Crunch time: What you need to know about the D.C. Council’s budget vote

On Monday the D.C. Council gave initial approval to the proposed $21.8 billion budget for 2026. The spending plan – $11.9 billion of which is for local expenses, the remainder for federal programs like Medicaid – was unveiled by Mayor Muriel Bowser in late May, prioritizing growth and economic development amidst a dramatic scaling back of the federal presence in the region. 

But since then the D.C. Council has been digging into the fiscal nooks and crannies and looking under the proverbial couch cushions for additional revenue, largely to restore social programs that took the brunt of cuts in Bowser’s proposed budget. Late last month we summarized many of the changes the council was looking to make, and below are more details on what got funded, what didn’t, and what’s left to happen. The second and final budget vote is on July 28.

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Ranked-choice voting and tipped wage ballot initiatives
Commanders stadium
Legal aid for low-income residents
Homeless families services
Medicaid
Tax increases (or not)
Council frustrations
What we still don't know!

Ranked-choice voting gets funded, the tipped wage phase-out survives a repeal attempt

We told you about this yesterday, but it’s still important budget news: The council voted to include funding for ranked-choice voting to start as soon as next year, and rejected a proposed repeal of the ballot initiative that phases out the tipped wage. The latter fight may not be over, though – there is talk of voting on some type of repeal or change to Initiative 82 later this month.

Commanders stadium funding stays in, the deal remains out

When Mayor Muriel Bowser and the Washington Commanders unveiled their $3.7 billion deal for a new stadium at RFK, they also set an ambitious deadline for approval: July 15. Well, the council met it – kind of. Included in the 2026 budget that was approved Monday is $500 million in funding for D.C. to start preparing the site for the stadium’s construction, which will largely be paid for by the team.

But what was left out is just as critical: the text of the actual stadium deal itself, which needs to be approved before work on the site moves forward. As he pledged to weeks ago, Council Chairman Phil Mendelson pulled the stadium deal out of the budget and introduced it as stand-alone legislation the council will have to vote on. Bowser warns that any delay could imperil the deal, but Mendelson (and some other lawmakers) say additional time is needed to fully scrutinize and potentially make changes to the agreement. A pair of public hearings have been scheduled for July 29 and 30 on the stadium deal, and on Monday the council also approved a change to its rules that will allow it to move the deal ahead during its summer recess in August. 

“The council is trying to move toward a positive vote on the stadium,” Mendelson said during the budget vote. 

A big save for legal aid for low-income residents 

For years, the funding for the Access to Justice program has been slashed only to be saved at the last minute, and this year was no exception. Bowser proposed cutting the program’s $30 million budget by two-thirds, which would significantly scale back the free legal services that it provides to low- and middle-income residents in civil matters. (Some 40,000 residents use the program every year, roughly half of them for housing cases.) The council, though, pulled together $19.5 million to fully restore the budget.

Homeless families retain private rooms, mostly

For at least a decade, standing D.C. policy has been that families experiencing homelessness get private rooms in shelters; the prevailing wisdom is that this offers them needed dignity and safety at particularly difficult moments. Bowser says there could well be more families than available space later this year, requiring the city to put families in congregate shelters, sharing rooms with other people. This possible policy change drew strident opposition from homeless advocates, and the council listened. The revised budget largely maintains the requirement that homeless families be given private rooms, though it does allow for sharing between two different families if all shelters are at capacity and the council is given 60-day advance notice of the need. Homeless advocates are still pushing for the council to fully ban housing families in congregate shelters, and are urging lawmakers to do more to fund housing vouchers and allow people to stay in rapid rehousing, a short-term subsidy program for people experiencing homelessness; Bowser is trying to exit people more quickly and with fewer appeals.

Relatedly, the council managed to restore at least some funding to the much-depleted Emergency Rental Assistance Program, a critical lifeline for residents struggling to pay their rent. While Bowser proposed $5 million for 2026 (down from the almost $27 million currently), the council added $6.6 million more. 

Healthcare challenges remain

D.C. officials are still trying to understand what President Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill will mean for Medicaid enrollees in the city, but homegrown changes to the program are moving forward regardless. Bowser proposed moving some 25,000 Medicaid enrollees off the program and into a new alternative run by the city’s health insurance exchange, and despite vocal opposition from some lawmakers,the council wasn’t able to reverse it. At-Large Councilmember Christina Henderson was able to mitigate some of the bigger changes Bowser proposed to the D.C. Healthcare Alliance, which insures some 27,000 residents, many of them immigrants. 

But there was only so much she could do, largely because of the high cost of reversing Bowser’s proposed changes.  The mayor proposed limiting new enrollees over the age of 21, but Henderson was able to increase that to 26 – for a year. By 2027, large number of older enrollees in the Healthcare Alliance could lose access to insurance benefits. 

