New Norton Appropriations Process Frees D.C. Budget (9/26/07)
New Norton Appropriations Process Frees D.C. Budget and Paves Way for Full Budget Autonomy
September 26, 2007
Washington, DC-For the fifth year in a row, Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) will get the D.C. appropriations out on time by Monday, October 1st--the first day of the new fiscal year-- atnext year's FY 08 levels, with today's House passage of a continuing resolution (CR) to keep the government running. Norton has communicated with the Senate as well, and passage also is expected there today, including the on-time D.C. provision. Until Norton negotiated the new procedure initially with Republican appropriators, the D.C. appropriation was habitually late, and the city could spend its own taxpayer raised funds only at the prior year's spending levels, pending the passage of a final appropriations bill that often came in November or December instead of by the end of the fiscal year on September 30th. The new procedure, guaranteeing on-time passage of the District's locally raised budget, is unique among federal appropriations because D.C. alone is allowed to spend at next year's levels. Norton said, "This procedure is a far cry and a huge relief from the multiple handicaps imposed on city operations when budgets were approved two and even three months late." The Congresswoman's budget autonomy bill to free the city entirely from Congress has been voted out of subcommittee.
Today's CR authority for the District is a major step toward full budget autonomy, which would allow the District to spend local funds when passed by the D.C. Council without coming to Congress at all. A subcommittee of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee passed Norton's Budget Autonomy Act of 2007 in June, and the bill is pending before the full committee. Norton's mid-year budget autonomy provision was passed two years ago, permitting the city to spend the local funds it has collected since the last appropriation without coming back to Congress for approval at all during the congressional mid-year supplemental appropriations process.
The District's FY 08 local budget is the only appropriation in the CR permitted to spend at the next fiscal year's levels. The other appropriations in the package are for federal agencies, which are authorized to spend only at the levels appropriated last year, regardless of increased expenses. Until Norton negotiated today's process, the District was treated similarly, as if it were a federal agency. She argued that holding D.C. to the usual appropriations process was punitive, unnecessarily hampered vital city operations, and kept important new programs from starting, even though they were funded entirely by local funds. "The ability to meet increased expenditures, operate new programs, enter and pay new contracts, and acquire needed equipment is the heart and soul of a smooth-running city," Norton said, "and that is impossible with the delays caused by the old problem that was the norm for D.C. until recent years."
Budget and legislative autonomy are the two most important bills in Norton's "Free and Equal D.C." series of bills to address restrictions placed on the District that deny the city the right to self-government equal to that of other U.S. jurisdictions.