Posts about Budget

For example, in Montgomery County, the state will build a $63 million interchange at Georgia Avenue (MD 97) and Randolph Road, to speed up traffic near the Glenmont Metro station. With ramps and longer crossings, the interchange will further degrade pedestrian access to nearby shopping from residences.

For the amount spent on this project, the county could build much of the long-discussed Georgia Avenue bus rapid transit project from Wheaton to Olney instead.

Montgomery County is pushing another grade-separated interchange at the Veirs Mill Road (MD 586) and Randolph Road. Based on past experience, we can expect that the planned Veirs Mill bus rapid transit project (the county's largest bus route) will continue to lose out to the expensive interchange for priority.

The interchange would not only compete for funds with this proposed rapid bus corridor, it would also make conditions much worse for the many pedestrians who cross these roads to stores and bus stops at the intersection. Read the whole list of the county's priority transportation projects here.

In Prince George's, despite numerous setbacks, the 6,000-acre greenfield Westphalia development project outside the Capital Beltway and miles from the nearest Metro station still maintains a top ranking on the list from local elected officials. The price tag for the road infrastructure to serve this massive tract of largely undeveloped land is $460 million.

The transportation projects would convert Pennsylvania Avenue (MD 4) into a freeway from the Capitol Beltway to Woodyard Road (MD 223), and add 4 interchanges along the way. The Westphalia plan calls for adding 14,000-15,300 new residential units and up 6 million square feet of commercial space.

The county transportation lists also contain important transit, bike, and pedestrian projects, but often these proposals languish while road projects advance. Other important transit, pedestrian, bicycle, and complete streets solutions never even make the list. We need to fund projects that meet the growing demand for more transportation choices that save time, energy, and money.

If Marylanders are asked to pay more, each dollar must be invested wisely. Residents need better and more affordable transportation choices. So where should this money go?

First, let's fix Maryland's existing infrastructure, like our aging roads, bridges and transit systems. Then, let's build modern transit to move more people efficiently and competitively, while providing alternatives to congested highways like the Beltway, I-95, and I-270. It's long past time for critical rail investments like the Purple Line, Baltimore Red Line and MARC expansion, and better bus service.

At the local level, state revenue to local governments should go to fix and maintain local street connections, sidewalks, and bikeways for existing communities.

Moreover, given high unemployment, smart growth transit options can help the economy. Public transportation and road maintenance are the biggest job creators. According to the Surface Transportation Policy Partnership, investments in road maintenance projects create 9% more jobs than spending on new highway capacity; increasing transit capacity creates 19% more jobs than new highway capacity.

If Marylanders are going to pay more, we deserve to know what the money will buy. We need a bill that that specifies smart, fix-it-first policies for the state. Otherwise, we're just throwing our money into the dark.

A fairer solution would be to allocate those dollars according to the uniform per pupil formula that is already in place. That formula is designed to ensure that each DC school child gets the same amount of funding, regardless of where he or she goes to school.

DCPS has completely legitimate funding needs. They want to use the money to increase food service contracts, supplement teacher salaries, and for other personnel costs. DC's public charter schools also have legitimate funding needs. In fact, they have exactly the same needs to feed their students and pay their teachers and other staff.

Public charter schools already have costs that don't apply to DCPS schools. For example, a new charter school has to find, buy, and outfit a building, while a DCPS school does not. But all the charter schools want is equal funding and an equal chance to prove their worth, knowing they can lose their charter if they don't perform well in educating their students.

Mayor Gray still has time to do what's right and fix this by distributing the newfound revenues in accordance with the existing funding formula. Equal funding for all of DC's public school students is not only good politics, it's the law, and it is in keeping with the promise of One City.

Revenues

Since Metro's ridership is in a slow decline due in part to both high fares and a weak economy, it can't count on increases in fare revenue (without raising fares) to help balance the budget. Additionally, WMATA can't assume that local jurisdictions will increase their contributions, so the budget process presumes the same support as last year.

In combination, this expense and revenue mix almost guarantees that WMATA will report a deficit to start out the new fiscal year. This coming year's reported deficit is different, because nearly half of the shortfall is considered discretionary.

Carol Kissal, WMATA Chief Finance Officer, made that point last Thursday, and suggested that the board develop a fare increase to cover the higher costs of existing service, while the jurisdictions should be expected to provide funding for various initiatives meant to improve service.

