A transparent budget — one that provides accurate, clear and timely information — is critical to helping the public understand how its tax dollars are being spent, and to enable the public and elected officials to hold the District accountable for the delivery of services.  I am here today to testify on improvements the Office of Budget and Planning has made to the District’s budget over the past year, and also to provide suggestions for ways to improve budget transparency for the public over the next year. 

The Office of Budget and Planning (OBP) has made several improvements to the District’s budget over the past year that have helped improve budget transparency for the public.  

• The online FY 2011 budget was organized by appropriations title and also by agency, making it much easier for the public to find all of the relevant budget documents for a given agency.
•  The FY 2011 budget included detailed crosswalks to help the public identify budget shifts that were made from FY 2010 to FY 2011 as most agencies were restructured under a new division based budgeting structure.[i]  
•  The CFO introduced a new online tool — CFO Info — that has great potential to be a rich and useful tool to allow the public to access detailed budget information.  We say “potential” because we think they are ways this site could be improved which I will talk about later in my testimony.  CFO Info not only allows users to drill down to a particular part of the budget that is of interest, but it also allows the CFO to expand the amount of budget information available to the public.  For example, CFO Info includes more detailed spending detail on special purpose funds, the capital budget, and agency spending to date in the current fiscal year than the in the budget books themselves.   

Despite progress, there is still room for improvement in the transparency of the District’s budget. 

• Current Services Budget.  For FY 2011, the CFO began putting together a current services budget.  The current services budget provides a look at how much is needed for the government to fund the same programs and services in the upcoming fiscal year as it funds in the current fiscal year.  This information can be very useful for the public because they can see how costs are expected to change from year to year and what the current gap between revenues and expenditures is expected to be. 

However, the current services budget provides limited information; largely looking at the total change in funding by agency from the previous fiscal year to the current fiscal year.  Previously, the CFO issued a very detailed baseline budget that walk through how an agency’s budget would change from year to year including detail on changes to personal services, non-personal services, and fixed costs. 

It would improve transparency substantially if the current services budget included the change in current services funding by agency, division, and activity and if it included some detail on why funding amounts increased or decreased in each agency.  In addition, it would be helpful to have this budget released earlier in the year, such as by March 1^st.  Last year the current services budget wasn’t issued until March 24^th and so far this year it still hasn’t been posted. 

•  CFO Info.  CFO Info was launched in 2010 and provides online detail about DC’s budget.   This tool is useful because it allows users to drill down into a particular part of the budget that is of interest and also allows the CFO to expand the amount of budget information that is available online.  For example, CFO Info already contains greater spending details on special purpose funds, the capital budget, and agency spending through the current fiscal year.  However, CFO Info could be improved by expanding the amount of budget information available and also making it more accessible and transparent. 
  
• Include more detail on federal funds.  Federal dollars can be a large portion of an agency’s budget.  The HASTA Administration and Department of Housing and Community Development are examples of two agencies that received significant amounts of federal grant dollars that fund many critical programs.  Yet, the DC budget documents contain very little information on federal grant funds.  For example, the budget tells you what types of federal grants an agency receives, but not what programs and services the grants fund.

The Office of Budget and Planning could expand the amount of federal grant spending detail through CFO Info similar to how they provided details on how special purpose funds are spent within an agency.   This would allow users to see how a particular federal grant was to fund programs and services within an agency. 

• Expand table 40 in the Operating Appendices so activities can be tracked by funding source.   It would be useful if the public could see not only how programs are funded, by funding source (such as local, federal, or special purpose), over time, but also how activities are funded, by funding source, over time.  Table 40 in the operating appendices currently displays this information, but not at the activity level.  OBP could expand Table 40 to provide this type of spending detail for activities on CFO Info. 
• Make CFO Info more user-friendly.  OBP has put a significant amount of budget information online in CFO Info and it has the potential to be an incredibly rich and useful source of budget information for the public.  However, in its current format it can be difficult to navigate, especially for a user who many not be very familiar with budget terms or how the budget is organized. 

