Photo by lightboxdc.

At his monthly breakfast with the D.C. Council yesterday, Mayor Vince Gray and some of his top aides celebrated what they said was a huge step towards budget autonomy for the District — a congressional spending bill that lets the city spend its own money.

“I don’t think I can overstate the significance of what has been done,” said Gray of the federal spending bill that allows the District to spend its own money and avoid the usual time-consuming preparations every time Congress threatens to shut down the government. “This is the first time that this has ever happened and hopefully it will establish a precedent moving forward,” he added.

But D.C. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton was quick to throw cold water on the celebration, stating in a press release yesterday that the continuing resolution passed by the U.S. Senate on Monday doesn’t actually allow the District to spend its own money through 2012 as Gray and other seem to have assumed.

Norton explained that while the continuing resolutions do allow the city to spend its own money at expected 2012 levels, the authority ends when the resolutions expire — in this case, November 18. What does this mean? Well, we’ve got budget autonomy, but only for another 49 days, after which we’ll go through all the motions again, including the usual doomsday prediction of how a federal government would affect the District. (According to City Administrator Allen Lew, it would cost us $5 million a week.) Of course, that’s 49 days more days of budgetary freedom than we’ve usually had, so I suppose there’s room for some high-fiving.

Norton has tried in vain to insert language or pass legislation that would give the District year-long ability to spend its money as it sees fit, but she has yet to meet with success. When she does, that will be grounds for a real celebration.