D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) and D.C. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson (D) have worked on 11 budgets together since Bowser took office in 2015, but their final one before she leaves office will come with a little dose of extra drama: a lawsuit.
The D.C. Council sued the mayor last week, seeking to force Bowser to deliver a host of budget documents prepared by agency directors that she has withheld for years — despite city laws, and a recent court ruling, requiring her to provide them.
Mendelson said in an interview Tuesday that the documents are critical to understanding the full scope of financial pressure points or program needs at each city agency, especially in a tough budget year in which cuts and difficult policy trade-offs are on the table.
Still, Mendelson downplayed the legal drama. It was “not a big deal,” he said, and could easily go away if Bowser hands over the documents.
“We shouldn’t have to seek a court order,” he said.
A spokesman for the mayor declined to comment. A spokesman for the D.C. attorney general’s office, which represents the administration in litigation, also declined to comment.
Last month, however, when a split D.C. Council authorized a potential lawsuit, the mayor made clear she would “strongly oppose” that path.
“Litigation initiated by the Council to compel the Executive to produce internal, deliberative budget enhancement requests is an extraordinary escalation of this issue,” Bowser wrote in a letter to lawmakers.
The making of the city’s $22 billion budget is a months-long process, including behind-the-scenes number crunching and input from bureaucrats overseeing everything from transportation to child welfare, who prepare detailed memos for the mayor about their financial situations and needs. Lawmakers have been seeking the “budget enhancement requests” for years to inform their own budget plan — building on the mayor’s — to no avail.
The mayor has disregarded D.C. Council requests or bills in the past — but the disagreements rarely escalate to a lawsuit. On this issue, Bowser has already spent years fighting in court against the release of the budget documents, in a case involving a separate plaintiff, and was recently found in contempt for continuing to withhold them.
In 2019, a law firm representing pre-school-age children with disabilities tried to get a hold of the budget documents from D.C. Public Schools and the state superintendent’s office through a public records request, pointing to laws requiring their release. The mayor said no, citing “executive privilege,” and said the records are part of her administration’s deliberative process as they put a budget proposal together — and are not for the public’s eyes. The administration lost that legal argument in 2021, appealed the judge’s order and, last year, lost the appeal as well.
The D.C. Court of Appeals ordered the mayor in June to release the documents to the law firm, Terris, Pravlik & Millian, which saw the information as important to its role in monitoring the city’s compliance with an older court order requiring the improvement of special-education programs. The city later provided some of the information, but not what the firm requested in full, lawyers told the court.
In February, D.C. Superior Court Judge Julie H. Becker held the mayor in civil contempt for failure to turn over the full batch of documents to the law firm, giving the administration 21 days to comply with another order. The mayor complied on the 21st day.
Mendelson said the Bowser administration continues to ignore requests to provide the D.C. Council with the requested documents. In January, following a new request, the mayor’s chief of staff sent a memo to agencies ordering them not to provide the budget documents.
“I don’t understand the fervent opposition, because once the court says you got to turn it over, you know, you got to turn it over,” Mendelson said.
Mendelson wants the mayor to produce the agencies’ budget enhancement documents from fiscal years 2025 and 2026, and the council is also asking a judge to compel Bowser to provide them as part of the fiscal 2027 budget process that is underway now.
Mendelson said he requested the documents from the administration several times before deciding to sue and got no response. Not all council members saw it as wise to pick a legal fight with the mayor over information some thought they could ask agency directors in hearings or meetings. The February resolution passed 8-5, with council members Anita Bonds (D-At Large), Christina Henderson (I-At Large), Trayon White Sr. (D-Ward 8), Matthew Frumin (D-Ward 3) and Wendell Felder (D-Ward 7) opposed to a suit.
Bowser also told lawmakers that asking for 2027 budget enhancement documents would be “moot” because there would be no enhancements this year — she has warned the council that the District faces a $1.1 billion shortfall, and cuts to programs and services are likely.
“As a result of the challenging economic headwinds the District continues to face, no agency budget requests have been submitted during this budget cycle,” Bowser wrote in her letter to lawmakers last month. “This will be one of the most challenging budgets the District has faced in decades.”
Mendelson acknowledged there was “some uneasiness” among colleagues about launching a legal battle with Bowser, but said the council had to assert its authority as the legislative, equal branch of government in charge of appropriations.
“I don’t know any way to look at it other than that the council is the appropriator — just as Congress is the appropriator — and that in order for us to do our job, we need all the information we can get so that we’re knowledgeable in our appropriations, and these enhancer requests are a key part of that knowledge.”
The mayor periodically ignores directives passed into law by the D.C. Council telling her administration to deliver reports or information. For example, on Monday, the administration released a long-awaited study on the feasibility of “congestion pricing,” which functions like a tax to drive into downtown as a way to reduce traffic and encourage public transit. The release came five years after the report was completed, and two years after the council wrote into law that the administration had to provide it by Jan. 1, 2024.
The move followed a lawsuit filed by Greater Greater Washington in December seeking to force the release of the report, and as mayoral candidates have floated congestion pricing. City Administrator Kevin Donahue told reporters that the administration did not release the report earlier because it found the methodology “deeply flawed,” citing pre-pandemic traffic pattern data. Bowser, who is not seeking a fourth term, said in a letter to lawmakers that she strongly opposed the idea.
Jenny Gathright contributed to this report.
The post D.C. Council sues Mayor Bowser over refusal to share key budget documents appeared first on Washington Post.