For example, it isn’t easy to directly find a particular agency because CFO Info is organized by appropriation title — and many people do not know which agencies are in which appropriation title.  It is also difficult to figure out the steps to determine how much an agency spent on a particular program or activity within the agency in a given year.  Most often, programs and services are the areas that the public are concerned about.  There is a Tips section with great how-to videos yet they don’t cover how a user gets to a program or service.

DCFPI suggests that OBP convene a working group of stakeholders over the summer to talk through improvements that could be made to the layout, navigation, and user-friendliness of CFO Info. 

• Improved and expanded budget detail at the activity level.  The activity level detail of the budget is critical for budget transparency because this is where most of the programs and services that are delivered to the public are found.  As agencies went through the process of re-structuring into a division-based budgeting structure in FY 2011, the redefinition, reorganization, and further breakout of activities was intended to take place in the FY 2012 budget.  With the change in administration and large budget shortfalls, it is not surprising that agencies haven’t had a chance to make those changes to their activities.   

We are hopeful however that for the FY 2013 budget OBP and Mayor’s Budget Office can help agencies redefine and further expand their activity level detail in the budget in order to provide the public with greater spending detail that better matches the actual programs and services the agency delivers.  We also suggest that they consider reaching to the public to find out what programs and services would be useful to display in the budget.   

Thank you for the opportunity to testify.  I am happy to answer any questions.

Most likely, he or she goes to work.

That’s because tipped restaurant workers are exempted from the city’s groundbreaking sick leave law. Passed in 2008, the “Accrued Sick and Safe Leave Act” gives up to seven days of sick leave per year, based on the size of the employer, to many workers in DC. However, several classes of workers were excluded from taking advantage of this important law: students, contractors, premium pay hospital workers, and tipped restaurant workers.

Think about that the next time a juicy hamburger or aromatic plate of green curry tofu is headed toward your table. 

This week, the Restaurant Opportunities Center of DC released a revealing report about the restaurant industry in the District, based on surveys from more than 500 restaurant workers and interviews with employers and owners. Among other findings, the report found that many restaurant workers must choose between their health and their job when they are sick.

DC was the second city  in the country to require that employers provide sick leave, and several other cities such as Milwaukee, WI, have since followed suit. These cities recognize the benefits of having a healthy workplace. In San Francisco, the first city to pass paid sick leave, two-thirds of businesses and employees said they support the law, according to this new report by the Institute for Women’s Policy Research. More than half of covered employees reported some benefit due to the law, and one out of four workers reported they were better able to care for their health and the health of their families.

The No. 1 recommendation from the ROC report is to include tipped restaurant workers in the city’s sick leave law. It’s time to do that, and a bill amending the current law to include tipped workers will likely be introduced in the DC Council this session.  Mayor Gray and the DC Council should support this important addition.

I am here today to testify in support of Bill 18-777, the “Open Government Act of 2010”.  An open and transparent government can enhance democracy by enabling the public to better understand and participate more in government decisions.  Bill 18-777 would make a number of improvements to the transparency of the DC Government by establishing an office to oversee access to government information, improvements to the Freedom of Information Act process, and greater detail government spending, to name a few.

I am here today to testify on two specific titles in the bill; title III on ‘Agency Transparency’ and title VII on ‘Spending Transparency’.  Both of these titles contain recommendations to improve transparency in two key areas that DCFPI cares deeply about; the DC budget and agency performance data.

Title III: Agency Transparency Act

In the District government, a serious shortage of meaningful agency performance and caseload data means we often don’t know what the District is getting for the money it spends.  This critical information should play an important role in the budget process by informing decision-makers and the public as to how effectively and efficiently the District government is delivering services to residents.  Improving access to this type of data can not only help make this information clearer, but it can help provide critical context for important budget decisions.