No tax increases – yet

Amidst all of the funding challenges for many critical programs, progressive advocates rallied outside the Wilson Building on Monday to urge the council to increase taxes on wealthy residents (as it did in 2021 to pay for homeless services and wage increases for childcare workers.) No such proposals surfaced this time – although some may be coming. Ward 5 Councilmember Zachary Parker has floated an increase in the capital gains tax paid by wealthy residents, a “modest step” he said could help “raise the revenue required to avoid the most devastating cuts.” On Monday he hinted that he’ll introduce it ahead of the second budget vote on July 28. But Mendelson is already on record questioning any such revenue-raisers: “If we’re going to increase, we should only do it when we absolutely need it,” he told reporters. “At some point government can’t keep raising taxes.” (Mendelson also opted to sunset a new tax on hotel room stays that Bowser wanted to make permanent.) 

Frustration with the mayor and CFO

While Bowser seemed pleased with the council’s first vote on the budget, Mendelson was far less happy with both the mayor and Glen Lee, the city’s chief financial officer. In a rare move, the council chairman included a two-page missive in a budget report saying that “collaboration [from the mayor] has been strained, with communication gaps and incomplete information slowing progress and weakening the transparency needed for effective governance.” He seemed even more frustrated with Lee, arguing that the CFO has been all too willing to allow the mayor to overspend. 

Mendelson’s annoyance flared again this week over $60 million he says he needs to fund some of the changes the council made to Bowser’s budget. He pulled that money from a $243 million surplus Lee announced in late June (the rest of which will go to cover overspending by mayoral agencies), but the CFO said Monday that the money wasn’t his to take. Mendelson isn’t budging. “Only the council appropriates. We will not be hostage to overspending, which by law is the responsibility of the mayor and the CFO to control,” he said. This isn’t the first time Mendelson has faced down a CFO, but it remains to be seen what the outcome will be. 

Plenty of unknowns ahead

Most elected officials concede that this budget cycle was hard – the souring economic situation has led to decreases in revenue and increasing fiscal uncertainty – but future cycles may well be worse. It’s likely that changes brought on by Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill will start having some immediate impact, and the council is preparing to revisit the budget in the fall to account for any significant changes to government programs or revenue. 

Additionally, there are already some glaring question marks around the 2027 budget. As part of her 2026 budget, Bowser gave schools a healthy funding bump. But her current plan for 2027 would actually see schools lose funding, unless something changes. The same goes for the Pay Equity Fund, a pot of money that has been used to slowly increase the pay of childcare workers. While Bowser largely provided the $70 million in funding needed for 2026, she zeroed it out for the following year. Some of these decisions are based on the fiscal uncertainty of the years to come, while Bowser has said others are a challenge of sorts to the council: If funding for certain programs is so important to lawmakers, they’ll have to make cuts to other programs to find the money for them. (The council also did this  itself, restoring funding for some social programs in the 2026 budget – but not for the later years in the city’s four-year financial plan.)

And there’s more:

• There was some back-and-forth drama over the fate of violence interruption programs late last month, with the Cure the Streets program run by Attorney General Brian Schwalb’s office likely on the chopping block. Mendelson found funds to retain the program’s six sites, though they will now be housed in the mayor’s Office of Neighborhood Safety and Engagement. The city’s two violence interruption programs are thus set to be condensed into one office. (Read an op-ed on this issue from The 51st’s contributing columnist, Robert Barton, here.)
• A new home is set to be built for the D.C. Archives on the University of the District of Columbia campus, but Bowser dropped a bit of a bomb in her budget: She thinks the project is too expensive and shouldn’t proceed as planned. The announcement shocked history buffs who have been agitating for a new Archives building for years to house the city’s oldest records, but the council largely saved it – albeit on a slightly delayed schedule. The new building is set to be built starting in 2028, though between now and then plenty could change again.
• The Rock Creek Tennis Center – home to the Mubadala Citi Open – has certainly seen better days, and the council is moving ahead with a plan to acquire the site from the National Park Service and spend $9 million renovating it. 
• As part of her push to find new sources of revenue, Bowser had hoped to legalize commercial card games like blackjack and poker. The council believed the proposal was short on details, so it scrapped it – while allowing commercial bingo to proceed. 
• Most dual language schools are clustered in certain parts of D.C., so the council provided funding for the Deputy Mayor for Education to conduct a study on the feasibility of creating new programs at schools in wards 6, 7, or 8. 

Want to read more budget coverage? The Washington Post, WAMU, and Washington Informer have good write-ups of all the budget brouhaha.