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%.