Washington D.C. Mayor Vincent Gray participates in a rally on the government shutdown at the U.S. Capitol, October 9, 2013 in Washington, DC. The U.S. government shutdown is entering its ninth day as the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives remain gridlocked on funding the federal government. (Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images)
In a letter to the D.C. Council, Mayor Vincent Gray expressed “serious concern” about some of the changes made to his proposed budget during the committee mark-up period.
“I’m extremely concerned that some committee mark-ups have transferred funds from important citywide capital projects to earmarks,” he writes. “I’m also extremely concerned about some committees removing funding for programs that provide upward mobility for residents to become self-sufficient through job training and career development.”
The Committee on Health is behind the biggest redirection of money from one of Gray’s biggest projects: the building a new community hospital on St. Elizabeths campus to take patients from the crumbling United Medical Center. The total estimated cost is $333 million.
“Inexplicably, the Committee on Health, with no expertise in hospital construction or management, now second guesses Huron by arbitrarily cutting $22.2 million from the project,” Gray writes. “And I have heard troubling rumors that some members of the Council may try to remove the remainder of the hospital’s funding at the Committee of the Whole level. Make no mistake, any Councilmember who votes to cut funding from this project is voting to deny the residents of Wards 7 and 8 access to a nearby hospital.”
The committee, headed by Ward 7’s Yvette Alexander, proposed to redirect the millions to several projects including the Nannie Helen Boroughs Housing Development and Hillcrest Recreation Center. Funds were originally redirected to the Washington Humane Society’s new facility, the Washington Tennis & Education Foundation, and to the DC Promise Neighborhood Initiative for a new park.
“At mark-up, all of those funds were available to be redirected as outlined, and as such, the committee members voted unanimously to redirect the funds as the chairwoman had outlined,” the committee report states. “However, one day after the committee voted on the report, the Mayor’s budget office removed $10,000,000 in Pay Go funds from the UMC – East End Medical Center project.”
In his letter, Gray writes that “at least $12.45 million” of the $22.2 million in proposed transfers “are not even eligible for capital funds. And an additional $6.45 million of capital funding redirected to three grants clearly violates the Council’s rules against earmarks.” The Washington Tennis & Education Foundation, for example, is located on federal land, and Gray writes that he “cannot believe the Council would have District taxpayers subsidize federal facilities over which it has no control.”
Email request for comment on this from Alexander’s office last week has not been returned.
Elsewhere in the letter, Gray says he is “shocked” by the $7.4 million in cuts to job training, including Vincent Orange’s plan to redirect $1.6 million to a film incentive fund and remove language that limits these grants “to the total amount of taxes paid by a production” in D.C.
“Such actions boggle the mind,” he writes.
