On its first reading, the D.C. Council approved the Fiscal Year 2027 Budget Act of 2026, a document aimed at reversing many of the proposed cuts made by D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser.
At such a precarious time for the District, D.C. Councilmember Trayon White (D-Ward 8) said more could’ve been done in direct benefit to residents living east of the Anacostia River.
“Ward 8 has different priorities than other wards, and as a result, if other members are not voting in the ranking of their top things in that category, then we may not get the things we need,” White told The Informer. “We have a different set of needs that are similar to Ward 7, but are very vast, different [from] other parts of the city.”
The council voted on a budget that, among other things: funded the early childhood educator pay equity fund and child subsidy program; maintained adequate funding for existing housing vouchers; partially restored paid family leave; increased healthcare investments; and delayed D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser’s TANF decrease in benefits.
White, who’ll soon go to trial for his alleged acceptance of money to influence the awarding of violence interruption contracts, represented Ward 8 this budget cycle without chairmanship of any council committee. Without that power, White pushed for his budget priorities in other ways.
“It’s about relationships and figuring out how to get things done, because I still have the power to vote,” White said. “We have a total of six council members in Ward 8: one chairman, four at large, and myself. We have to make sure I create those priority lists and get those buy-in from other members.”
With the second budget reading scheduled for June 23, White and his council colleagues can still make some tweaks. We’ve got some wins,” White told The Informer, “but we still have a lot more to go, and I’m not totally satisfied with where we are now.”
Looking Back: Council Delays Move on Revenue Generation
During a five-hour Committee of the Whole meeting that preceded the council’s June 9 legislative meeting, council members tackled the Fiscal Year 2027 Local Budget Act and Fiscal Year 2027 Budget Support Act.
As D.C. Council Chair Phil Mendelson explained, the council had at its disposal an additional $420 million, $270 million of which was decoupling revenue recognized by the Office of the Chief Financial Officer (OCFO). The other $150 million came from the fiscal stabilization reserve.
During the council’s Committee of the Whole meeting, Mendelson addressed the OCFO’s concerns about the council’s use of the contingency funds in advance of what Chief Financial Officer Glen Lee predicts will be a “fiscal cliff.”
“It is not whether we are overspending our budget. It’s purely a matter of cash flow,” Mendelson said. “As I said, we believe that there are steps that can be taken to manage cash. I don’t mean that as a criticism. I mean that there are some practices that need to be looked at and changed so that we can better manage cash. But that’s not a reason for us to…to bank more dollars…in our reserves.”
The Fiscal Year 2027 Budget Support Act, as approved by the council, included an amendment that D.C. Council members Brianne Nadeau (D-Ward 1) and Charles Allen (D-Ward 6) introduced to launch a curbside management program.
Other Budget Support Act amendments included one that D.C. Councilmember Wendell Felder (D-Ward 7) introduced to establish an Art All Night Fund. An amendment by D.C. Councilmember Zachary Parker (D-Ward 5) requires D.C. Office of Planning to submit a comprehensive plan with policies and maps aimed at addressing what he described as inequitable industrial land use.
“We’re hoping that this language sends that message so that they can include [that information] when they come back to us,” Parker said. “I think it’s clear. I think it offers flexibility….I don’t think this…ties the hand [of] Office of Planning or the council. And again, we are empowered to change anything we don’t like that they sent to us.”
Nadeau, who will soon leave the council, found difficulty in getting her colleagues to immediately accept most of her propositions. On Tuesday, she withdrew her amendment to strike Subtitle DD from the Fiscal Year Budget Support Act. The subtitle in question allowed the council to divert revenue generated from a yet-to-mature internet gaming industry in any way they deem fit.
With the internet gaming legislation not yet passed, Nadeau deferred to her colleagues who wanted to have further discussion in the fall.
In anticipation of, yet another, council work meeting about contingency fund priorities, Nadeau withdrew another amendment that would’ve, in the event of future revenue growth as determined by the Office of the Chief Financial Officer, allocated recurrent funding to: teacher pay equity, the credible messengers program, school-based behavioral health, the Housing Production Trust Fund, TANF cost of living increases, and housing vouchers.
