monthly income.

Your investment has not only made services services possible, it's helped transform a fragmented legal aid landscape into a connected, responsive and efficient system.

For instance, it supported a clicking sound and it apparently is not one of these on your microphone.

We did have a lot of your pause that may have.

I promise you I did not do this.

All right.

Your investment has not only made such services possible, it's helped transform a fragmented legal aid landscape into a connected, responsive and efficient system.

For instance, it supported the DC Bar Foundation's creation of the DC Social Justice Transformations Network five years ago.

Another example is the D Source DC resource bridge.

The DC Barr Foundation worked with residents and partners across the city to build this coordinated intake and referral system so that DC residents now make just one phone call to get the legal help they need.

Since its September launch, the DC Resource Bridge has matched more than 1100 callers to 25 legal service requires.

This kind of systems change requires long-term commitment and stable investment, and it's not sustainable without public funding.

DC residents deserve access to justice.

I urge you to preserve your long-standing commitment to the access to justice initiative with level funding.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr.

Robinson.

Um, I do not have questions for y'all.

Thank you very much for your testimony.

Thank you very much.

Brian Stredge or Streggy Care ANC 6A um, Struggy.

Got it.

How Rani Webb, co-founder of Green Scheme.

Ty Hobson Powell, Director of Campaigns with the Fair Budget Coalition.

Catherine Landfield, who's senior advocacy strategist for a budget coalition.

Claire Mills.

Oh.

Is that you, Claire Mills?

Go ahead.

Sit down because I don't have a seat for you up here.

You'll you'll be the next uh coop.

And I'm gonna be spelled for about an hour by Councilmember Bonds.

You want to come over here?

Not that easy.

What's just for me?

Oh, that's my testing screen.

Just for me.

So you want to go first?

And then I'll okay.

Um, going through it, you'll be able to tell me.

Switch.

I'll let you know.

Um, I think he's staying a little bit too.

We'll let you go first.

Ms.

Sandfield.

So if you're staying, you go right ahead.

Okay, okay.

Good afternoon, Chair Mendelssohn and Council Member Bonds.

My name is Catherine Lamfield, and I'm a longtime Ward 3 resident, social worker, and the senior advocacy strategist at Fair Budget Coalition.

Today I'm pulling the alarm for the third year in a row.

Two years ago, the budget ended with a major failure in housing security.

Last year, the budget ended with a major failure in health care.

Policymakers have allowed DC to move backwards with major chunks of our safety net defunded and failing residents.

This budget season, the mayor has literally handed you a budget that dismantles just about every facet of the safety net and the related programs that help black and brown working class and poor households make ends meet when times are tough.

This is policy violence, and you must go big to prevent it.

Like a Jenga Tower, the safety net is an integrated set of programs.

As policymakers eliminate and underfund so many of them, like the Jenga Tower, the safety net cannot stand.

How long before communities fall and fail?

But this is not a game, and the costs in human misery, lost economic growth and productivity, and long-term harm to community health and well-being will be far higher than anything related to investing in community now.

Go big with solutions to protect the integrity of the network.

You can do this, not meeting the needs is a choice because DC has the resources.

It has the fourth highest rate in the country of extreme concentrated wealth, with about 1,500 tax units holding almost 50% of all the wealth in the city.

Realistically, these folks and many more have much more they could be contributing without any loss in personal well-being for the good of community.

The funding gap is a very conservative 700 million, and you can raise or access at least 759 million immediately.

Here's how raise 230 million in new revenue through a wealth proceeds tax and increase rates on the highest earners.

Use the 60 million at events DC.

Get 180 million in decoupling revenue back online.

Take 200 million from the six surplus days of DC's reserve funds, undo the mayor's unproven business subsidies, and invest in true community safety by using $89 million from the MPD budget, which has a 15% increase for the new wish list items and double dipping.

Not a penny can be wasted in the mission of investing in our communities.

For future years, you could raise a billion dollars through such smart policy as a bat and a land value tax to put DC communities on solid financial footing and address structural flaws in our tax system.

I will close with the question: what does this budget ask of my family?

It is a deep shame that the answer is absolutely nothing.

Raise my taxes.

Thank you.

Thank you very much for your testimony.

And I'm not sure that we actually have it.

Because you provide us some very interesting numbers.

So, in order to follow up, we've got to have your paper.

Thank you very much.

Next, we'll hear from Mushin Yuma.

Are you next?

No, must be online.

All right.