WMATA proposed various service improvements:

More police on buses

The bus system has experienced some high-profile shootings recently, and the system also has some issues with fare evasion and driver assaults. For $2 million per year, the agency could provide an additional 32 police officers for its buses. This might improve rates of fare evasion and encourage people to ride the bus if crimes and assaults decrease.

Preventive maintenance for escalators and elevators

Earlier in the year, Metro stated that it doesn't have the staff available to complete all preventive maintenance items on time. $8 million per year would increase the number of maintenance staff and improve elevator and escalator availability.

Bus priority corridors

For $5 million, Metro can provide additional buses and supervision on key routes, which would alleviate crowding and improve service. WMATA said this initiative would require some capital improvement as well as coordination with the local jurisdictions.

Maintenance of capital investments

An increase of $2.5 million is needed for ongoing maintenance of capital assets.

Increase staff to reduce overtime

This would cost $11.2 million per year, but might improve safety since fewer fatigued workers would be on the job. Additionally, more alert workers would make fewer mistakes, leading to less rework to fix problems.

Engineering maintenance

$1.9 million is needed to increase maintenance performed on the fleet of buses and trains.

Rail grinding

Worn-out rails have speed restrictions and increase the likelihood of wheel or rail failures. An additional $2.7 million would improve fleet reliability and on-time performance.

Radio maintenance

Metro has had some public failures of its radio system, and $1.4 million is needed to improve the radio reception throughout the system.

All of these choices are improvements compared to the baseline service Metro offers today, so $55 million of the $121 million shortfall shouldn't factor in as a "deficit," but rather as the cost of improvements that staff are looking at recommending.

The next step in for WMATA's General Manager, Richard Sarles, to propose a new budget in January, and some of these improvements could be funded by local jurisdictions or fare increases. The actual deficit for the current service is $66 million, which could be covered by a modest increase in fares in the new budget, similar to the rate of inflation since the last fare increase.

Where was the emotional debate about the reduction in DPR programs? Did someone defend residents who want to see their parks facilities properly maintained? Why should anyone expect that DPR could continue to operate with a sharply cut agency budget and similar cuts in related support services?

Ward 5 Councilmember Harry Thomas Jr. has talked a lot about the benefits he sees to the District of selecting a DC-based landscaping company. It may indeed bring benefits, but Thomas should also consider the benefits to many more District residents of having rec centers open for more hours in his own Ward 5.

Ward 5 has seven recreation centers, three community centers, and a cultural center. All 11 centers are closed every Sunday of the year. Three centers (Fort Lincoln, Theodore Hagans, and Edgewood) are closed all weekend year-round. Not a single center is open for more than six hours on Saturdays. Are these limited hours adequate for Ward 5 residents?

For other signs of problems from underfunding, Thomas need look no further than the now-unavailable DPR Kids Retreat program. The program launched in 2010 as a coordinated effort for kids activities at rec centers on days when DCPS teachers have scheduled professional development. The program only lasted a couple professional development days because of funding constraints. There is no Kids Retreat planned for today, October 14, 2011, the first DCPS professional development day of the year for teachers and staff.

What will it take for Mayor Gray and the Council to examine how the grass cutting debate distracts from the poor state of DPR funding? Aren't tens of thousands of rec center users more important stakeholders than the employees and owners of various landscaping firms?

Focusing too narrowly on the grass cutting contract will only further hurt District residents by neglecting DPR's much more severe funding woes.

Update: John McGaw from the Mayor's Office of Budget and Finance has provided a clarification regarding this post.

The decrease in 2010 is more than offset by nearly $9 million being transferred to the newly created Department of General Services (DGS) to perform facilities maintenance. This adjustment gives DPR a total of $45 million in 2012 with the DGS funds. Nevertheless, the 2012 budget remains well below the $63 and $59 million available to DPR in 2008 and 2009, respectively.

Mike DeBonis recently highlighted an even bigger failure: Upshur Park, where the grass actually caught on fire. DPR opened the park to great fanfare earlier this year, but then again didn't water the new trees and grass.

DPR followed up with DeBonis to tout Walter Pierce Park, which looks green and verdant. However, DeBonis noted, that might be because it isn't open yet.

DPR is also putting in irrigation at several of its playing fields. But this highlights what many parks advocates say is the issue: a focus on the recreational facilities, like pools, indoor rec centers, and athletic fields, over parks. Ironically, says a former DC government employee, under Mayor Williams the department was renamed to put parks first. Apparently the semantic change didn't translate to policy.

