President Trump upped funding for the District to provide security at huge rallies and other events in the budget proposal released Monday but still fell short of the amount the city says is needed.
But the D.C. government wanted $18 million for other security expenses, the same amount the federal government provided this fiscal year after Congress intervened.
“As the seat of the federal government, the District hosts a broad range of public events that require significant planning and activity,” Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) wrote in a letter to members of Congress in response to the budget proposal. “D.C. is a popular site for First Amendment related activities, which are increasing in number and size.”
As in past years, the Trump budget proposal would nearly double money for a voucher program and make equal contributions to the city’s traditional public school and charter sectors.
It also eliminates a federal scholarship program for college students from the District. The budget will be debated and changed by Congress before it is approved. In past years, Congress has restored the funding for the scholarships, known as Tuition Assistance Grants, or TAG.
The security fund has been one of the city’s top priorities because the District has seen more events since Trump took office, including hundreds of protests a year, a white-supremacist march and last year’s Fourth of July festivities that drew large crowds to the president’s speech and military display.
Bowser warned the president last fall that the security fund was on the verge of going bankrupt after the overhauled Fourth of July celebration cost the city government $1.7 million.
D.C. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D) and Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) helped the city secure an additional $6 million to avoid a deficit in the security fund, on top of the $12 million already appropriated. Local leaders want to maintain the funding at $18 million a year, especially with an election year looming and the prospect of more major demonstrations.
City officials say they are still owed more than $7 million for Trump’s 2017 inauguration.
Trump’s budget attempts to deliver on a campaign promise to expand the voucher program, which pays for low-income families in the nation’s capital to attend private and religious schools.
The D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program is the nation’s only federally funded voucher program. Its funding would increase from about $18 million to $30 million in the coming fiscal year. The administration proposed similar increases last year, but Congress approved a more modest jump of about $3 million.
Many city leaders, including Norton and the chair of the D.C. Council’s education committee, have spoken against the voucher program. But the Trump administration’s budget ties voucher funds to additional federal funding for charter schools and traditional public schools, leaving local leaders unable to forcefully speak against the voucher funding without the risk of sinking valuable dollars for public schools.
The Bowser administration official said the mayor’s office supports the changes as long as each sector receives the same level of funding.
The federal budget proposal maintains language that prevents the District from using its own dollars to regulate the sale of recreational marijuana and to subsidize abortions.
Despite that federal restriction, Bowser has called for the D.C. Council to move ahead with legislation to tax and regulate cannabis sales. The District currently allows possession of small amounts of marijuana but does not allow sales because of the federal restrictions.
In a statement, Bowser said she opposes the president’s cuts to federal social safety net programs including Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program.
“We need a White House that realizes that more and more Americans are unable to cover the cost of housing, food, and other basic necessities,” she said. “This budget is simply a shot across the bow at the middle class.”