For Nadeau, that amendment served as a means of preparing an ideal four-year financial plan for the District’s new crop of elected officials.
“The fiscal cliff can only be resolved by generating new revenue which this body is not apparently prepared to do today or maybe this year at all,” Nadeau said. “That’s okay there’s 13 of us. We can’t all get on the same page on that. There’ll be a new body next year but this is something we can do today and it’s something we’ve done before and it’s honestly not that controversial frankly.”
Nadeau also didn’t introduce an amendment promoting a tax increase on top earners’ passive income, as she had hinted weeks prior. She however remains adamant that the District needs a new revenue source for the entirety of the four-year financial plan.
“You’ve got a one-time here and a one-time here, and most of them are recurring,” Nadeau told The Informer. “So this additional revenue stream is really important for funding the long-term priorities, and some of the short-term ones, because…we’re going to need more than this $400 million to even tackle the needs in FY27.”
On Monday, Mendelson told reporters that he envisions the council tackling the issue of tax policy during a fall hearing.
“It will probably be by invitation only. That doesn’t mean that some of the groups that have been advocating for a tax increase would be excluded. They would be included, but I’m interested in getting expert testimony,” Mendelson said. “So hearing from those who are well-versed, whatever their view is..that’s what I’m looking for. Some of the proposals that have been talked about have come with some criticism, and that’s part of what I want to understand better.”
D.C. Council Members Zachary Parker and Wendell Felder Fight for the Youth
The Fiscal Year 2027 Local Budget Act, as approved by the council on June 9, included amendments that D.C. Councilmember Zachary Parker (D-Ward 5) introduced to preserve LGBTQIA funding and finance a financial literacy pilot program that gives 125 students a weekly stipend for 40 weeks during the 2027-2028 school year.
As Parker explained, the goal of the financial literacy pilot program centers on addressing chronic absenteeism. He said that the funds to actualize that goal would come from D.C. Department of Youth and Rehabilitative Services (DYRS) in a manner that, in tandem with elements of the Budget Support Act as introduced by the mayor, narrows the use of leave policy tied to staffing gaps.
“One of the challenges that the agency cited is that right now the status quo, a person only needs to notify the agency within an hour of their call time that they will not be showing up,” Parker said on the dais. “The subtitle changes that. It also changes the amount of time a new employee needs to work in order to accrue leave. I believe it is now six months, and so it changes the culture which now says you’re hired today and you can call out next week.”
Throughout much of the early afternoon on June 9, Parker addressed colleagues’ concerns about the purpose of the program, and the timing of implementation. He called the program a suitable investment at a time when there’s skepticism about the efficacy of D.C. Department of Human Services anti-truancy pilot program.
“I think this is yet another opportunity we have as a district to employ another strategy for us to step back and say, ‘What are our options and what is working? And let’s look at all of the data,” Parker said.
During the council’s Committee of the Whole meeting, Felder withdrew an amendment that diverted $150,000 in capital funds from the relocation of a comprehensive psychiatric emergency program to fund the installation of a pool shell at Kelly Miller Recreation Center.
Council members’ qualms centered on the likely interruption of the emergency program’s relocation. In response, D.C. Councilmember Janeese Lewis George (D-Ward 4) offered Felder assistance in finding an alternative funding source.
An even larger discrepancy, however, centered on the cost of the pool shale: Parker and D.C. Council member Christina Henderson (I-At-large) said that, per their conversations with D.C. Department of General Services and D.C. Department of Parks and Recreation, the renovation would cost $1.5 million, not $150,000 as stated by Felder.
Felder addressed the confusion.
“The $150,000 that we’re asking for will cover the shale, which will go towards opening up the pool,” Felder told Henderson and Parker. “Now, that broader $1.5 million will go towards broader renovations to the pool.”
The Ward 7 council member went on to paint the bigger picture.
“The reality here is we have a community, one of our most vulnerable communities, with no recreational activities available, which has been closed for a couple years,” Felder said. “There are individuals who are saying that all pools across the District are open when the reality is, in Ward 7, that is not the case. When we talk about activities for our young folks or the lack thereof, we can’t pick and choose what we choose to support and what we choose not to support.”