There's been a lot of upheaval at DPR in recent years. Mayor Fenty had 4 separate directors for the agency, one of whom Council refused to confirm amid controversies over contracts that were allegedly improperly routed through DPR. The Williams administration saw similar turnover rates in the job.

Perhaps the biggest cause of problems is funding. Over the last 5 budget cycles, DPR's budget was cut by 47%. It's hard to keep up maintenance of a growing set of parks and rec centers in that climate.

Now, park maintenance is slated to transfer to the new Department of General Services, which could mean it'll get the attention it needs, or it could mean it slips through the cracks entirely.

Perhaps parks slip through the cracks so much because DC has so little actual parkland that's not run by the National Park Service. Maria Barry, the volunteer president of Friends of 16th Street Heights Parks (including Upshur Park, the one that caught on fire), says that many calls to 911 about crime in the park end up routed to the Park Police, even though Upshur and nearby Hamilton Park are not federal and MPD has jurisdiction. Since almost all parkland is federal, dispatchers sometimes erroneously assume that all parkland is.

Tommy Wells now has oversight over DPR on the Council. Will he be able to make any changes? He could fight for more budget, though everyone else has pressing budgetary needs as well. Should he push for any structural reform? Some have suggested creating a separate park division, which could ensure some staff focus on parks, or it could simply rearrange the org chart to no real effect depending on how it's implemented.

When Kwame Brown announced he's open to an income tax increase, he stipulated the money go to maintaining schools, rec centers, and parks. That's a change from earlier promises to use extra money for affordable housing, but could alleviate DPR's woes.

Parks are a significant piece of building a good city for neighborhoods of all types and for all residents. We need to show that DC parks can be great. Failings at DPR aren't an excuse for NPS not to do better, but if DC could make its parks a model for urban parks, it would certainly help set an example for other, federal parks around the city.

First, a quick recap of the long saga: Gray's April budget proposal included a 0.4% tax increase on incomes over 200,000. Kwame Brown vowed to eliminate that, and swapped it out in favor of eliminating the tax exemption on out of state bonds, which no other state has.

The only reason the rest of the cuts-before-taxes councilmembers, like Mary Cheh and Jack Evans, agreed with the measure was because reinstating the exemption was on a list of priorities for spending future unanticipated revenue, at last some of which was indeed anticipated. But Tommy Wells wrangled an amendment to swap that item with restoring other cuts.

In any event, the next budget round had a bunch of spending pressures around Medicaid that pushed this item down the list. The replacement items aren't funded either, yet, and so the bond tax buyout still wouldn't have been had it stayed on the list.

Meanwhile, Mary Cheh said she would introduce an amendment to remove just the part of the bond tax for already-purchased bonds, and put back in an income tax, but only on incomes over $400,000. Yet she never introduced it, and instead passed a measure devoting some of DC's reserve funds to delay the bond tax by one year and make it non-retroactive.

Some councilmembers say she never really meant for the amendment to pass, and withdrew it after Mayor Gray whipped votes for it; she says it's because she feared Wells would round up support for some other change she didn't want.

What Gray vetoed was the bill that delays the bond tax. Now, if the Council doesn't act further, the bond exemption will go away even for already-purchased bonds, including on interest from 2011.

Kwame Brown still insists "people are tired of taxes and fees" even though a DCFPI poll found strong support for the original income tax increase.

Tim Craig writes,

Instead of a tax increase, Brown said he will probably push to establish a commission to explore potential cuts and savings to the city's budget. Brown said the commission would include government officials and citizens who will work to ferret out "wasteful spending within the government."

It's become a familiar trope to say there must be waste. And there indeed is. But it's not so easy to just cut the waste, like most politicians pretend.

For one thing, some waste is an unfortunate byproduct of organizations. Even my former employer, Google, which constantly enjoys adulation from the press for being a great organization, has some people not pulling their weight. It's not a lot, sure, but even without obstacles to firing people, getting rid of anyone is difficult, unpleasant, and bad for team morale (especially because there's never unanimity about who the less productive people are).

In a private company, a lot of the waste is just hidden. That doesn't make it right, but the popular belief that anyone with half a brain could just take an axe to government spending easily is a little too facile.

