Budget Negotiations Almost Complete: D.C. Mayor Anthony Williams and members of the City Council are set to wrap up negotiations over the city’s $4.94 billion 2006 budget today. After District CFO Natwar Gandhi verified in recent weeks that the city’s finances were doing better than expected — he predicted a $90 million windfall over the next two years — members of the Council proposed that the surpluses be directed towards schools and social programs or tax cuts. The former seems to have won, according to the Post — the Council agreed to spend an additional $26.4 million for school renovations and teacher pay raises. While the mayor’s critics noted that increased spending on school’s was a simple necessity, others recognized that spending on social programs would also serve to promote the possible mayoral candidacies of various members of the Council. No less than five council-members have expressed interest in running for the mayor’s seat in 2006.

Williams in Hot Water Over Contracts: It may not be on the same plane as Halliburton’s $1.7 billion no-bid contract for reconstruction work in Iraq, but in terms of D.C. politics, it’s something. Williams and city administrator Robert C. Bobb have recently come under fire for awarding no-bid contracts worth $150,000 for consultancies on last year’s trade mission to China and to help bring baseball back to the District. According to the Post, Williams and Bobb regularly skirted city contracting procedures by failing to open the bidding process for city contracts and, in one case, allowing a contract to move forward without a written agreement and without approval from the city’s contracting office. Vincent Orange (D-Ward 5), who chairs the Committee on Government Operations, has promised to hold hearings on the matter.

Williams has been criticized for dubious contracting procedures in the past. In early December 2004, the Post reported that Michael Reinsdorf, son of Jerry Reinsdorf, owner of the Chicago White Sox and chairman of the Expos relocation committee, was to be granted a $3.7 million contract to consult on a new stadium in Southeast. Members of the City Council expressed concern over this obvious conflict of interest, though Reinsdorf’s role in building any new stadium is to be formalized when a new owner for the Nationals is announced later this summer.