DCFPI supports the creation of agency transparency plans that bill 18-777 calls for, and also strongly supports the inclusion of public comment into the development of these transparency plans.  The requirements in bill 18-777 will help make open to the public what types of high-value information the agency currently collects, and will direct the District to come up with an online centralized database to display this information.  This high-value information includes sources such as agency outcome data, caseload data, and output data, to name a few.

We suggest that along with requirements of what type of data is to be published, requirements are also added to the bill that require agencies to provide a short narrative describing what each dataset being posted consists of.  Often times, data is dumped into an online database without providing any context for what the figures mean.  This will be critical to help make the data an agency posts more understandable and transparent to the public.

Title VII: Spending Transparency

Too often today, it is difficult or impossible to determine what actual services are being funded each year due to major gaps in how budget information is put together and then shared with the public.  We believe that having access to clear, timely, and accurate budget information is critical to promoting a healthy discussion of budget priorities, enabling the DC Council to perform its agency oversight functions, and to empowering residents to hold public officials accountable for the delivery of public services.

We support the requirement in bill 18-777 for the creation of a searchable online budget database  that would provide a greater level of spending detail for many areas of the DC budget that have long been opaque.  For example, B18-777 would require for the first time a breakdown of how federal funds are spent within an agency in the DC budget.  For an agency like the Department of Housing and Community Development, where over 60 percent of the budget is made up of federal dollars, this information will help provide a more complete picture of their total budget.

Additionally, bill 18-777 also will require greater spending detail at the activity level in the DC budget.  The activity level is often where the public sees the spending on real programs and services they use, and bill 18-777 would require the additional spending detail by type of fund so the public can track how funds were spent on activities over time to make year to year comparisons.

Greater detail on special purpose funds, District grants, and spending detail on agency activities — all of which this bill requires — will help DC residents better understand what actual programs and services are being funded each year with their taxpayer dollars.

The CFO has recently launched a new website, CFOInfo, which has taken a laudable first step at posting budget information online for the public.  We suggest that any new budget information created as a result of bill 18-777 be added within CFOInfo’s current framework to help provide a centralized location for spending detail.

Thank you for the opportunity to testify.  I am happy to answer any questions.

The new structure is referred to as “division-based budgeting” by the Mayor’s office but is also more commonly known as “program-based” or “organizational-based” budgeting.  Until FY 2011, the District used a “performance-based” budget structure that resulted in many budget line items that are too large to provide meaningful understanding of how funds are being used and that fail to delineate how funds are actually spent on the real programs and services DC residents use.

Starting with the FY 2011 budget, a number of agencies will begin to follow a “division-based” budget structure which will change the way the budget looks in three key ways.

• Division-based budgets.  In 2011, the budgets for approximately 30 agencies have been re- organized to match an agency’s division structure.  The agencies that have new division-based budgets are largely the agencies that have also created new performance plans for each division.  This will allow for a better match of funding with performance goals.
• Greater spending detail.  In addition to the new division-based budget structure, some agencies expanded or restructured their budget line items to provide greater spending detail on services the agency provides.  The majority of agencies will go through this process for the FY 2012 budget, but there will be some additional breakouts of activities in the FY 2011 budget.
• Removal of fixed costs from many agency budgets.  Starting in the FY 2011, fixed costs, costs such as rent and utilities, were removed from many agency budgets. Some fixed costs were removed and put into a new “paper agency” — an agency that only exists on paper to aggregate all of the city’s fixed cost — named Municipal Facilities: Non-Capital.  Other fixed costs have been moved out of agency budgets and placed into two existing agencies — the Office of Contracting and Procurement and the Department of Human Resources.   The removal of fixed costs may make it look like many agency budgets have been cut even if they have not.

This new structure should improve transparency because it will allow for programs and services to be displayed in greater detail and in a way that more closely matches how agencies spend dollars on actual programs and services.  At the same time, the transition could create some confusion, and it will be important that the changes to agency budgets are explained fully throughout the transition.

This paper walks through DC’s previous budget structure and its problems, the changes in the FY 2011 budget, and information the Mayor’s office should provide to the public as it implements division-based budgeting.

