By Liane Scott, on May 1st, 2012 
Sam Ford Interviews Homeless for ABC 7
April 17, 2012, at his Ward 7 budget town hall meeting, Mayor Vince Gray said, “Just so people are clear. We’re not cutting those things. People will tell you anything. Sometimes they even think they’re right. We’re not cutting homeless services, we’re not cutting affordable housing, we’re not cutting Medicaid, we’re not cutting TANF (Temporary Aid to Needy Families) and we’re not cutting the Summer Youth Employment Program.” Despite this, advocates for social services and affordable housing programs, like the Fair Budget Coalition who’ve been organizing around these issues, will assure you that the mayor’s proposed budget will in no way meet the growing need of DC’s low- and even moderate-income residents in these difficult economic times. In particular, the homeless families living in DC General, whose numbers continue to grow, do not believe maintaining an increasingly tenuous status quo represents their needs or wishes as taxpaying citizens of the District of Columbia. These families made their feelings known at the DC City Council Budget Hearing on April 30, 2012. Only two elected officials, Council Chair Kwame Brown and Ward 8 Councilmember Marion Barry were present at the hearing. ABC 7’s Sam Ford and the Washington Times’ Andrew Harnick covered the story.
The above videos make clear that DC’s safety net isn’t meeting the needs of many of our residents, but given the time constraints of a local news broadcast, it doesn’t go into much depth. For more insight, it doesn’t hurt to follow the analysis of folks like Howard University professor David Schwartzman, who routinely follows the DC budget.
Cross-posted from The Mail @ DC Watch written by David Schwartzman
Our Mayor proposes another DC budget balanced on the backs of the poor; should we be surprised? On April 20, we learned that our former mayor, Anthony Williams, has been appointed as Chief Executive of the Federal City Council, the leading local think tank of the 1 percent, or is it the 0.1 percent? (Note that Frank Keating, the former Republican governor of Oklahoma and now president and CEO of the American Bankers Association, is the FCC president). Anthony Williams served on Mayor Gray’s transition team and was also just appointed to head the new Tax Revision Commission. As CFO of the Control Board, Anthony Williams was a key architect of the Urban Structural Adjustment Program that balanced our budget on the backs of our poor, while favoring the wealthy with tax cuts (the Tax Parity Act). The Control Board regime closed DC General Hospital, privatized municipal functions, cut the so-called safety net, and increased our income gap to record levels, while setting the course for Mayor Fenty’s agenda that brought this assault on our working and middle class majority to a new level. And Mayor Gray has not unexpectedly continued along the same road.
While our mayor and council deserve credit for their liberal policies regarding sexual orientation and immigrants rights, their economic and public education policies should brand them as Republicans posing as Democrats. For example, our mayor just endorsed new DCPS school closings based on an IFF study funded by the Walton Foundation (Walmart), opening up new opportunities for the semi-privatization of public education. Colbert King just characterized conservative Democrats one hundred years ago as favoring “the wealthy, to whom much has been given, have no stake in anybody else’s success,” http://tinyurl.com/6twrwpf, an apt description of most of our local Democratic elected officials, and of course the Republican posing as an Independent, David Catania. When will these Democrats follow President Obama’s example by at least claiming to go on an “Offense Over Taxes on the Wealthy,” a headline from the New York Times?
Now to address the DC budget process. For FY 2013, Mayor Gray has proposed even more hurtful budget cuts in low income programs, amounting to roughly seventy million dollars, which include programs involving health care coverage for low income residents, affordable housing, homeless services. and cash assistance for families with children (for details go to http://www.dcfpi.org). This proposal comes on top of $239 million already cut from low income programs since 2008, according to the DC Fiscal Policy Institute’s budget data. And while the mayor and the council squabble about where to spend the $79 million surplus, specifically whether to pay back city employees for their four-day furlough taken at the beginning of 2011, the elephant sitting in the Wilson Building remains unnoticed, the under-taxed, now growing income of the top 5 . . . → Read More: Another DC Budget Balanced on the Backs of the Poor?
By Liane Scott, on December 2nd, 2010 
If you haven’t yet heard, and you may not have, as this doesn’t seem to be getting a whole lot of play in the mainstream press, Mayor Fenty has proposed one last round of cuts to the 2011 fiscal year budget, including more cuts to child care subsidies, TANF, adult job training, disability assistance, the grandparent caregivers program, the local rent supplement program, etc. As a low-income resident of the District, I’m feelin’ a little panicky.
It may be a last ditch effort to do as much damage as possible to the constituents that threw him out of office, but we cannot let it stand. At issue is a $188 million budget gap. On Tuesday, December 7th, the DC Council will decide how to close that gap. The budget that lame-duck Mayor Adrian Fenty has proposed would cut vital programs that help low-income and working families. (Low-income and working families who are often one in the same.) According to Joni Podschun, Save Our Safety Net, nearly 40% of the cuts (that’s $50 million) would impact human services, even though these programs make up only a quarter of the city’s budget and have experienced deep reductions–approximately $100 million–in the last three years. Fortunately there is a clear alternative. A one percent income tax increase on income above $200,000, would raise $65 million. That’s $15 million more than would be needed to keep funding of social service programs at their current level.
