A D.C. Council committee yesterday killed a proposal in next year’s budget that would have increased parking and licensing fees for D.C. drivers in an attempt to raise millions of dollars in revenue for the city.
“I cannot support increasing DMV fees in a citywide budget that has grown by 7.3 percent,” said council member Carol Schwartz. “Our residents already pay enough to live here.” The at-large Republican chairs the Committee on Public Works, which has oversight of the Department of Motor Vehicles.
Under the proposal, the annual price of residential parking permits would increase from $15 to $30, duplicate driver’s licenses and registrations would go up from $7 to $10, reinstatement of a driver’s license would rise in cost from $98 to $125 and vehicle registrations would go up by anywhere from $28 to $148 annually, depending on vehicle weight.
The estimated $6 million in additional fees were part of $46.8 million in proposed nontax revenue increases in Mayor Anthony A. Williams’ $6.2 billion fiscal 2005 budget.
Mrs. Schwartz said her committee identified $13 million in public works sector savings that could be generated from performance improvements and would cover the costs of scuttling the fee increases.
The Public Works Committee also approved Mrs. Schwartz’s recommendation that some of the $13 million in savings be used to help extend hours of operation for public libraries and to enhance special-education classes for juvenile inmates.
Tony Bullock, a spokesman for Mr. Williams, said he was approaching Mrs. Schwartz’s proposal “with a certain amount of skepticism.”
“Obviously, these are user fees and periodically they go up,” he said. “Nobody wants to raise fees or costs to the citizens. We don’t do it because we want to do it.”
He said eliminating the fees will likely mean cuts in other programs or a reduction of services.
“We would want to look at that very carefully because this is the same council member who is insistent on maintaining quality service,” he said. “You can’t just magically create efficiency. Sometimes you need bodies.”
Tuesday, Mr. Williams said city officials had identified an additional $50 million in revenue from higher-than-expected economic growth, enabling him to eliminate some of the more contentious proposals from his budget.
Mr. Williams said he would eliminate proposals to tax out-of-state bonds and to impose a 1.2 percent tax on hospital stays. The mayor said he also would be able to cancel a $20 million reduction in funding for the Housing Production Trust Fund, which is used to help finance affordable-housing projects.
However, an additional $13 million in expected revenue from enhanced traffic enforcement will remain intact.
Council voted in July 2002 to exempt itself from its own parking regulations. The measure, coming after a year in which traffic-enforcement officers had cracked down on illegally parked cars of council members, was sponsored by Mrs. Schwartz and supported by council members Kevin Chavous, Jack Evans, Sandra Allen, Adrian Fenty, Jim Graham, Harold Brazil, Vincent Orange and Linda W. Cropp, all Democrats, and David Catania, a Republican. Phil Mendelson, Kathleen Patterson and Sharon Ambrose, all Democrats, voted no.
The exemption, approved but criticized at the time by Mr. Williams, extended to council members the same parking privileges granted members of Congress — including the freedom to park in bus zones, in restricted spaces near intersections, at building entrances and on restricted residential streets. It also freed council members from having to put money into parking meters.
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