Councilmember Nadeau made the following remarks at the Committee on Public Works & Operations mark-up for the FY2026 budget on June 24, 2025. Read the full Committee Report.
The Committee on Public Works & Operations sometimes refers to itself as the “nitty gritty city committee,” in recognition of the Committee’s attention to some of the most mundane and daily necessities of city life. We dive into the weeds, learn the difference between this kind of street sweeper and that one, how daily staffing assignments are made at DPW, and the legal steps someone takes if they have a discrimination complaint before the Office of Human Rights. By collaborating with the agencies under our purview to improve their work, agency and Council leadership can and do improve government services.
This report of the Committee on Public Works & Operations on the Fiscal Year 2026 Proposed Budget is the result of months of hearings, testimony, meetings, performance and data analysis, as well as other forms of public engagement.
The Committee has been able to apply found savings within agencies the Committee oversees, as well as transfer funds to other committees, to restore unacceptable cuts in the budget that was presented to the Council.
Within the Committee, funds were applied to keeping our city clean and enhancing cleanliness with additional waste collection, improving trash collection at parks, preserving and expanding the availability of public restrooms across the District; street cleaning, and graffiti removal; expanding curbside composting and neighborhood food waste collection bins.
The Mayor’s proposed budget made some curious enhancements to DPW. One of those, about $4 million, was advertised as a one-year continuation of term positions for more intensive cleaning of corridors and highways. This is well-intentioned. But it was concerning to us that the Executive could barely provide even the most basic of details, like a list of the corridors included in the initiative. We’re still not even clear on what the name of the initiative is, whether it’s Clean Corridors, Consistently Clean City, or Spring Cleaning.
Adequate cleaning of our high-traffic corridors should not be an “initiative”. It should be a baseline expectation, and part of the core functions of DPW.
In lieu of those temporary positions, this Committee turned that one-time funding into permanent enhancements to DPW staff, as well as funding to supplement our existing commercial corridor Clean Teams. The Committee enhancements include 20 positions for corridor cleaning, and enhancements to graffiti removal, nuisance abatement, and litter collections. The total number of positions is less than what the Mayor proposed, because we’re choosing to fund higher salaries and permanent positions, even for entry-level jobs.
The other major enhancement the Mayor proposed at DPW is concerning on a more structural level. $9.3 million of funds from the Storm Water Permit Review Fund for DPW’s signed sweeping program. While street sweeping is an allowable use for those special purpose funds, this creates significant pressures on the District’s key environmental programs and river cleanup priorities.
This $9.3 million doesn’t make much sense within DPW either. It’s curiously budgeted as one-time funding and coded as “IT Maintenance”. As we learned at our hearing, this is simply a holding pen for those dollars. What’s proposed in the Mayor’s budget is to continue to roll that money into future years to fund full-time positions on a continuing one-time basis.
In working with our budget office and the Transportation and Environment Committee, we learned that the special purpose account those funds came out of has an escrow requirement that we’re now at risk of violating. This could mean losing out on federal funding, in addition to the existing damage of this funding shift away from local environmental programs.
We did not make this change in our Committee, but before Council finalizes the budget, it is almost certain that those funds will have to be removed from DPW and returned to that account.
What this all means in practice is that the Mayor’s budget has only funded the signed street sweeping program for one year.
The Committee sees this as an opportunity for us to evaluate and improve the performance of our street sweeping program. The blocks that receive weekly sweeping are scattered and not based on performance data since they’re by a petition process. As we learned in our research, every year, DC spends $2,500 for every mile of street swept. I’ll remind my colleagues that we’re spending that much and still see a need for enhancements to clean major corridors.
In light of those concerns, this budget funds one new program analyst position, with the intent for increased capacity to support a more holistic evaluation of our signed sweeping activities.
Elsewhere in DPW, the Committee report addresses traffic safety by funding my legislation to give DPW the authority to immediately boot and tow vehicles with fake or missing tags, and to implement a new vehicle points system to prioritize booting and towing resources towards the most dangerous offenses. I want to thank Councilmember Allen and his team for the continued collaboration on this effort, which started all the way back when these bills were originally drafted.
Here are some additional highlights from the Committee’s Fiscal Year 2026 budget recommendations. They are organized into four themes:
The Committee makes significant investments in keeping our city clean and livable.
The Committee’s recommended budget:
- Funds more than 250 new public litter and recycling cans.
- Expands curbside compost pickup from 9,000 to 12,000 households and funds 10 additional neighborhood smart bins for 24-hour food waste drop-off..
- This is a big one – the Committee funds the consolidation of park litter and recycling cans at DPW, rather than the current inefficient system in which DPW and the Department of General Services share responsibility.
- Makes additional investments in illegal dumping enforcement, and improved staffing for better litter, trash, and recycling collections.
The Committee report recommends measures in the budget that will improve public safety, including road safety.
The Committee’s recommended budget:
- Provides support to people living with substance use disorder and creates safe and vibrant public spaces in by maintaining and enhancing the Ward 1 community navigators program.
- Approves funds for security camera replacement and maintenance across the District; and
- Fully funds the expansion of DFHV’s authority to cover food and parcel delivery apps.
The Committee report makes recommendations that use public funds efficiently and effectively.
The Committee’s recommended budget:
- Funds new Administrative Law Judges and staff at the Office of Administrative Hearings – enhancements that are critical to making every other part of DC government run effectively.
- The Committee similarly funds staffing and technology needs at the Contract Appeals Board.
- Approves funding to support the PASS modernization project to streamline the District’s online procurement system.