I appreciate the opportunity to testify today on the Office of Budget and Planning. As you know, the DC Fiscal Policy Institute cares deeply about budget transparency and works in an ongoing way to make recommendations for improving the transparency of the city’s budget documents.  We believe that having access to clear, timely, and accurate budget information is critical to promoting a healthy discussion of budget priorities, enabling the DC Council to perform its agency oversight functions, and to empowering residents to hold public officials accountable for the delivery of public services.

We are encouraged that that the FY 2011 budget reflects solid incremental progress in this regard.

• Online budget information is now organized by appropriations title and agency, with each agency’s budget chapter, operating appendix, and capital budget in one place.   This makes it much easier to identify the relevant budget information for any particular agency.

• The budget web site includes crosswalks that help users identify budget shifts that were made between FY 2010 and Y2011 under the new division based budgeting structure.

• The CFO has introduced a new budget tool — CFO Info — that has great potential for allowing users to drill down to a particular part of the budget that is of interest.  We say that CFO info has great potential because we are eager for it to have more functionality. For example, CFO Info allows a view of the operating budget for each agency by funding source from FY 2008 though FY 2011.  It would be even better if it could provide this information at the division and activity level as well.

• The CFO Info site indicates that they plan to add more information soon, including budgets by grant and agency fund and also on capital projects.  We hope that OBP also will add more information on special purpose funds and federal funds, with spending detail at the division and activity level.  These two funding sources support critical programs and services in the District — such as homeless services and HIV/AIDS treatment to name a few — and are long overdue for transparent budget information.  Table 1 at the end of my testimony provides an example of how information on these two funding sources could be organized and displayed.

FY 2011 marked the beginning of a transition to division-based budgeting, a joint effort between OBP and the office of the City Administrator. We applaud this effort, because we believe it has great potential to create a new set of budget line items that better tie budget information to the agency divisions that administer them.  The FY 2011 budget is a good first step, but we hope OBP and OCA will work over the next year to implement this reform for all agencies.  We think this reform will be most useful if it includes changes at the activity level to include more detail.  As DCFPI has noted in the past, line items in the DC budget are often too large and encompass multiple programs and services, making it difficult or impossible to track funding for specific programs.

There are a few important other reforms that I would like to address.  First, it is important to help the public understand and track changes to the budget from its approval in the prior year. Many people may think that the budget approved by the Council in the spring in the budget an agency spends for the upcoming fiscal year.  The budget passed by the Council is after all, the result of months of hearings, advocacy and debate over what the Districts priorities should be.  However, changes are often made to the budget by the Mayor’s office over the course of the year. And many of these changes can be significant.

The Office of Budget and Planning should take the following steps to help the public understand what changes were made to the budget in the course of a year:

• Use revised budget figures. The DC budget contains not only the proposed budget figure for upcoming fiscal year but also the approved budget figure from the prior year’s budget.  These figures can be used to make year-to-year comparisons of funding changes for critical programs and services.  However, many times these figures are not useful because the budget has been changed over the course of the year.  DCFPI recommends that OBP use revised budget figures as of a certain date—for example as of February 1^st—that would provide a more accurate snapshot of the budget for the agency.  It is worth noting that the FY 2011 budget includes a “re-allocated budget” for DC Public Schools that does precisely what we are recommending.

• Improve the transparency of reprogrammings and intra-District transfers. The Mayor’s office has the authority to make changes to an agency’s budget during the year through reprogrammings—changes that move funding from one purpose to another—and through intra-District transfers—changes that move funding from one agency to another for the same purpose.  Giving the executive the flexibility to make changes to the budget makes sense, but all changes should be made in a transparent manner and substantial changes should come before the Council for review.  Bill 18-559, the “Reprogramming Policy Reform Act of 2009”—introduced by Chairman Gray—would, among other things, require additional reporting by the OBP to make these changes. DCFPI testified in support of this legislation and we recommend the OBP undertake the new reporting requirements.

Thank you for the opportunity to testify.  I am happy to answer any questions you may have.

