Martin Austermuhle

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.

That may sound like some legalistic parsing, and it somewhat is. If MPD arrests someone, they won't turn them over to immigration agents. But if MPD merely detains them during a traffic stop, they will share the information that could be used for an immigration check.

Early in the hearing, Carroll insisted that MPD officers are obeying the law that prohibits them cooperating on immigration enforcement when they arrest someone. But he conceded that officers will share information of people detained in traffic stops with federal agents.

The short of it is that Carroll says that MPD isn't cooperating on immigration enforcement. (Many lawmakers have questioned that claim.) But he concedes that federal agencies that MPD does work with will do immigration enforcement, sometimes when MPD officers are on hand.

🧵: It's been quite a day for Interim D.C. Police Chief Jeffery Carroll, who has faced a barrage of questions from the D.C. Council over the last few hours over what, if any, cooperation is happening between MPD and federal immigration authorities.

When Bezos fires, @51st.news hires.

We're up to $3171 ($2537 donations, 634 follows), which means it's time for me to cut another check. Keep it up and make me send a third.

The overall fundraiser is at $215,736‼️

No, he had a place at CityCenter during the first Trump administration.

Taunt thy neighbor? It seems that someone in D.C. has been trying to send a message to FBI Director Kash Patel, who owns a condo just across from this building not far from U Street NW. (Though I don't think he lives there anymore.)

If you know who did this, get in touch!

There hasn't been a sewage overflow from the pipe into the Potomac for 17 days. It's still all being redirected into the C&O Canal for a half-mile stretch, and then back into the sewage pipe downstream.

"If you look at the data we have coming in… it’s trending in the right direction [in D.C.]. We leave it to the officials in D.C. who have the expertise to make those decisions" on whether to lift the advisory, says a D.C. Water spokeswoman.

Testing of the water in the Potomac River continues; @doeedc.bsky.social will be getting EPA assistance to increase testing from weekly to daily schedule.

If E. coli levels remain within safe levels in D.C., current advisories telling people to avoid the river could be lifted next week.

There have been senior federal officials visiting the site of the pipe break: EPA director Lee Zeldin today and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum yesterday. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers are also on the site helping D.C. Water crews.

Updates on the sewage pipe break and spill: @dcwater.bsky.social says "significant progress" has been made to clear a 45-foot-long rock blockage in the sewage pipe. Once that is cleared, repairs on the pipe can begin; they're still looking at mid-March completion date.