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Resistance from D.C. CFO Forces Progressives to Scramble for SNAP Benefits, Excluded Workers

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D.C.’s unique system of governance positions the city’s chief financial officer to be the bad guy as lawmakers advance plans for new spending. And CFO Glen Lee has played that role with aplomb in the first tight budget cycle of his tenure.

Lee managed to seriously piss off both Council Chair Phil Mendelson and At-Large Councilmember Kenyan McDuffie with his management of their proposals for free bus service and baby bonds, respectively, and that was just the start of the acrimony. The CFO’s obstinance also aggravated a group of progressive councilmembers looking to fund an expansion of food stamps in the budget’s waning days. Now lawmakers must embrace a distinctly risky method of paying for SNAP benefits at Tuesday’s second and final vote on the budget. And that’s had ripple effects elsewhere, making the process of providing checks to excluded workers much more complicated and angering their advocates in the process.

“In this difficult budget year, it feels we’ve exhausted all other feasible options,” Ward 1 Councilmember Brianne Nadeau, one of the lawmakers working on the issue, said Tuesday.

Lee’s predecessor, Jeffrey DeWitt, courted similar fights during his tenure. The CFO has the power to threaten not to certify the entire budget if they don’t like how the Council has funded one program or another, and DeWitt exercised that as recently as 2019 in a relatively petty dispute about Events D.C. funds. But DeWitt served in the role long enough to earn a healthy bit of respect, particularly from Mendelson and other moderate members, despite these skirmishes. Lee doesn’t exactly have the same track record to lean on, stoking suspicions that Mayor Muriel Bowser is overly influencing the nominally independent bean counter.

The frustration this time around stems from Lee’s refusal to allow Ward 4 Councilmember Janeese Lewis George to pay for enhanced SNAP benefits by pulling money from the fund that supports the city’s paid family leave program. She hoped to secure about $39.6 million by reducing the amount of money the city is legally required to set aside for the paid family leave fund, according to a memo circulated by her staff last week. This would only fund a year of enhanced benefits—a far cry from what At-Large Councilmember Christina Henderson’s legislation, which the Council passed but never funded, calls for. But Lewis George sees it as a good place to start, noting that her proposal comes as congressional Republicans are busy demanding new work requirements for benefits as part of a deal with President Joe Biden on the debt ceiling. (Ward 5 Councilmember Zachary Parker’s plan to leave a key tax increase in place would have paid for all this, but his proposal fizzled during the Council’s first budget vote.)



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