As conversations about District youth activities happen inside and outside the John A. Wilson Building, Parker continued along his crusade for the full implementation of the ROAD Act.
After the council advanced a committee print of the budget bill that didn’t reverse the mayor’s financing of additional beds at the Youth Services Center and New Beginnings, Parker said that DYRS’ fidelity to the ROAD Act would make it so that more beds wouldn’t be necessary.
“We firmly believe that the strategy that would be most beneficial right now would be implementing the ROAD Act and accelerating placements and improving culture,” Parker told Mendelson. “What essentially this print does is it allows and makes room for us to incarcerate more youth three, four years from now, citing overcrowding today, at a time when the agency has not fully committed to implementing the ROAD Act, although we’re working with them on it.”
Kicking the Can Down the Road: The Fight for Early Childhood Educator Pay Equity and the Childcare Subsidy
After Bowser defunded public employee pay increases in her budget proposal, the council allocated $100 million toward the District’s workforce investment fund for collective bargaining agreements. The fund, as it currently stands, has nearly $179 million, none of which is budgeted for contractual obligations related to the Washington Teachers’ Union and Fraternal Order of Police.
The council also allocated $72 million to the early childhood educator pay equity fund for one fiscal year — setting the stage for what will likely be another budget battle next year. Weeks prior, as she and her comrades wrote letters to Bowser and visited the John A. Wilson Building, LaDon Love sought a more favorable outcome.
“My fear is that the city is setting childcare up to fail, and it’s a sector that we all need because childcare is the workforce behind the workforce,” said Love, executive director of SPACEs in Action, a membership-based community organization immersed in the fight for childcare and healthcare funding.
“If we don’t make sure that our educators have higher wages and benefits, we’re going to lose them,” Love told The Informer. “If we have children that need services that aren’t getting them, we’re going to have a larger population of children who aren’t ready for grade school.”
Throughout much of the budget deliberation cycle, SPACEs in Action has been preparing parents to testify before the council and particpate in a “Day Without Childcare,” where parents and children occupy council members’ offices to showcase how children learn at early childcare facilities.
SPACES in Action has also conducted rallies at Bethel Christian Fellowship Early Child Development Center on Martin Luther King, Jr. Avenue SE in Anacostia, Gatari Child Development Center in Northeast, Blandi Child Development Center on Kennedy Street NW.
Each event, Love said, allows for an opportunity to make clear the importance of supporting early childcare workers.
“We have educators that are saying ‘I’m able to make my ends meet. I’m able to take care of a bill that I have been ignoring. My credit score has gone up because I can take care of my debt.’” Love told The Informer. “We have educators who are saying, ‘I’m less stressed because I could take care of my household and I’m better able to attend to the children in the classroom.’”
For the childcare subsidy program, the council increased Fiscal Year 2026 funding by $10 million and $39 million for Fiscal Year 2027, which brings the funding for the program up to $150 million and $153.2 million respectively.
Additionally, a subtitle in the Fiscal Year 2027 Budget Support Act of 2026 eliminates the Fiscal Year 2026 waitlist, as long as the State Superintendent of Education (OSSE) maintains fidelity to a monthly threshold of 8,450 children.
“They have to take certain steps to stay within the budget,” Mendelson said. “The wait list should go away. It’s possible that there would be a short term wait list as in, you would go on the wait list until there’s a slot that opens, which will open and then you would be able to get that slot.”
Weeks before the council’s first budget reading, Ward 7 resident Dr. Marla Dean implored her council representative Felder to make early childhood education a significant part of Ward 7 Education Town Hall. By that time, OSSE launched its wait list for eligible families receiving subsidies and placed a cap on childcare providers that could join the program.
Accompanying the wait list’s rollout was OSSE’s announcement about programmatic changes, including the reduction of the number of excused absences allowed for subsidy recipients, and a hold on new childcare providers joining the program.
Such changes, Dean said, exacerbated a strain on the childcare ecosystem.
