District Budget Passed This PM, On the Way to the President (9/30/09)

District Budget Passed this P.M.,

On the Way to the President

September 30, 2009

WASHINGTON, D.C. - As a result of a procedure negotiated by Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC), the District's local budget was passed this evening in a continuing resolution, allowing the District's FY10 budget to become effective at the beginning of the fiscal year tomorrow, Oct. 1. Almost all of the federal government must continue to operate on the FY09 budget, however. Instead of waiting months from now when the Financial Services Appropriations bill, which carries the District's federal appropriations, is enacted the District will begin spending tomorrow from next fiscal year's local funds for operations in its exclusive control, such as schools, fire, and police. The District's federal appropriations for programs funded exclusively by the federal government will continue to be funded at the 2009 levels pending passage of federal appropriations. Included will be funding for D.C. prison inmates in the Bureau of Prisons, among other federally covered costs.

Because D.C.'s federal appropriations, still under consideration, contains several harmful riders, Norton released her letter to appropriators asking them to remove riders that would ban the use of local funds on the city's effective needle exchange program, and to prevent that language from being included in the Senate version. Norton also asked that the final bill's ban on the use of local funds for abortions for poor women, and on the use of marijuana for medical purposes in the District as authorized by a local referendum, be removed.

A copy of the Congresswoman's letter to appropriators is attached.

September 30, 2009

The Hon. David Obey

Chairman, Committee on Appropriations

U.S. House of Representatives

H-218, The Capitol

Washington, DC 20510

The Hon. José E. Serrano

Chairman, Subcommittee on Financial

Services

U.S. House of Representatives

1040A Longworth House Office Building

Washington, DC 20510

BY MAIL AND EMAIL

Dear Mr. Obey and Mr. Serrano:

Thank you for your continuing work to produce the District of Columbia appropriations, particularly your strong and successful efforts that have reinforced the District's home rule government. We also especially appreciate the Appropriations Committee's continued practice of approving the local budget of the District of Columbia in the first Continuing Resolution or the first appropriations bill. As you know, this practice relieves the city of the hardship of conducting the business of a major American city under last year's budget. We especially applauded your success in ridding the Financial Services appropriations bill of the abortion and marijuana bans this year. While we strongly oppose all anti-home rule riders restricting the District's use of its own taxpayer-raised funds, there is a particular urgency, once again, to clear our appropriation of the most dangerous rider, the return of an effective ban on needle exchange. This rider reverses the Congressional elimination of that same provision in 2007 under of your leadership.

The House Financial Services appropriations bill, as passed, bans the needle exchange program from being conducted "within 1,000 feet of a public or private day care center, elementary school, vocational school, secondary school, college, junior college, or university, or any public swimming pool, park, playground, video arcade, or youth center, or an event sponsored by any such entity." District law already prohibits needle exchanges within 1,000 feet of schools. The expansive restriction in the House bill effectively is a full ban. The attached map from the District showing the area affected by the House Financial Services appropriations bill confirms that virtually the entire city would be covered by the restrictions. The Senate bill contains no such restriction. We request the Senate language, which reflects the change Congress enacted in 2007, be adopted in the conference report.

The District has the highest HIV/AIDS rate in the country, primarily because of the needle exchange ban that you removed in 2007 when the new majority took over. At least one-third of HIV/AIDS cases in the District are caused by the exchange of infected needles among intravenous drug users. Until Congress halted the city's program, established by the Whitman-Walker Clinic, D.C.'s pioneering needle exchange program had been recognized nationally for bringing hard core addicts into treatment, and for two years now the District has resumed doing so again with a model program that combines health care and social services. More than any other action by Congress, the lifting of the ban on spending local money for a needle exchange program has saved the lives of innocent women, men and children. This rider is a particularly harsh and underserved repudiation of the District's duly elected local officials, who would become unable to take needed action against the city's most serious public health problem.

We also are deeply concerned about three District programs that were included in the House bill, but left out of the Senate's bill. Specifically, the Senate removed $19 million for the District's Housing First program, which seeks to place homeless individuals in apartments instead of shelters. The Senate also did not include $5 million for the District's program to bring disconnected youth to school or work, $4 million for HIV/AIDS prevention, which is especially important in this city, and $2 million for the D.C. National Guard's D.C. Government Operation. Each of these programs was approved in the House bill as necessary programs and components of the District's budget, and I request that they be included in the final legislation. Like most of the country, the District's recession will not allow it to make up for these major programs, which are of great importance to the city. Accordingly, we request that you retain these provisions in conference.

Thank you again for the support you have given to the city.

Sincerely,

Eleanor Holmes Norton

CC:

Adrian Fenty, Mayor, District of Columbia

Vincent Gray, Chairman, District of Columbia City Council