I am here today to testify on improvements that have been made to the District’s budget over the past year, and also to provide suggestions for ways to improve the transparency of the budget for the public.

The Office of Budget and Planning has made several improvements to the District’s budget over the past year that has helped improve its transparency to the public.  I’d also like to note that FY 2009 – FY 2010 were incredibly difficult budget years that required the District to amend its budgets a number of times.  We appreciate all of the hard work OBP had do over the course of this year to produce a number of amended budgets in such a short timeframe.   One of the most critical improvements was to include more thorough and accurate descriptions of the programs and services and agency provides, in the agency’s budget chapter.  Because many of the District’s budget line items are large and arbitrary, the descriptions can help the public to determine where funding for a particular program or service they care about, it located.  In addition, the baseline budget was put online for the first time and the FY 2010 budget volumes were indexed.  These are small changes but both help the public to be able to find and locate more easily, the budget information they are searching for.

However, there is still room for improvement in the transparency of the District’s budget.  A transparent budget — one that provides accurate, clear and timely information — is critical to helping the public understand how its tax dollars are being spent, and to enable the public and elected officials to hold the District accountable for the delivery of services.  My testimony will focus on ways to improve transparency in three key areas: helping the public to locate critical budget information, helping the public to understand and track changes from the prior year approved budget, and to help the public understand how programs and activities are funded and ultimately where their tax dollars go.

Helping the public to locate critical budget information. Part of the challenge with the budget is finding all of the critical information.  The budget for each agency is contained in thick volumes that make it difficult to locate a particular agency.  Furthermore, many members of the public may not be aware of the operating appendices or capital budget for agencies.  We recommend that OBP bundle each agencies budget information (budget chapter, operating appendix, and capital budget) and have them available to view by agency rather than large unclear volumes.

Helping the public understand and track changes to the budget from its approval in the prior year. Many people may think that the budget approved by the Council in the spring in the budget an agency spends for the upcoming fiscal year.  The budget passed by the Council is after all, the result of months of hearings, advocacy and debate over what the Districts priorities should be.  However, changes are often made to the budget by the Mayor’s office over the course of the year. And many of these changes can be significant.  In fact, the Council budget office recently reported over $650 million in changes to the budget in 2009 alone.  Therefore, the Office of Budget and Planning should take the following steps to help the public understand what changes were made to the budget in the course of a year:

• Use revised budget figures. The Districts budget contains not only the proposed budget figure for upcoming fiscal year but also the approved budget figure from the prior year’s budget.  These figures can be used to make year-to-year comparisons of funding changes for critical programs and services.  However, many times these figures are not useful because the budget has been changed over the course of the year.  DCFPI recommends that OBP use revised budget figures as of a certain date—for example as of February 1^st—that would provide a more accurate snapshot of the budget for the agency.

• Make CFO Source available to the public. CFO Source is a powerful online tracking tool that allows users to see the actual spending of an agency over the course of the year.  Yet, this software is limited to only certain users and there is no public component.  OBP should release CFO Source to the public so that they can track how funds are being spent within an agency. 

• Improve the transparency of reprogrammings and intra-District transfers. The Mayor’s office has the authority to make changes to an agency’s budget during the year through reprogrammings—changes that move funding from one purpose to another—and through intra-District transfers—changes that move funding from one agency to another for the same purpose.  Giving the executive the flexibility to make changes to the budget makes sense however, all changes should be made in a transparent manner and substantial changes should come before the Council for review.  Bill 18-559, the “Reprogramming Policy Reform Act of 2009”—introduced by Chairman Gray—would, among other things, require additional reporting by the OBP to make these changes more transparent.  DCFPI testified in support of this legislation and we recommend the OBP undertake the new reporting requirements.[1]

Help the public better understand how programs and activities are funded. One of the biggest problems with the lack of transparency in the District’s budget, is the way that information about the budget is displayed in the budget books.  Often times, there is not enough spending detail so that public knows how funds are being spent on critical programs and services.  DCFPI suggests that the Office of Budget and Planning take the following steps to increase the transparency of spending on programs and services.