There are some on the council who will say this alternative is crazy. That to consider this more progressive tax income rate would be engaging in class-warfare and what’s more, it might just damage our triple-A bond rating. I’ll admit it. I don’t even know what a triple-A bond rating means but I’m guessing that it doesn’t mean much to my neighbors and I in Wards 7 & 8, suffering under a 19 and 30 percent unemployment rate respectively. Those of us who are not in poverty yet are often one pay check away from it, and may find ourselves in desperate need of those social services that the city council is considering reducing further, as if $100 million worth of cuts in the last three years isn’t enough. Thus, that panicky feeling.
What does any of this have to do with the above video of Queen Noble, former candidate for congress as a representative of the District of Columbia? This video was shot and edited by Judith Hawkins, co-producer of Valencia’s It Is What It Is Mobile Talk Show (which I suggest you subscribe to on Youtube.) It was one of the first videos that Judith edited as a member of the Grassroots Media Project. She uploaded it to Youtube and it’s since gotten thousands of hits and hundreds of comments, some positive, some negative, a lot of them very funny.
Although Queen Noble may not fit squarely into what we consider to be a sociological norm, she has brought a lot of attention to issues that are important to her and to the residents of the District of Columbia. She might not be the best candidate for public office, but one cannot imagine her cutting an additional $50 million from the city’s safety net at a time when poverty in the District is already increasing at an alarming rate, without cuts to services meant to ease that situation. Class warfare indeed. It is conjecture on my part, but I believe Queen Noble wouldn’t hesitate to vote for legislation that increases the income tax rate just one percent on the city’s wealthiest and least needy residents.
Because she is what she is, she may not be the best representative for the causes she espouses, namely reparations for descendants of enslaved Africans and reform of the DC police department, but at least she brings attention to those issues. I post her here because I want us–DC progressives in general and progressives who want to produce through the Grassroots Media Project specifically–to go to the People’s Hearing, scheduled for Tuesday, December 7, at 9 AM at the Wilson Building, and videotape someone or preferably several people who can represent the issue. If Queen Noble can go viral nationwide, is it not worth our effort to find those people who are impacted by the cuts in social services, a number of whom we hope will be present at Tuesday’s People’s Hearing, and put there stories out there? If we can make this issue go viral in Washington, DC, we might just be . . . → Read More: A Call To Action: The People’s Hearing
By Liane Scott, on November 29th, 2010 
Vince Gray is very proud of the legislation he sponsored making pre-k education universal for all 3- and 4-year-olds. He declared it as one of his major accomplishments in all of his town hall meetings prior to November’s general election. To be sure, early childhood education is extremely important. Children who receive high-quality child care from an early age are better prepared for school, more likely to graduate high school, go on to college, and to stay out of prison. But which service providers are able to take advantage of the money made available by this legislation is also important.
When the bill to make pre-k education universal was first proposed in 2008, 50 percent of the new slots provided were supposed to go to community-based child care providers. By the time the legislation was passed, that number was down to 25 percent. In addition, funding for the District’s Child Care Subsidy Program, which also benefits community-based child care providers as well as low-income parents in need of affordable child care, has been cut each of the past five years.
While Gray wants to do right by his youngest constituents, he seems less concerned about their parents or the middle-class workforce that at one time provided the backbone for DC’s tax base. A pattern that we should be familiar with from the Fenty Administration, who closed down Department of Recreation Early Childhood programs in wards 6, 7 & 8 while leaving the same programs open in the wealthier wards. This action, which Gray is unlikely to reverse, insured an increase in the unemployment rates in those wards hardest hit by the recession as child care providers from the Department of Recreation were fired. The closing of the Recreation Department child care programs also increased the burden on low-income parents by decreasing the number of affordable child care providers within the city’s poorest communities, a number which has already been decreased by the consistent de-funding of the District’s Child Care Subsidy Program.
Subsidized child care, which provides low-income parents with vouchers that pay a portion of their child care costs, is one of the most important work support programs available in DC and around the country. Child care costs can easily amount to $15,000 per year, per child. Without subsidies that help to make child care affordable for low-income families, thousands of parents in DC would be unable to work, unable to look for work or attend school so they are better qualified for work.
In addition to the huge benefits for children and their families, investing in early child care and education helps to strengthen a field whose workforce in DC is predominantly low-income women of color. Child care providers rely on these subsidies from the government to cover their costs. Without them, they would have to lay off the hundreds of people, mostly women, who work in this field. Many child care providers have already had to close their doors for good, even though these are precisely the kinds of small business that Gray claims to support.
The District of Columbia City Council will hold a a public hearing Tuesday November 30, 2010 to hear testimony regarding childcare in the District’s budget. Community members who are impacted–children, parents, child-care providers, etc., are encouraged to testify. If you are interested in testifying at the hearing, attending in support or getting more information, contact Ben Parisi, Child Care organizer for Empower DC at (202) 234-9119 or Ben (at) empowerdc.org.
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