“If we’re talking about our wealthiest neighbors in the District of Columbia saying that childcare is essential and expensive, then you can only imagine what it means for middle and working class families and their ability to provide for their families and participate in the economy,” said Dean, chair of the Ward 7 Education Council.
Dean’s education policy experience includes a stint on the Early Childhood Educator Equitable Compensation Task Force. As a member of that body, she guided the implementation of the early childhood educator pay equity fund that allowed for the adequate compensation of credentialed early childhood educators.
Before then, Dean served as director of Bright Beginnings, a Ward 8 nonprofit that uses the whole child, two-generation approach toward the long-term development of children and their families. As she recounted, nearly all parents at Bright Beginnings relied on the childcare subsidy, which helped the organization meet its annual budget.
“The economy can’t run without a childcare sector and parents definitely can’t participate in the economy without a childcare sector,” Dean told The Informer. “This is an issue for women’s economic ability and inclusion. It’s an issue for fathers because we just don’t live in an economy anymore where a family can live off of one income.”
For Dean, it’s also become a matter of ensuring the best possible educational outcomes for District youth.
“This has to be a central part of the conversation when it comes to education,” Dean told The Informer. “We also know how our young people often come with gaps in literacy preparedness, and so if they don’t have that exposure to early childhood education, those gaps are only more exacerbated.”
As Dean said, the defunding of early childhood education would also be an affront to the legacy of one of Ward 7’s greatest.
“Former mayor and former Ward 7 D.C. council member Vince Gray was instrumental in helping to create the advancement in early childhood here in the District with pre-K3 and pre-K4 for all, and then coming back and really supporting the birth-to-three bill,” Dean told The Informer. “ It was seen as such a beacon of light across the country on this issue and a pathway forward, and for us to give up all of that would be truly tragic.”
Much to One Parent’s Chagrin, the Council Saves a Piece of Paid Family Leave
While Bowser’s budget included no new vouchers and didn’t ensure the adequate funding of existing vouchers, the council’s allocation of $173 million over the four-year financial plan at D.C. Department of Human Services and D.C. Housing Authority supports nearly 700 vouchers, 190 of which are for families exiting rapid rehousing.
Though the council’s budget allocates the $14.5 million toward TANF and delays the mayor’s decrease in benefits, there are no cost of living increases. Lewis George questioned whether, between the first and second reading, Mendelson would prioritize the cost of living increase, along with funding for immigrant teacher visas.
“I understand that the three funding areas we had to confront here with TANF, many appear distinct, but in practice, they are closely connected, because the TANF cost of living adjustment is 2.9%, which remains below the inflation… the District has experienced in recent years,” Lewis George said. “And I think it’s also worth remembering that the District only reinstated a meaningful TANF [cost of living adjustment] in fiscal year 2017, which increased the average benefit for a family of three from 441 in Fiscal Year 2016 to 644 in Fiscal Year 19, but I think we all can agree this increase was necessary then, and that keeping up with inflation is just as necessary now, even more so.”
For universal paid leave, the council partially restored the maximum weekly benefit to $1,100, an increase of $100 from what the mayor included in her budget proposal. The council also reversed Bowser’s elimination of medical leave and family in Fiscal Year 2027, but only partially, allowing for up to six weeks for paid family leave and up to 10 weeks for medical leave.
For Ward 1 mother Sequnely Gray, the council didn’t go far enough in stopping what she called an assault on working Black parents.
“It still creates racial disparities in Black communities, specifically with low-wage workers in D.C.,” Gray, a senior organizer with D.C. Jobs with Justice, told The Informer. “Black moms, brown moms are more likely to take this benefit, specifically caregiving leave, because we are the heads of our household and we all have to take care of our families.”
In 2024, Gray took paid family leave upon the birth of her child. She said the full 12 weeks, as recommended by her doctor, helped her juggle her responsibilities to her newborn son and father. Though she commended the council for securing funding for six weeks of paid leave, she lamented how, as she explained, low-income Washingtonians would more than likely miss out on time with their loved ones.