• Expand Table 40 so that activities can be tracked by funding source. It would be useful if the public could see not only how programs are funded, by funding source (such as local, federal, or special purpose funds), over time, but also how activities are funded, by funding source, over time.  Table 40 in the operating appendices currently displays this information at the program level but not the activity level.  DCFPI suggests that the OBP provide an expanded table 40 to show this information broken out for activities.  This table could be made available online so that it does not further constrain the available space in the published budget books. 

• Include more detailed information on federal and special purpose funds. Federal funds can be a large portion of an agency budget.  The HIV/AIDS Administration and the Department of Housing and Community Development are examples of two agencies that receive significant amounts of federal dollars that are used for many critical programs.  Yet, the DC budget contains very little information on how these federal dollars will be spent.  DCFPI published a paper called “10 Ways to Improve the Transparency of the DC Budget” that included suggestions for displaying the use of federal based, based on other states ways of displaying information.[2] I have attached this paper to my testimony and we recommend that OBP include new tables in the budget that provide a narrative description of the federal funding source, the carryover or balance of the fund, additional revenue expected into the fund, and on what programs and activities the funds will be spent on. 

Special purpose funds, or o-type funds, are separate from the general fund are funded through the collection of fines and fees and often their use is restricted for a particular purpose.  Despite the number of special purpose funds, their large dollar amount, a the critical functions they can serve, there is very little financial detail in the budget on how the funds are used and what the revenues are that are deposited into the funds.  DCFPI suggests that OBP provide an additional table that displays a brief narrative of each special purpose fund, the sources and amounts of revenue into the fund, and which programs and activities the funds will be used on.

Organizational-Based Budgeting. The District’s current performance based budget structure results in many large, arbitrary line items that make it difficult to determine how funds will be spent on real programs and services.  Starting the in FY 2011 budget, the District will begin to move towards and organizational-based budget structure that should display program and services in a more meaningful way to the public an ultimately result in greater spending detail.  DCFPI supports the new budget structure but we suggest that the OBP ensure that detailed crosswalks are provided so that the public can better understand where funding has been moved and be able to make year to year comparisons.  In addition, much of line item detail will be finalized between the FY 2011 and FY 2012 budgets.  We encourage both OBP and the Mayor’s office to work with the public on suggestions for how programs and services are broken out and displayed in the budget.

Thank you for the opportunity to offer testimony.  I am happy to answer any questions.

[2] See DCFPI, “10 Ways to Improve the Transparency of the DC Budget” February 2009, available at: http://dcfpi.org/?p=285

DCFPI supports the changes in bill 18-559, the “Reprogramming Policy Reform Act of 2009.”  This legislation will improve the transparency of the budget throughout the year and allow for better oversight and accountability of taxpayer dollars.  The changes will be especially useful under the new program budget structure set to begin in the FY 2011 budget.  In addition to testifying about the positive changes in bill 18-559, I will also provide some suggestions for further information to help make transfers and reprogrammings more transparent to the public.

Many people assume that the budget passed each spring by the D.C. Council is the final budget that every agency will actually spend the following fiscal year.  However, in many instances, that may not be the case.  The Executive Branch can makes changes to the budget during the fiscal year through reprogrammings — changes that move money from one purpose to another — and through intra-District transfers — changes that move money from one agency to another without changing the purpose.  In fact, the Council Budget Office has tracked over $650 million of reprogrammings in 2009 alone.

Giving the Executive Branch the flexibility to make changes to the budget throughout the year makes sense, but substantial changes should go before the Council for review, and all changes should be made in a manner visible to the public.

