Martin Austermuhle

Interesting: In her responses to the @mdcdsa.org candidate questionnaire, @janeese4dc.bsky.social says she's aiming to get 70,000 votes to win the mayoral primary. Bowser's best was 62,000 in 2022; Vince Gray got 72,000 in 2010. She also wants to knock on 500,000 doors.

So, should you file your taxes? It's currently a big shrug from pretty much everyone. The CFO says residents and businesses can like they normally would. But if and when things might have to stop (and get delayed) remains totally unclear.

There's rumors that some D.C. lawmakers may want to try and recouple, effectively ending this dispute altogether.

"That would be very unpopular with residents who are tired of seeing government officials acquiesce to federal bullying," says @chmnmendelson.bsky.social.

If the CFO decides that decoupling didn't happen, then tax-filing will have to stop, forms and guidance will have to be redone, deadlines will be pushed back, and the tens of thousands of residents who have already filed returns may have to do so again.

For now that D.C. attorney general says that Congress didn't actually repeal the D.C. Council's decoupling bill, and the city's CFO seems to be proceeding like that's the case. But his lawyers could decide they disagree with the AG, and that the decoupling bill isn't law.

D.C. TAXES UPDATE: There's still no final resolution in the fight between D.C. and Congress over whether the city has decoupled itself from some of the Trump tax cuts or not. Tax-filing continues as normal, but there's still a chance it could be stopped and delayed.

Starting today, @doeedc.bsky.social (with assistance from the EPA) will be doing daily water-quality testing, increasing from what has been weekly testing to date.

Below is the water testing data from when the break happened in January to last week. Even the E. coli levels closest to the pipe break site have come down; D.C. Water officials said last week they hadn't had a sewage overflow into the Potomac since February 8.

NEWS: As was teased two weeks ago, D.C. is lifting its advisory for the Potomac River in the wake of the big sewage spill in January. Testing has generally found E. coli levels in D.C. to be within safe levels, and that’s held since mid-February.

For his part, mayoral candidate Gary Goodweather says he would push for fare-free buses. "It will be a net-positive revenue generator to our city," he says.

Lewis George says she would push to release a long-delayed DDOT report on congestion pricing, which she adds could serve as a source of revenue to make buses free. But, generally, she's not following Mamdani on making buses free.

Interesting: At a transportation forum, @janeese4dc.bsky.social says fare-free buses in D.C. are the "long-term goal," but not something she would commit to early on. She says she instead wants to create a dedicated source of funding for Metro.

A senior D.C. official separately had harsh words for the CFO: "In this scenario everybody loses. You continue to anger the White House and Congress and now you anger the council, advocates, residents, and businesses. None of the upside, all of the downside."

UPDATE: @mayorbowser.dc.gov is not particularly happy with CFO Glen Lee. In a letter, she questions his decision to not include revenue from the council's decoupling bill, which Bowser says will complicate her formulation of the budget. Bowser also says D.C. taxpayers need clarity.

The AG's opinion actually had a number of legal issues with what Congress did before he even got to the 30-day count.

The more stable forms of revenue, largely commercial property taxes and sales taxes, are declining in D.C.

In the newest revenue estimate, D.C.'s CFO points out that tax revenue from capital gains and corporations is consistently growing. Sounds good, no? Maybe not. Those increases are "highly volatile and largely driven by factors outside the District."

Oh, and if somehow D.C.'s attempt to decouple is ultimately derailed by Congress, the CFO has said tax-filing deadlines could be pushed into late summer, it could cost the city $10 million to re-do forms and systems, and cash he expected to get in April wouldn't come until fall.

All the while the mayor has been very quiet on whether decoupling is the law of the land, the council is divided on whether it should act like it's the law, the CFO is kinda pretending it is but assuming it eventually won't be, and more than 75,000 taxpayers have already filed.

So D.C. now has a tax bill that the attorney general says is law, but the CFO won't factor in the revenue it would bring in because of "uncertainty." And there's no political consensus on how to proceed. Does the D.C. Council pass a bill to recouple?

Is this confusing? You bet. This week the D.C. attorney general said Congress didn't actually repeal the decoupling bill, meaning the revenue for at least tax year 2025 ($180 million) should be reflected as money the city is getting. But Lee isn't including it.

NEWS: There's more trouble and confusion for D.C.'s attempt to decouple its tax code from the Trump tax cuts. In a new revenue estimate, CFO Glen Lee says he's not including the estimated revenue from decoupling "due to the uncertainty" raised by the congressional repeal.

Interesting update: This bill will get a first vote in the D.C. Council next Tuesday.

D.C. has also installed public smart food waste bins around town, which in 2025 took in about 360,000 pounds worth of food waste. Ward 1 crushed the competition here: Some 82,000 pounds. Second-place Ward 6 mustered a mere 55,000 pounds.

Trashy fact of the day: Since D.C. kicked off its residential composting program almost three years ago, the city has picked up some five million pounds worth of food waste. There's now some 12,000 participating households, with Ward 4 in the lead followed by wards 3 and 5.

Still, many councilmembers seem to have lost patience over what's at best a confusing situation and at worst MPD cooperating on immigration enforcement. Carroll got plenty of tough questions from Ward 2 Councilmember Brooke Pinto, who had been criticized last year for not holding MPD to account.

Carroll pushed back on claims that it would be easy to fully extricate MPD from the perception that it is cooperating with immigration enforcement, since many federal agencies that wouldn't traditionally do it are now empowered to do it. And those agencies work with MPD.

"MPD is not trying to facilitate immigration enforcement," responded Carroll. "We don’t want to be in that situation. If we go out to make an arrest and a U.S. Marshal decides to do immigration enforcement, then we’re there and it paints us in a bad light."

"MPD isn’t doing immigration enforcement, but all the federal agencies have the capacity to do immigration enforcement. Then the question becomes, to what extent is MPD actively facilitating immigration enforcement? That’s what worries D.C. residents," said @cmfrumin.bsky.social.

There are also situations where certain federal agencies (like U.S. Park Police) have been deputized to do immigration enforcement, and they can unilaterally or in conjunction with MPD respond to calls. When they arrive, they can do immigration checks.