On the other hand, there are indeed some clearer examples of people who aren't adding value to an organization. Most people I've spoken to in government agree and know who those people are; sometimes others share the same view, while sometimes the opinion varies from person to person.

Many agencies could benefit from strategic reductions in their staffing levels. Unfortunately, labor rules make it very difficult to eliminate people based on their performance. The standard procedure is a RIF (Reduction in Force), which has strict rules around removing the most junior people, or people based on their job category rather than their performance, and further rules requiring the agency to find new placements or rehire people if jobs open up.

As I've written before, I think it's detrimental to unions in the long run to stand against the general principle of merit-based firings. Better to push for least arbitrary process for evaluating employees, so that the firings are as fair as possible, rather than opposing the whole idea.

If the Council doesn't want to take this issue on, it may be very hard to find genuine opportunities to cut that haven't already happened. It's worth investigating. If Brown staffs his commission with thoughtful people who really are looking for good win-win solutions, it could come up with something. Though it's hard to have a lot of faith in Brown's ability to choose people on merit instead of for political reasons.

It would definitely not be helpful to have a Boehner-style commission that simply picks programs to axe. Most of the actual objectives the DC government pursues are worthwhile. If accomplishing them more efficiently is not really possible or not politically feasible because of labor issues, wholesale cuts are not the answer.

Such a commission also would not likely be able to find specific cuts between now and the beginning of the fiscal year in October. Brown may have to swallow the tax increase that most residents want, and then pursue longer-term efficiency gains for next year.

The weekend's debt deal trades a $900 billion raise in the debt ceiling (accomplished in two stages) for $917 billion over the next decade in discretionary spending cuts—reducing domestic discretionary spending to the lowest levels since Eisenhower was president—and including $350 billion in defense cuts—the first defense cuts since the 1990s.

Later this year, the debt ceiling will be raised by another $1.2 trillion to $1.5 trillion, depending on the deficit reduction recommended by a special new bi-partisan, bi-cameral committee and agreed to by Congress. Alternately, if Congress passes a balanced-budget amendment (the preference of many Republicans), that would satisfy the conditions for raising the debt ceiling.

In the absence of such an amendment, if committee members can't come to an agreement, or Congress fails to pass their recommendations, across-the-board cuts will automatically be implemented, cutting equally from defense and non-defense spending. Medicare, social security, and some other social safety net programs would be exempted.

After seeing discretionary spending cut time after time with no sacrifices demanded of the defense sector, it's remarkable that social programs, not defense, were the ones shielded from the painful cuts. Meanwhile, by spreading cuts around to a greater number of agencies, including massive spenders like the Pentagon, each affected agency is affected less.

Still, infrastructure spending is vulnerable. The White House fact sheet on the debt deal, in the section about the automatic cuts triggered by a failure to act on the committee's recommendations, says:

If the fiscal committee took no action, the deal would automatically add nearly $500 billion in defense cuts on top of cuts already made, and, at the same time, it would cut critical programs like infrastructure or education. That outcome would be unacceptable to many Republicans and Democrats alike—creating pressure for a bipartisan agreement without requiring the threat of a default with unthinkable consequences for our economy.

Under the normal spending cuts regime (not the nuclear option of the automatic, across-the-board cuts) the Department of Transportation is grouped with all other discretionary spending for cuts. The Highway Trust Fund is not discretionary, since it has its own funding source.

I asked Senate staffers if any of this will make it harder for the Finance and EPW Committees to justify spending $12 billion more than trust fund receipts, as spelled out in the Senate transportation bill—even if that $12 billion comes from another budget item and doesn't add to the deficit. No response yet.

Another Senate staffer says that while there are not cuts specific to transportation, the cuts will be "pretty devastating to every discretionary program."

In addition to spending cuts and the possibility of tax reform in the committee recommendations, the expiration in early 2013 of the Bush tax cuts on the rich also ensures some deficit reduction. If more savings aren't found, the president says he will veto an extension of those tax cuts. The White House estimates that would generate nearly $1 trillion; other estimates have put the added revenue closer to $700 billion over ten years.

In his sales pitch to House Republicans [PDF], Speaker John Boehner is trumpeting his victory in keeping tax increases at bay—and indeed, for now, President Obama's proposals to close loopholes on the oil industry and corporate jets are not in the bill. But the 12-member fiscal committee is tasked with finding deficit reductions in both cuts and revenues—teeing up another Congressional brawl over taxes later this year.