The D.C. Council’s judiciary committee unanimously voted Thursday to approve a $15 million reduction to the Metropolitan Police Department’s proposed budget for next year and to require the current police chief to undergo a review every four years to stay on the job.

While the committee mark-up of MPD’s budget includes less funding than Mayor Muriel Bowser proposed in mid-May, it still constitutes a $9 million increase over the department’s approved operating budget for the current fiscal year. Against the backdrop of calls to “defund the police,” committee chair Charles Allen said the amount of the decrease was partly limited by contractual pay raises for police officers.

At a committee meeting, Allen said roughly $25 million of MPD’s budget was already locked in for pay raises under the city’s collective bargaining agreement with the D.C. Police Union. An initial committee report notes that the legislative body “legally does not have the authority to renege on past contractual agreements around the [collective bargaining agreement] and pay raises,” adding that this is why MPD’s budget shows a net increase from last year.

The committee also passed a proposal that would subject the city’s police chief to a four-year term. It would apply retroactively to D.C. Police Chief Peter Newsham, who was approved for the role in 2017, meaning he would be due to undergo a council review next year to stay on the job. (The chief would generally continue to serve “at the pleasure of the mayor,” Allen noted.)

Lawmakers also advanced proposals to increase funding for violence prevention programs, expand authority for the D.C. attorney general to prosecute local government-corruption cases, and restore the right to vote for thousands of incarcerated residents who are serving sentences for felony convictions in federal prisons.

The recommendations come after protests against anti-Black police brutality and in support of racial justice swept across D.C. and other U.S. cities following the killing of 46-year-old Black Minnesotan George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police in late May. Local activists have called on lawmakers to defund MPD and redirect that funding to social services—including holding protests at both Allen and Ward 7 Councilmember Vincent Gray’s homes.

The whole council still must deliberate over and approve the District’s budget for the next fiscal year, steps that are scheduled to happen by the end of July. Fiscal year 2021 begins in October.

Bowser will get to review the council’s changes to her budget proposal. At a press conference Thursday, she declined to comment on the revised police budget, saying she hadn’t read the judiciary committee’s report and had a “new policy” of not weighing in on council actions until she fully understands what lawmakers have done.

The mayor also has yet to make a public decision on recent emergency legislation that bars police officers from using chemical irritants, bans chokeholds, requires body camera footage in police shootings be made public more quickly, and other measures. She has until July 7 to veto it, sign it, or let it pass without a signature.

Under the new budget proposal, MPD would have an operating budget of more than $568 million, or $9.6 million less than Bowser requested. The mayor has consistently defended her proposed MPD budget and, in an interview with NPR this month, said it comprised “not a penny more than we need and certainly not a penny less.”

The mayor’s proposal had already reduced the personnel part of MPD’s budget by $43.8 million, which would largely eliminate new hires unless the department chose to underspend in other areas, according to the judiciary committee’s report. The committee’s proposal further reduces MPD’s personnel funding by $6.1 million, Allen pointed out, the maximum amount certified by D.C.’s chief financial officer.

“What your committee did is it worked with the [council’s budget office] and the [chief financial officer] to determine essentially the amount of salary that was still available or left on the table within MPD,” said Jen Budoff, the director of the council’s budget office, during the committee’s meeting. “And we determined that to be $6.1 million.”

To reach the total reduction of $15 million, the budget recommendations also cut Bowser’s proposed $2 million bump to MPD’s cadet program and a bevy of other costs, including those for uniforms, travel, and ballistic shields.

Committee members acknowledged that their revisions were just the beginning of a broader overhaul of the city’s policing and public safety systems.

“The time has come for this fundamental reimagining of policing,” said Ward 3 Councilmember Mary Cheh. “It’s long overdue. … This is not a one-off.”