Mayor Muriel Bowser's administration declined to send any agency leaders to a D.C. Council hearing on chronic overspending Thursday, Oct. 29, leaving lawmakers without the witnesses they had requested to explain why agencies keep blowing past their budgets.

The Council had asked for testimony from executive-branch officials overseeing police, public works and human services, according to 7News, which first reported the story. The executive branch declined to send a witness, according to the Council's official hearing notice. The mayor's office told 7News, "No comment at this time."

D.C. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson called the move unacceptable.

"I'm shocked that the mayor withheld witnesses from this hearing to talk about the budget," Mendelson told 7News. "We have a $22 billion budget, and everybody needs to take it seriously."

The hearing went forward with testimony from D.C. Auditor Kathy Patterson and Chief Financial Officer Glen Lee, who painted a grim picture of the District's finances.

Lee warned that D.C. faces "fiscal stress not experienced since the 90s." Patterson told lawmakers the city's four-year financial plan assumes a $552 million reduction in local funding between fiscal years 2027 and 2028. Among the projected cuts: $95 million from D.C. Public Schools, $78 million from D.C. Public Charter Schools and nearly $40 million from the Department of Energy and Environment. The plan also includes a 35% reduction for the Office of Victim Services and Justice Grants and a 50% cut to the Office of Neighborhood Safety and Engagement.

Those reductions are not final. They are built into the existing financial plan and could change when the mayor and Council develop the fiscal year 2028 budget. Maintaining current funding levels would require lawmakers to find savings elsewhere or raise taxes.

Mendelson has separately estimated the District faces a roughly $650 million funding challenge in fiscal year 2028 because the current budget relies on one-time money to keep programs running. Bowser warned in a July 24 letter to Mendelson that the Council's spending plan would create an $837 million shortfall for her successor, 7News reported.

Patterson used the hearing to push a structural change: abolishing the independent CFO position and returning budget authority to the mayor's office, City Cast DC reported. Congress created the independent CFO role during D.C.'s 1990s financial crisis. Patterson argued the office now amounts to a duplicate bureaucracy.

"Our taxpayers today are paying for two robust and wholly distinct and independent budget structures," Patterson said at the hearing, according to City Cast DC. She said the two offices "are not communicating effectively" and "fail to effectively control spending."

Mendelson pushed back. He said he would rather have a CFO who is "overly conservative" than one who overstates revenues, which he said preceded the federal control board that governed D.C. finances until 2001.

Patterson also raised alarms about agencies that routinely exceed their approved budgets. "There are agencies that overspend year after year after year after year, and you have to then ask yourself, how can that be?" she told lawmakers. Asked whether agency leaders face consequences for overspending, Patterson said, "I don't know that there have been any consequences."

Lee offered a counterpoint. An agency exceeding its original budget does not necessarily mean it spent more than legally authorized, because budgets can be adjusted during the year through approved transfers. He also pushed back on the idea that D.C. faces an unavoidable financial cliff, emphasizing the District has a balanced four-year plan and that elected officials can make different choices about spending and revenue.

Mendelson questioned whether some planned reductions, particularly to public education, are realistic.

The hearing comes five days before the Nov. 3 mayoral election. The Council is accepting additional testimony on agency overspending through 5:30 p.m. on Nov. 12.