Yesterday, Mayor Bowser disregarded the law when she unilaterally eliminated a District agency by completely defunding the Office of the Ombudsperson for Children in her Fiscal Year 2023 budget and for the rest of Fiscal Year 2022. This reckless decision to relitigate a battle the Mayor lost when the Council unanimously passed the law creating the Ombudsperson puts children at risk and takes all the guardrails off a child welfare system emerging from three decades of necessary federal court oversight. I will work with my colleagues to defeat this vindictive abdication of the Executive’s responsibility to protect the District’s children