The Washington Post
Tough Cuts in the District
The D.C. Council is facing up to hard times -- but students shouldn't be paying the price.
Friday, July 31, 2009
THE D.C. COUNCIL barred the public from its marathon work sessions on the city's budget. That's too bad, because what was going on behind those closed doors was a welcome example of public officials making hard decisions about the need to cut spending and raise taxes. Though we aren't keen about every decision, council members deserve credit for working to responsibly deal with the city's economic ills.
Faced with a $666 million revenue shortfall through October 2012, council members crafted a plan, to be voted on Friday, that aims to raise $50 million annually in new revenue while making $103 million in annual spending cuts; these come on top of measures already proposed by Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D). Noteworthy are the council's actions to raise the gasoline tax by 3.5 cents, add 50 cents to the cost of a pack of cigarettes and increase parking fees for government workers. The budget crisis also caused the council to abolish all earmarks, a move no doubt hastened by publicity over Ward 8 council member Marion Barry's dubious use of the practice.
We wish the council could have avoided cuts to public education. The city's public charter schools, in particular, are bound to be hurt by the decision to freeze the per-pupil formula at current levels because of the hit they already took in facilities funding. It's worrisome to think that cuts affecting the classroom could slow the momentum of Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee's education reforms. But the proposed cut of less than $30 million is relatively minor when compared with the $1 billion the District spends on education, and council members are correct to argue that all city departments must share in the sacrifice brought on by these hard economic times. We question, though, the council's priorities in funding an expensive study of the schools and beefing up the bureaucracy of the state school board while curtailing summer school and making it harder for students to graduate. Also tucked inside the budget documents is troubling language that would dilute the mayor's authority over the schools; he vetoed it once, and we hope he does so again.
Notwithstanding those decisions, the council showed its mettle in refusing to take the easy way out of the budget dilemma by using, as Mr. Fenty had suggested, the city's rainy-day funds or one-time accounting moves. That would have pushed the problems into the future, when they could become even harder to solve. As council member Jack Evans (D-Ward 2) forcefully reminded his colleagues, it was exactly these kinds of budget gimmicks, along with unchecked spending, that caused Congress to place the District under a federal control board.