Fenty Proposes 8% Boost In Budget

Schools Negotiating For More Money

Mayor Adrian M. Fenty is preparing to deliver his first District budget proposal Friday, a $5.4 billion package for fiscal 2008 that represents an 8 percent increase in spending.

Although the budget contains only a minor bump in education spending, public school officials lobbied yesterday for an additional $113 million that they said would go toward implementing the Master Education Plan, raising teacher salaries and paying for increases in fixed costs such as electricity, among other priorities.

The school budget request comes as the D.C. Council is weighing Fenty's proposal to reduce the power of the Board of Education and award him direct authority over the school system.

In a statement, Fenty (D) said his city budget closely follows "base line" recommendations prepared by D.C. Chief Financial Officer Natwar M. Gandhi.

"I am committed to maintaining a balanced budget, ensuring all the D.C. agencies spend their money efficiently, and my government lives within its means," said Fenty, who will deliver a State of the City address titled "Moving Forward Faster" today in Ward 8. "This budget shows that the fiscal responsibility of the last decade is continuing."

Superintendent Clifford B. Janey and school board President Robert C. Bobb met with Fenty and his aides yesterday in the mayor's third-floor office, huddling around a table in a small conference room. Afterward, Janey said they had agreed to meet again tomorrow.

"We asked the mayor whether or not they had put their pencils down in a technical sense," Janey said. "He said no. So we'll meet again."

But Fenty aides said it is too late to make changes because the massive budget document is being printed in preparation for delivery to council members Friday. In pursuing his school takeover, Fenty has not advocated increasing school spending but rather talked of improving management and efficiency.

Aides described the mayor's overall budget as a modest first effort that does not contain any sweeping new initiatives but instead builds on programs in place. Highlights include continued funding of the 300 new police officers added last year and an increase by thousands in the number of residents covered under the city's health-care plan.

The plan does not require new taxes, said aides, who attributed the spending increase to additional debt service, employee pension fund obligations and the increased health-care commitments.

Under the city's budgeting process, the school board controls the line-item spending in the school system but must request an overall budget from the mayor and council.

Fenty's proposal includes about $810 million in local funds for the 55,000-student system, an increase of about $2 million for a system whose enrollment dropped by 3,000 students last year.

Mayoral aides said school officials were supposed to deliver a budget request to the administration by December but failed to do so until last week and continued to make changes yesterday. Therefore, the aides said, the administration crafted a schools budget that essentially reflects the "base line" offered by Gandhi, who prepares estimates for each city agency based on the previous year's spending and projections for the next year. Gandhi's office had no comment yesterday.

Bobb and Janey said they had requested an extension for their budget request because Bobb and several other school board members took office in January and needed time to review the figures. In November, Janey had announced that he would request $84 million in additional funds, but yesterday's request is significantly higher.

"It's not reasonable to submit a budget without consulting the new board," Janey said yesterday.

In a letter to Fenty last week, Janey and Bobb said they scrubbed their budget to identify savings and found $11 million to transfer from central office functions to support schools. But that's not enough to fund what they want, so they are asking for the increase in city funds.

"Insufficient resources greatly compromise our ability," the letter said.

According to a draft of his State of the City address, Fenty will lay out a series of steps he has taken in his first 78 days in office, including hiring new police and fire chiefs.

Regarding his school takeover plan, Fenty intends to say that "taking over . . . is only the first step. But it is a step we must take, and we must take it now."