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The Committee on Labor and Workforce Development will hold a public roundtable on the nomination of Dionna Lewis to the Office of Employee Appeals Board (PR23-0281) on Wednesday, June 5, beginning at 2:30pm in Room 123 of the John A. Wilson Building (1350 Pennsylvania Ave. NW).

A draft witness list and agenda is available here.

D.C. Councilmember Elissa Silverman (I-At Large) responded to a new report released earlier today from the Office of the D.C. Auditor, which raises concerns about the integrity of the competitive application process for the city’s Housing Production Trust Fund (HPTF). The report found that the D.C. Department of Housing and Community Development (DHCD) often deviated from its own scoring system to select lower-ranked projects for the fund, which provides critical gap financing to developers of affordable housing.

In Tuesday’s second and final vote on next year’s budget appropriations, D.C. Councilmember Elissa Silverman (I-At Large) championed the redirection of $1 million to public housing repairs in Ward 1, the restoration of over $7 million to United Medical Center in Ward 8, and the allocation of $15.3 million to support early education and affordable housing needs across the District. These investments were largely part of a series of amendments wrapped into the Fiscal Year 2020 budget, which passed unanimously.

In response to a request from two D.C. Council members, D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine has issued a legal opinion concluding that the Bowser Administration does not have authority to waive specific D.C. hiring requirements put in law in order for the Line Hotel to qualify for a taxpayer subsidy worth up to $46 million. Earlier this month, the Department of Employment Services (DOES) found that the hotel had not met two of seven specific requirements legislated by the Council but said the agency had the ability to create an alternative compliance plan.

Dear Resident,

On Tuesday, the D.C. Council will take the first of two votes on the Fiscal Year 2020 budget, which will begin this October. This will determine much of the direction for our government resources next year. As a reminder, both the specific money allocations and any enabling legislation supporting that funding require second votes, which will happen in late May and early June.

I have heard from many of you this budget season. Thank you for your emails, your calls, and visits to the Wilson Building. It’s no surprise that your top concerns were equitable funding for our public schools, additional money to preserve and build affordable housing, resources toward preventing homelessness, and continued support for innovative approaches to public safety. Transportation-related advocacy, including support for Vision Zero efforts, has picked up in these last several weeks. Budget season is a good reminder of the breadth of programs and services our government funds, from health care to business corridor grants to parks and recreation.

D.C. Councilmembers Elissa Silverman (I-At Large) and Brianne Nadeau (D-Ward 1) sent a letter earlier this week asking D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine to give his legal opinion on whether the executive branch has authority to waive District resident hiring requirements put into law as conditions for the Line Hotel receiving a $46 million tax abatement. The D.C. Council passed special legislation in 2011 requiring the hotel to meet specific hiring targets beyond the District’s First Source hiring law in order to receive the subsidy. The Line Hotel opened last year in the Adams Morgan neighborhood of Ward 1 and is still in the process of being deemed eligible for the tax abatement.

The Committee on Labor and Workforce Development, having conducted hearings and received testimony on the Mayor’s proposed operating and capital budgets for Fiscal Year 2020 for the agencies under its purview, reported its final recommendations for review and consideration by the Committee of the Whole on Wednesday, May 1, 2019.

A copy of the Committee's final report and recommendations is available here: FY20_LWD_Budget_report_05-15-19.pdf

The Committee on Labor and Workforce Development will convene a public oversight roundtable on the Implementation of the “Universal Paid Leave Amendment Act of 2016” on Monday, May 6, 2019 at 3:00pm in Room 120 of the John A. Wilson Building (1350 Pennsylvania Ave. NW).

The draft witness list and agenda are available below:

The Committee of the Whole and the Committee on Labor and Workforce Development will hold a Joint Working Group Meeting on Monday, May 6, 2019 at 11:30am in Room 412 of the John A. Wilson Building.

The purpose of the working group is to discuss the city’s implementation plan for the Universal Paid Leave Amendment Act of 2016; and to hear from the Department of Employment Services and the City Administrator about efforts to conduct outreach to the business community on the program’s launch. The working group will be limited to Councilmembers, the District’s City Administrator, the Department of Employment Services, and invited representatives of the District’s business community and other District employers.

In a unanimous vote yesterday, the Committee on Labor and Workforce Development, chaired by Councilmember Elissa Silverman (I-At Large), approved budget and policy recommendations for upcoming Fiscal Year 2020 that put an emphasis on investing in programs that have data-driven track records of putting D.C. residents on paths to work. In statements supporting the decisions, each Committee member stressed how critical agencies under the Committee’s jurisdiction are to ensuring all residents, especially returning citizens, benefit from the city’s prosperity. Agencies under the Committee’s purview include the D.C. Department of Employment Services, the Workforce Investment Council, and the D.C. Department of Human Resources.

“We have designed programs to help residents get work, particularly in our high-demand industries, yet the numbers don’t point to success. Data has been either unclear or in some cases unavailable to the Committee,” Silverman said. “However, anecdotal evidence from residents who testified at hearings was straightforward: Many of our high-profile workforce programs are not delivering what was promised to get our residents into jobs and put them on paths to long-term career success. The status-quo of spending lots of money on programs that don’t help our residents can’t continue.”