New D.C. Budget Eliminates Programs, Not City Employees
By • June 2, 2025 0 545
Washington, D.C.’s new budget for 2025, 2026 — delayed, uncertain, smaller and controversial — is on the table. Frustrated city officials have a good excuse for the situation however. In February, the federal government cut back D.C.’s budget allotment by $1 billion, and now it seems Congress won’t fix it.
After weeks of, at times, heated negotiations, Mayor Muriel Bowser presented the District Council on May 27 with a revised budget, including some cuts in services and programs.
“We did it without resorting to any layoffs or closing of facilities, even as we complied to all federal regulations,” Bowser said. They avoided the initial possibilities of having to cut public safety and school systems as was originally predicted.
The Bowser budget team used a little known law that allows the city to increase expenditures by up to 6 percent every year. That brought the mandatory cuts for the fiscal year ending in September 2025 down to $347 million — allowing full funding of school and public safety emergency programs. Bowser also imposes a city-wide employee hiring freeze (a projected savings of $63 million).
Certain grant and contracts, not essential to city core mission and totally around $174 million, will also be eliminated in the new Bowser budget. Those include the new Child Tax Credit program for all residents that had not yet taken effect. Also eliminated is the sanctuary city program. The new budget ends sanctuary city protections in Washington, D.C., that limit local authorities from cooperating with federal immigration enforcement agencies. For instance, D.C. would be required to comply with detainer requests processed by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) bureau of the Department of Homeland Security.
The revised budget will also begin a pull back on the District’s Universal Family Leave program. “These are programs we’ve identified that are worthy but not essential to our core,” Bowser was quoted as saying in news reports.
The new budget seems to respond to multiple requests to make the District more business friendly. It aims to bring in more revenue and commercial workers in the face of more than $1 billion in anticipated cutbacks of federal agencies and personnel in the District by the Trump federal government downsizing initiatives.
Bowser proposes increasing the number of sales tax holidays and other incentives to bring shoppers and businesses back to D.C. Cuts in building regulations, including a pause in some environmental review mandates, are being proposed to expedite construction in the District and cut expenses.
The budget is being projected in part as a financial plan into 2029; many of the proposed cuts may become permanent if the revenue stream in D.C. does not improve in the next years.
“But these cuts are far less severe that what we had originally feared,” Bowser said. ”Our path through less revenue is to build our economy. We can’t act like today is 2023 or 2024 … We have a shifting economy and if we don’t shift with it, we will be a city that people flee.”
“I remain committed to prioritizing public safety, economic resilience and growth, and support for young people and seniors in the budget,” Ward Two Council member Brooke Pinto wrote. “I will provide an update once we have an updated budget hearing and vote schedule for the summer.”
The Council will begin its work on the budget this Thursday. It has 70 days to approve it.
