President’s Budget Would Grant D.C. Budget and Legislative Autonomy, and Give Funding Boost to Norton’s Top D.C. Priorities

WASHINGTON, DC – The office of Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) said today that President Obama’s fiscal year 2015 budget would grant the District of Columbia budget and legislative autonomy, and is the strongest and most comprehensive call for local D.C. autonomy in a President’s budget ever. For the first time ever in a president’s budget, the President not only supported legislative autonomy in his narrative section, but included statutory language to give the District legislative autonomy. The budget also includes statutory language that would give D.C. budget autonomy, as the President’s fiscal year 2014 budget did as well. Budget autonomy would give the District the permanent authority to spend its local funds without congressional approval and to set its own fiscal year budget. Legislative autonomy would eliminate the congressional review period for legislation passed by the D.C. Council, which provides no benefit to Congress, but imposes substantial costs (in time and money) on the District.

The budget also funds Norton’s top D.C. priorities, particularly with what would be the highest appropriation ever for the D.C. Tuition Assistance Grant program (DCTAG), at $40 million, a $10 million increase over the fiscal year 2014 enacted level. This unprecedented amount follows a letter Norton sent to the President last month, to reiterate her request that he fully fund DCTAG, especially in light of the D.C. Council’s preliminary approval of the D.C. Promise bill, which, according to House and Senate appropriators, could risk the future of DCTAG funding. However, Norton is disappointed that the budget imposes the same means testing that the President proposed last year, reducing the household income eligibility from $1 million to $450,000 for new students. In fiscal year 2014, Norton was able to prevent new means testing, and she will seek to do the same this year.

Also of particular importance to the District is the $323,534,000 provided for continued construction of the consolidated U.S. Department of Homeland Security Headquarters (DHS) campus at the St. Elizabeths West Campus in Ward 8 ($250,534,000 in the General Services Administration budget and $73 million in the DHS budget), indicating the Administration’s ongoing support of the project. These funds ratify Norton’s promise to the District and Ward 8 that despite slower funding, the DHS complex will be completed. Norton, however, is disappointed that the bill does not include funding for the D.C.-owned portion of St. Elizabeths, to jumpstart redevelopment of the St. Elizabeths East Campus.

“This is the best news in a president’s budget for D.C. funding in several years and for D.C. policy ever,” said Norton. “Residents will be cheered to see the President’s statutory language for both budget and legislative autonomy, and parents and students will be particularly gratified by the strong increase in funding for DCTAG. I am particularly pleased that one of my most important projects, the DHS headquarters in Ward 8, is handsomely funded with an increase that should ensure that the first federal agency to cross the Anacostia River will not be turned back, and should ensure D.C. residents get more construction and federal jobs.”

Norton pointed out other important funds in the President’s budget, including $20 million for D.C. public schools and $20 million for public charter schools, a $4 million increase for each, from the fiscal year 2014 enacted level; $5 million for HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment, matching the fiscal year 2014 enacted level; $16 million for the D.C. Water and Sewer Authority (DC Water) – a $2 million increase from the fiscal year 2014 enacted level – for the ongoing massive construction to improve D.C.’s antiquated storm water system to eliminate combined sewer overflows into the Anacostia and Potomac rivers and Rock Creek, a special Norton priority.

Another Norton priority in the President’s budget is funding for the sixth $150 million installment for WMATA, per an authorization for $1.5 billion over 10 years in federal funds for capital improvements authorized in the 2008 Rail Safety Improvement Act, which Norton helped to champion as a senior member of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.

Under a provision Norton got signed into law at the beginning of the year, as part of the fiscal year 2014 omnibus appropriations bill, D.C. is permitted to spend its local funds and remain open if the federal government shuts down in fiscal year 2015, meaning D.C. will not face another shutdown threat until at least October 1, 2015.

Published: March 4, 2014