Photo by Chris Rief aka Spodie Odie

Good morning, D.C., and welcome to the first, tortuous August day spent in the office of 2009. There really ought to just be an agreement that no one does anything of any importance for the entire month, so we can all stop pretending to be hard at work when we’re really merely staring at the computer screen, counting down the days until we can get out of our convection oven of a city for a real break. Or maybe Virginia has it right, where today is Telework Virginia Day, so there are thousands more people than usual blissfully working in their jammies in the state this morning. Couldn’t August become Telework D.C. Month? Or better yet, Four Weeks of Vacation D.C. Month?

Taxes Up, Unemployment Benefits Too: The big local news carried through the weekend was of course the revised FY2010 budget passed by the D.C. Council on Friday afternoon. The new budget raises a number of taxes: a sales tax increase of .25 percent, to 6 percent; a gas tax increase from 20 cents per gallon to 23.5 cents per gallon; another new cigarette tax, going from $2.00 to $2.50 per pack. The Council also voted to lift the $19 cap on taxicab fares within the District, and roll back tax rates on vacant property to $5 per $100 of assessed value, instead of the $10 the city had been charging for the last year. And of course, there are the big spending cuts at DCPS, the MPD, DPR and other city agencies.

At the same time the Council passed all these tax increases and spending cuts, they also extended, by emergency legislation, unemployment benefits for D.C. residents by another five months. The District’s unemployment rate hit 10.9 percent in June and is expected to go up again.

Briefly Noted: D.C. police investigating two fatal shootings … Four people shot during robbery in District Heights … Engine fails on DCA to JFK flight.

This Day in DCist: In 2007, our own Martin Austermuhle repped DCist’s fight for District voting rights at the Yearly Kos convention, and in 2006, we wondered if we could achieve gyro perfection.