The Committee report restores funds to support the rights, health, and wellbeing of residents.
The Committee’s recommended budget:
- Undoes a significant rollback of reforms and threats TANF by transferring $6.4 million to the Committee on Human Services. The rollbacks in the budget presented to the Council by the Mayor would have turned the program back to the draconian policies of the 1990s that were proven to be ineffective and condemned by a DHS-convened working group.
- Funds home visiting for expectant parents – a program that was cut even though it exists in law – via a transfer to the Committee on Health.
- Accepts a transfer of money from the Committee on Health to fund the Farmers Market Support Amendment Act of 2025.
- Partially restores funding to the Office of the Ombudsperson for Children in collaboration with the Committee on Youth Affairs, an office that is critical to safeguarding children and families.
- Approves funding in the Office of Human Rights to implement the Second Chance Amendment Act.
Fully funds the Fairness in Human Rights Administration Amendment Act that Council passed last year.
BSA SUBTITLES
With that, I now want to turn to the Budget Support Act subtitles proposed by the Mayor, as well as new subtitles proposed by the Committee.
The Budget Support Act, presented to the Council in conjunction with the budget itself, is supposed to contain needed changes to legislation to make the budget possible. By law and by practice, it is not intended to be a repository for policy changes that are unrelated to the budget. This Committee recommends removing many of these policy changes and insisting that they go through the regular legislative process, so they can receive the attention they deserve from the Council and the public.
MAYOR’S PROPOSALS
The Committee recommends approval of three of the Mayor’s proposed subtitles, without much change:
- The Community Affairs Amendment Act of 2025.
- The Surplus Property Sales Fund Amendment Act of 2025.
- Technology Ecosystem Support Amendment Act of 2025.
The Committee is also recommending the approval of the Vending Compliance and Modernization Amendment Act of 2025, with changes.
This subtitle as proposed would make sweeping changes to street and sidewalk vending laws in the District, including adding new penalties for vending violations. The Committee believes that such substantive changes should go through the full legislative process, including a public hearing. Therefore, the Committee has made several changes to remove most of this language but keeps key provisions that support implementation of the current law.
The Committee did not have the funds to replace the estimated savings to strike the proposed subtitle on Limitations on Liability Against the District of Columbia Act of 2025. The subtitle creates new requirements for accidents involving the District that result in property damage, injuries and death, including setting caps for maximum allowed monetary damages. It is important that individuals who are harmed a result of actions of the District can receive adequate payments for the damages. Any type of cap on these payments jeopardizes an individual’s ability to obtain justice.
Lastly, I want to take a moment to discuss the Mayor’s Project Labor Agreements Amendment Act of 2025.
District law currently requires the use of a project labor agreement (PLA) for any capital construction project with a cost of $75 million or greater. Due to the recently passed “Revised Project Labor Agreement Cost Threshold Amendment Act of 2024,” for projects first included in the capital improvements plan for Fiscal Year 2026 through 2032, the new threshold for a PLA was set to be $50 million.
The Mayor’s proposed subtitle increases the PLA threshold to $100 million for all projects. It also delays the applicability of the PLA requirement for all projects to those first included in the capital improvements plan for Fiscal Year 2032 or later. In other words, it means that PLAs will be required for far fewer projects, to the detriment of labor.
The rationale given for this change is that it will save the District money. Critics of PLAs routinely claim that PLAs increase construction costs. But these claims do not bear out. For every industry-backed report that says PLAs increase costs, there’s an academic, government, or third-party analysis that finds no statistically significant cost difference or even finds improved performance under PLAs. Quite frankly, I’m tired of having this argument. However, my hands are tied here.
Although the Committee would otherwise recommend striking the subtitle from the BSA, it is unable to do so due to the projected cost of its removal. According to the fiscal impact statement, eleven projects in the FY2026 Capital Improvements Plan are not budgeted to include a project labor agreement; as a result, removing the subtitle would increase costs by over $76 million.
The Committee therefore recommends approval, with the intent of working with the Committee of the Whole to lessen the damage of the Mayor’s subtitle.
COMMITTEE’S PROPOSALS
The Committee’s proposed new subtitles largely address technical corrections and the funding of new legislation. There’s only one I’d like to highlight, the Public Restrooms Program Amendment Act of 2025.
Along with funding allocated by the Committee, this subtitle realizes the decade-long goal of having a real public restroom program throughout the city. The Committee’s budget restores funding for the six existing standalone public restrooms and accepts funds from other committees to install four additional Throne units at Ellington in Ward 1, Watkins Recreation Center in Ward 6, Starburst Plaza in Ward 5, and Marvin Gaye Park in Ward 7. The Committee funds a new program manager at DPW to oversee and grow a permanent public restrooms program.
After initial failures to implement a public restroom program at DGS, two years ago the Council created a new pilot program at DPW. That pilot has exceeded expectations, with a survey showing a 90 percent approval rating. This Committee has also received requests for Throne restrooms in additional locations. In order to ensure the continued access to public restroom facilities across the District, the Committee seeks to make this program permanent. The Committee therefore recommends approval of this subtitle.
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Even in a difficult budget year, District residents deserve a budget that invests in them – all of them – including our most vulnerable residents and our hardest-working government employees. The budget must address the need for childcare, early childhood educator pay, affordable housing, social services, protections for residents, quality services, and all the things that support and power our city.
The Committee on Public Works & Operations plays a critical role in overseeing many of the city agencies and functions that residents count on daily and with this budget report, we recommend restoring many vital services and protections that were removed from the budget that was presented to us.
