In other, somewhat less obvious budget gap-related news: the District Department of Motor Vehicles will be raising rates on some transactions, including fees for residential parking permits and change of address requests.

Some positive budget news from the District’s Chief Financial Officer today: thanks to an uptick in tax revenue, the city’s budget gap for fiscal year 2012 has been reduced from as high as an estimated $600 million to about $322 million.

Kwame Brown. Amid a budget gap, we couldn’t help but notice how superfluous D.C. Council Chairman Kwame Brown’s and Mayor Vince Gray’s city-funded luxury SUVs are. When asked about the luxury SUV, Brown said that he had asked for a black SUV and had just driven what the city got for him. It turns out, that’s not quite what happened. Props to Mike DeBonis for digging up the truth via a few FOIA requests:…

D.C.’s budget gap in fiscal year 2012: $345 million. $400 million. $500 million. Er, make that $600 million. Michael Neibauer reports that Mayor Vince Gray’s financial team has revised the city’s budget gap for the upcoming fiscal year yet again, in what is certainly a sobering piece of Friday afternoon news for anyone in charge of a D.C. city agency. Remember the massive outpouring of opinion when the city had to trim $188 million from…

Over the last two days, we’ve featured two distinct views on the District’s growing budget deficit — Councilmember Tommy Wells (D-Ward 6) on why higher taxes are needed and Councilmember Jack Evans (D-Ward 2) on why more cuts are necessary.

If you’re a D.C. government employee, you’re going to get four unpaid days off in the near future; and if you make anywhere north of $40,000 a year, your taxes aren’t going up — two key points of a revised plan, sent out early this morning by D.C. Council Chair and Mayor-elect Vince Gray, which intends to close the city’s $188 million budget gap.

It’s getting down to the wire at the D.C. Council, where Chair and Mayor-elect Vince Gray and his 12 colleagues have continued tweaking Mayor Adrian Fenty’s plan to close a $188 million budget gap for the current fiscal year.