Bill 18-559 will help make that process more transparent by lowering the threshold for which reprogrammings need to come to the Council for approval — from $1 million to $500,000 — and by adding Council review of intra-District transfers over $500,000.  Importantly, the bill also requires a quarterly report from the Office of the Chief Financial Officer (OCFO) that summarizes all reprogrammings and intra-District transfers over $50,000 made by the Executive Branch

These new reporting requirements will be especially useful as the District shifts towards a program-based budget structure starting in FY 2011.  The program-based budget structure should result in new division and program breakouts within agencies that will likely result in greater budget detail.  As the budget is divided in a more detailed way, this could lead to an increase in requests to  reprogram or transfer funds between programs.

Lastly, DCFPI has the following suggestions for additional information that would make it easier for the public to understand and track reprogrammings and intra-District transfers.

• Include a brief description of the original purpose of the funds being moved. It would be helpful if a brief description of the original purpose of the funds being transferred was included in the reprogramming summary published in the DC Register.  Currently, these summaries only contain a brief description of what the transferred funds will be used for.  In addition, it would be helpful if the CFO’s summary report listed a brief description of the original purpose of the funds and the new intended use of the funds.

• Include the program and activity the funds are coming from and going to. Currently, the funds being reprogrammed or transferred are only described at the agency level.  It would also be useful to include the program and activity the funds are coming from and going to.  This is described in the legislation, but it was not clear if that would be included in information sent to the public.
• Provide more clarity on O-type transfers. When transfers are made from O-type or special purpose accounts, it is often not clear which special purpose fund within the agency the transfer is coming from or what type of funding is being transferred, such as spending authority or actual fund balances.  Information should be included on which special purpose accounts the funds are coming from and what kind of funding is being transferred.
• Provide online access to the quarterly report and full reprogramming requests. It would helpful for the quarterly report to be placed on the CFO’s website within 10-15 days after it is sent to the Council.  In addition, the Council Budget Office should provide a link to the quarterly reports and the DC Register from their website so the public can more easily find and track reprogrammings and intra-District transfers.  Lastly, the full reprogramming requests sent by the Mayor should be posted online.  The full reprogramming requests include a greater level of information than is currently available to the public.  By having these reprogramming requests online, the public could have greater transparency about the changes being made to the budget.

Thank you for the opportunity to offer testimony.  I am happy to answer any questions.

My testimony today will focus on how the transparency of the DC budget needs to be improved so that a early childhood education advocate, a DC resident, or a DC Councilmember would be able to tell how well early education programs and services are being implemented in the District.

The DC Fiscal Policy Institute does not have extensive knowledge on implementation of Pre-K for All, but we are extremely well versed in the lack of transparency in the early care and education budget.  For several years, we have tracked funding for early care and education, and we have raised warning signs over reductions in funding.  But we have not been able to draw many conclusions because the budget lacks clear, detailed, and useful information.  This makes it difficult to tell how much is being spent on various programs and what services are being delivered.

The early care and education budget is yet another example of how inadequacies in budget information in the District make oversight difficult for important services.  Just three weeks ago, DCFPI testified about the lack of transparency in the DC Public Schools budget.  We are hopeful that the Council will use this information to push for reforms that result in the availability of more meaningful budget information.

To read the complete testimony, click here.

Unfortunately, these kinds of surprises are re an all too familiar story — because DC’s budget lacks clarity in two key areas: showing how funds are directed to programs and services, and detail on how federal block grants are used.

For the full report, click here.

I am here today to testify on transparency improvements that we hope will be made to two critical areas of DC government: the DC budget and agency performance data.  Too often today, it is difficult or impossible to determine what actual services are being funded each year due to major gaps in how budget information is put together and then shared with the public.  And a serious shortage of meaningful performance data means we often don’t know what the District is getting for the money it spends.

A lack of budget transparency can have serious consequences.  The most recent example came just two weeks ago when homeless service providers learned days before the new fiscal year — and the start of the coldest months of the year — that their budgets were being cut by up to 30 percent.  Yet, because of a lack of budget transparency, no one—advocates, providers, or the DC Council—had any idea the cuts were coming or why.

Click here to read the full testimony.

Click here for a copy of DCFPI’s paper on “10 Ways to Improve the Transparency of the DC Budget”