Parental leave is most likely taken by higher income white families in the city and that’s what most of the money is taken,” Gray said. “It would be fair to cut some of the parental leave [slots] to free up some of that money, as opposed to giving us only six weeks for caregiving leave. We don’t need to cut it at all. It’s already a dedicated tax, but we’re just trying to be equitable here.”
Another hurdle for working families, Gary said, centered on the weekly allocation of $1,100. She said that wouldn’t suffice.
“When you’re home, your bills increase, your grocery bills, your electricity. Electricity is already high,” Gray said. “You need that full amount of weekly benefits to actually take care of your family. A lot of businesses are not required to make up your salary.”
The Council Saves the Food Policy Council and Changes Its Agency Home
The D.C. Council restored funding for Fiscal Year 2026 and Fiscal Year 2027 to the Food Policy Council, a coalition of food leaders and government representatives appointed by the mayor to encourage the pivot toward an equitable, healthy and safe local food system.
Weeks prior, Henderson, chair of the council’s Committee on Health, facilitated, not only the Food Policy Council’s move from the D.C. Office of Planning to D.C. Health, but its ability to evaluate food procurement processes across District agencies. She called those moves part of her plan to follow through on conversations she had with then-Food Policy Council director Caroline Howe.
“We had a hearing…about enhancing its authority around food procurement, and then we weren’t even given the opportunity to do that because all of the funding was just removed,” Henderson told The Informer. “There was a lot of frustration in terms of [Director Howe] getting fired for essentially advocating for her office to remain. I thought that Caroline Howe…was an excellent public servant and someone who was enthusiastic about the type of work that she was doing and was actually effective.”
Henderson expressed doubt that her restoration of the Food Policy Council would manifest into anything of substance— at least this calendar year.
“We funded the position, so when the office moves, they’ll have that authority,” she told The Informer. “Unfortunately, I don’t anticipate any of those positions being filled into the next administration.
The Food Policy Council and Director Establishment Act of 2014 paved the way for the Food Policy Council, which promotes various means of food access, including marginalized producers. Other purposes involve collection and analysis of data on food access; monitoring the job creation potential of the local food economy and advising the food policy director on the aforementioned and other matters related to national food policy.
As Jazzlyn Lindsey explained, much more was on the way for the Food Policy Council before Bowser defunded the advisory body in her budget proposal and, shortly after, fired Howe.
“It is a good space…for us who are concerned about food, about food justice, about procurement to actually congregate and share those types of resources,” Lindsey told The Informer. “That’s one way that we’ve tangibly been able to benefit from getting connected to funders who are in the food space who aren’t even necessarily through the mayor’s office.”
Lindsay and her husband launched Nyame Kua Farm Collective, a Black-led food justice initiative dedicated to equitable access to fresh, nutrient-dense and culturally relevant foods in honor of the late Baba Oduno Tarik.
A Garveyite and horticulturalist who died in 2023, Tarik coined the saying, “No culture without agriculture.”
“Baba Oduno’s been telling us forever, and then me and my husband were like, ‘We should probably do something with agriculture,” Lindsey told The Informer. “That’s a big part of where Nymame Kua was born. We told him we had just got the shirts printed for the organization that say ‘No culture without agriculture’…to bring it to him. Before we made it back, he passed away.”
As Lindsey recounted, she and her husband stayed in the know about new developments in local food policy while staying connected with other Black growers and sustainability experts in the space. They also sought the D.C. Food Policy Council’s assistance in circulating the Oduno Petition, which called for grocery stores with an operating budget of more than $1 million to open 70% of their shelf space to produce grown within a 250 mile radius, with Black and brown farmers taking priority.
Lindsey credited the Food Policy Council as an important resource for her and others establishing roots in the food equity space.
“There are a lot of things that D.C. promotes or has access to, like urban agriculture, the Nourish DC Collaborative, and commercial kitchens, that there isn’t a good streamlined way to find out about them,” Lindsey told The Informer. “My question and concern is if we remove the council, how would we learn about those? Will we need to be going through the Department of Health? Will we need to become wizards of [navigating] the D.C. government website versus having these bi-monthly meetings where we were getting the download?”
