D.C. Council Reworks Mayor Fenty's Budget Proposal

The D.C. Council began revising Mayor Adrian M. Fenty's proposed $5.4 billion budget yesterday, keeping Emancipation Day as a District holiday, restoring charter school funding and all but gutting the office of the deputy mayor for education.

At a news conference to announce their "markup" of the spending plan, council members signaled their intention to scrap a proposed $51-a-year charge to residents' electric bills for streetlight maintenance as well as efforts to raise the 911 tax that is applied to phone bills. They also endorsed an expansion of pre-kindergarten.

Several council members are vowing to prevent any reductions in school crossing guards and to continue working for universal access to health insurance. The council also set aside about $8 million for employee raises in future contract negotiations.

Many of the council's revisions appeared aimed at various interest groups that have expressed unhappiness with Fenty's program cuts in the middle of a recession.

Council Chairman Vincent C. Gray (D) said the proposed changes did not increase spending. "We are still operating with the same money that was on the table at the beginning," he said. "We just have differences on how to spend it."

A final council vote on the budget is scheduled May 12. But council member Jack Evans (D-Ward 2), chairman of the Finance and Revenue Committee, warned that the lawmakers might have to make additional adjustments, including possible spending cuts, in summer or fall when the council receives updated revenue forecasts.

"We have to be diligent. We have to be careful," Evans said.

Fenty (D) projected savings of $1.3 million in overtime holiday pay to employees by dropping the four-year-old Emancipation Day, which commemorates President Abraham Lincoln's freeing of the District's 3,000 slaves in 1862. Gray said he thinks the day has "tremendous symbolic value" to the city.

Fenty's proposal to do away with the $3,109-per-pupil allotment for public charter school facilities drew loud criticism from charter advocates. District officials said some schools were using the money for personnel and other non-facility costs.

Critics said the proposal, which would have cut facility funding from $90 million to $66 million, deepened an already substantial inequity between public charters and D.C. public schools, which receive facilities money from the capital budget and the District's school construction agency.

The most dramatic move was a proposal to cut more than 84 percent from the budget of deputy mayor for education Victor Reinoso, from $4 million to $778,000. His staff would shrink from 21 to seven.

Gray has long been unhappy with Reinoso, whose portfolio includes oversight of the school construction agency, reuse of surplus school buildings and the coordination of social services in schools.