Analysis | Five winners and losers in D.C.’s 2025 budget (2024)

In a year of tough choices, here are some of the winners and losers in D.C.’s 2025 budget. Which initiatives or agencies got more investment? What got cut? Who got what they wanted (or didn’t)?

Have additions? Leave your list of budget wins and losses in the comments.

Bowser and the council are going big on D.C.’s downtown. With empty office buildings and vacant retail storefronts at some of their worst levels in history, the council kept most of the Bowser administration’s nearly $800 million in investments toward reviving downtown. Split between the operating and capital budgets, the investments are intended to spur development, including tax incentives for developers to turn vacant office buildings into housing or something more interesting, and fill vacant retail space such as with a “pop-up retail” program that will allow vendors to temporarily fill vacant storefront spaces.

Not to be forgotten — and perhaps an honorary D.C. budget winner — is Capitals and Wizards owner Ted Leonsis, whose company is getting $520 million in public funds to revitalize Capital One Arena.

Coming off a historic spike in violent crime, Bowser and the council fully funded the D.C. police department’s requests for more officers and other needs this year, with a $572.9 million budget. The council’s public safety committee expects the department will be able to hire 276 additional officers through recruitment and the cadet program to bring the force to 3,370. The budget also includes $8.7 million to hire 40 new “community safety officers” who will take on tasks like administrative work, looking for missing people and low-risk security to free up sworn officers for more crime-fighting.

With all that love for downtown, lawmakers fought to spread a bit more of it to small businesses in other commercial corridors. Of note, a proposal from council member Charles Allen (D-Ward 6) will double the Small Retailer Property Tax Credit from $5,000 to $10,000 — helping small businesses offset high real estate or other costs — while also expanding eligibility for the program.

The business committee also preserved $1.9 million in enhanced funds for the Main Streets program, which supports businesses in buzzy retail centers across the District, while Allen also added grant funds specifically for LGBTQ+ businesses in Ward 6 Main Streets. And a bill by council member Brooke Pinto (D-Ward 2) — the BEST Act, which is funded in the budget — reduces licensing burdens and fees for businesses trying to get up and running with fewer headaches.

The caveat: One of the most lucrative tax hikes the council passed is on the tax employers must pay into the paid family leave pot — impacting small and big businesses alike. The council hiked it to 0.75 percent from its current 0.26 percent. Any money that exceeds what’s needed to fund paid family leave goes into the general fund.

Council member Kenyan R. McDuffie (I-At Large) hit a trifecta in this year’s budget, advancing three major policy goals at once. Mendelson included McDuffie’s legislation to drastically reform the sports wagering landscape by opening up the market for competition, ending a monopoly held by the current contractor, Intralot, which has woefully underperformed lawmakers’ expectations. Building on that, the revenue from this new sports wagering system would go toward funding baby bonds, a program McDuffie spearheaded that creates trust funds for children born into low-income families. In addition, the council’s budget also includes funds to stand up a task force to study reparations, another major McDuffie priority.

McDuffie’s sports wagering bill survived an effort to separate it from the budget Wednesday — but some details may still be worked out during the council’s upcoming vote on laws associated with the budget.

A number of initiatives, big and small, cater to new parents with infants or small children — or those expecting or hoping to conceive. A newly established Child Tax Credit — an idea from council member Zachary Parker (D-Ward 5) — will offer up to $420 per child to households with a child under 6, depending on income. The council also enhanced the Earned Income Child Tax Credit. And the council funded council member Christina Henderson’s (I-At Large) bill to expand access to fertility treatment and established a new grant for to help expectant parents, or legal guardians, with child care needs when urgent medical appointments come up.

With homelessness increasing, and with limited funds to address the insatiable demand for housing aid among lower-income residents, D.C.’s housing programs are underwater.

Amid a plan by housing officials to terminate more than 2,000 households from rapid rehousing, a time-limited program that provides a housing subsidy for people exiting homelessness the program, Bowser’s budget proposal slashed rapid rehousing assistance for individuals in half and by about 17 percent for families.

Lawmakers worked to fund more than 600 new housing vouchers — some of which would go to people exiting rapid rehousing — after lobbying from housing advocates. And though still a lot less than last year, council member Robert C. White Jr. (D-At large), the housing committee chairman, restored $6.9 million more in Emergency Rental Assistance Program funding, which Bowser had proposed cutting by more than half.

Still, White said he would “not sugarcoat it” Wednesday, noting that despite the council’s efforts, major gaps in housing aid remain.

It’s hard to imagine a more tortured government planning process. The Bowser administration announced plans to create a 2.7-mile bike lane on Connecticut Avenue NW in 2021, delighting cyclists while frustrating others who raised fears about fewer vehicle traffic lanes and parking spaces. After two years of divided views, the Bowser administration said last year it was hitting pause to rethink the bike lane design.

This spring, the Bowser administration said it would not move forward with the bike lanes and would advance a different vision — infuriating cycling and multimodal safe-streets advocates and pleasing other commuters worried about traffic and parking impacts. The decision was just in time for budget season. Allen, chairman of the transportation committee, tried to re-add a bike lane requirement through his committee’s budget proposal, but Mendelson did not move forward with it.

For the second year in a row, a standoff erupted between Mendelson and D.C. Public Schools Chancellor Lewis D. Ferebee about how to fund the public school system. Bowser’s administration ignored a law known as the “schools first” funding formula, which directs that individual schools can’t get less funding than they did the year before. So in his own proposal, Mendelson redirected $25.4 million away from the DCPS central office back into individual schools.

Ferebee strongly objected. He and Bowser told Mendelson that the move would require cuts to programs including swimming lessons for third-graders and after-school meals and services like technology support, while blocking a pair of new initiatives — math training for teachers and the creation of an alternative school.

Mendelson and the council did not budge, arguing individual schools should be the priority.

When the council passed the Secure D.C. crime bill in March, it came with an amendment from council member Trayon White Sr. (D-Ward 8) ordering the Bowser administration to create a comprehensive public safety plan. The only hitch: It had a $343,000 price tag, according to a fiscal impact statement, meaning lawmakers would have to set aside funds for it in the budget. But it’s not in the budget, making it a toothless provision.

Separately, White voiced concerns about cuts to the Office of Neighborhood Safety and Engagement, which has been without permanent leadership for over a year and which runs the executive’s gun violence intervention program. Led by Pinto, lawmakers on the public safety committee said the agency needs to focus on enhancing its program by pursuing universal training for violence intervention workers and contractors and completing a merger with the attorney general’s similar Cure the Streets violence intervention program. Decrying a lack of coordination, lawmakers wrote in the report that “the dual programs currently in existence lead to a waste of taxpayer funds by duplicating what could and should be shared infrastructure.”

Pinto said she’d hoped that merger would be ready in time for this year’s budget, adding that the work is “certainly not over” in urging the executive to move toward a more “comprehensive strategy to prevent violence.”

Dangerous drivers and scofflaws stand to lose thanks to several initiatives funded in the budget: Nearly $300,000 is included in the budget to hire civil attorneys at the attorney general’s office who will bring cases against dangerous drivers and begin implementing the STEER Act. Meanwhile, the budget also funds a program allowing the DMV to install a “speed governor” on cars to automatically lower the speed for people who are known reckless drivers.

Plus, with contributions from the public works committee headed by council member Brianne K. Nadeau (D-Ward 1), some Department of Public Works tow trucks will now get to have license plate readers to go after parking ticket scofflaws.

Michael Brice-Saddler contributed to this report.