Throughout much of the budget deliberation cycle, Lindsey established connections with Harriet’s Wildest Dreams, Dreaming Out Loud, and Fair Budget Coalition to make known her qualms with Bowser’s budgetary decision. As she recounted, she also made plans to visit Lewis George’s office.
Had council members followed through with the dissolution of the Food Policy Council, that would’ve been up to $400,000 going elsewhere. That amount, though negligible in some people’s eyes, did a lot for the District’s farming community, Lindsey told The Informer.
“If you feel like the staff was being ineffective for the council, fine,” she said. “But the actual council itself wasn’t just these staff positions. It’s representatives from different organizations, different farmers, different constituents even showing up. So the staff was there to support that and to cultivate that space. We need a budget for things like that to help cultivate those spaces.”
As the District, and much of the nation for that matter, reel from SNAP eligibility changes, the Food Policy Council has even more potency as an agent of stability. Henderson told The Informer just as much.
“When I asked the director of the Office of Planning who picks up that work stream, she was like, ‘I don’t know,’” Henderson said. “That’s an ongoing issue. An estimated 17,000 people might lose their SNAP benefit due to the federal requirements, and there’s not one person whose job it is in D.C. government to think about that from a food perspective of how we fill the gaps.”
The Bellevue Family Success Center Will Remain Open
At $325,000 apiece, the D.C. Council’s Fiscal Year 2027 budget funded four family success centers, one of which is located in the Bellevue neighborhood of Ward 8. During the council’s Committee of the Whole hearing, Lewis George successfully introduced an amendment to save another family success center that serves families living near Georgia Avenue NW.
Across town, a community member is speaking highly about the Bellevue Family Success Center at Community of Hope. They said it’s been their saving grace.
“If I go up there right now, I can grab a cup of coffee, have a conversation, get a printout of something,” said Darene Bennett, a Bellevue resident of more than a decade who’s patronized the Community of Hope Bellevue Family Success Center since 2021.
The space, Bennett said, has been of immense help to her during her darkest moments.
“There’s one particular time, I was in a crisis with my parents, my brother, and he was just coming back from his dad,” Barnett told The Informer. “I was battling custody with him, and I was overwhelmed. I just had to duck in there to the ground myself. I was just at my wits’ end and they took me in the office and allowed me to get myself together, because I was suffering from anxiety and depression.”
Over the five years that she visited the Bellevue Family Success Center, Barnett poured into the community just as much as she received from it. As an aspiring teacher currently working toward her credentials, Barnett received the Circle of Parents training. She also dedicated a portion of her time as a board member, through which she coordinated bookbag giveaways, game nights, and other activities.
As Barnett recalled, the Bellevue Family Success Center has also a significant resource for her neurodivergent grandson.
“We don’t have the rec centers,” Barnett told The Informer. “I don’t know anything about Bald Eagle. That’s too far from me, but I can go to Community of Hope and get my grandson to play with other kids and be safe without a gunshot, without a drug dealer standing in front of it.”
Earlier this year, when Barnett found out that the mayor’s budget proposal defunded the Bellevue Family Success Center, she got into action. She counted among those who testified before the council’s Committee on Youth Affairs in support of the center.
“I wanted to see where we go from here,” Barnett told The Informer. “Who else could we talk to and send some emails to? I’m in the last leg of this degree, so my time is filled, but I do want to send out emails to council members and make calls. I know that money is a thing, but we need this. We’re just trying to help [and] be something that’s missing in this community.”
“We found out… then we had the hearing so we rallied to see if we could get members to testify. I do want to see where we go from here. Who else could we talk to, send some emails. I’m in the last leg of this degree, so my time is filled, but I do want to send out emails to council members and make calls. I know that money is a thing, but we need this. We’re just trying to help [and] be something that’s missing in this community.”
For Barnett, it was a matter of saving the community that she’s called home for years.
“Being in Ward 8, you don’t have a sense that people care, but I meet people that genuinely care,” Barnett told The Informer. “The board members respect me. I can listen, and they have other organizations that come in and talk to us about what we can do…to be better community members. It’s a sense of belonging. A lot of us want to make a difference and don’t know how, but that gives us a space.”
