Studies and reports are a dime a dozen in the D.C. government. Despite the good intentions of their authors, these dry documents seldom tend to move the needle in local politics. So who could possibly be afraid to let one see the light of day?
The answer: Mayor Muriel Bowser. She’s worked for years now to keep a D.C.-funded study of congestion pricing under wraps, and Loose Lips hears that her administration has once again defied the law in keeping this report secret. Apparently Bowser is so uninterested in any public debate about congestion pricing that she would rather rerun the same sort of fight with the Council that nearly got her sued than simply make the study public.
The Council set aside half a million dollars in 2019 to examine congestion pricing, which would toll drivers every time they head into popular parts of the District in order to simultaneously manage traffic and raise more revenue from the commuters and tourists who clog the city but don’t pay taxes here. A contractor completed a report in 2021 outlining options for how the practice could work: where the boundaries could be, how much money the tolls could raise, how the city could stand up the program. But the District Department of Transportation never released the document, likely at the direction of Bowser or her top deputies. The Council then took the unusual step of passing budget language last year barring DDOT from the fairly common practice of moving funds around within their budget for big projects until the the agency updated the study and then forwarded it to the legislature.
The Jan. 1 deadline for the report’s release has come and gone, and there’s no indication that DDOT has followed the law and found a firm to refresh the study, several advocates and lawmakers tell LL. What’s more, it seems pretty clear that DDOT has no interest in ever doing so, no matter what the law says.
Alex Baca, D.C. policy director with the advocacy group Greater Greater Washington, tells LL she began asking DDOT directly about the study a few weeks ago. Baca has long been interested in congestion pricing, and GGW also happens to manage the DC Sustainable Transportation Coalition, which compiled the original study two years ago. To Baca’s surprise, she eventually received a response directly from Interim Director Sharon Kershbaum.
Though Kershbaum acknowledged that “DDOT has been in communication with Council regarding the congestion pricing report,” per an email Baca forwarded to LL, she also did not communicate any intent to ever share the document.
“We’ve shared our concerns that at a time when so many of our residents and businesses are still struggling to recover economically from the pandemic’s impacts, imposing a congestion tax undermines our collective efforts to retain and attract residents and businesses,” wrote Kershbaum, who took over after Everett Lott’s ouster last fall. “It also would impose a fee on the millions of Americans who come to Downtown DC to visit their Congressional representatives and our national monuments, memorials, and museums. We are working to improve our bus infrastructure, bikeways, and opportunities for pedestrian travel to provide multimodal access to our downtown neighborhoods as preferred options for commuters. We see this development as a critical first step before restricting travel or leveeing [sic] fees for cars traveling downtown.”
Spokespeople for both Bowser and DDOT did not respond to LL’s requests for additional comment. But it is not exactly surprising to hear Kershbaum echoing Bowser’s frequent talking points on the imperative of getting people back downtown (particularly in the wake of Ted Leonsis’ announcement that he intends to flee Chinatown). It’s a bit more puzzling, however, to see her conflating a study full of hypotheticals about how congestion pricing could work someday with the actual implementation of the policy.
“If it is indeed the case that a report is the equivalent of creating and implementing a policy, this is great news for advocates, like myself, as we can now operate with the assumption that all reports are self-implementing, precatory documents to the fullest extent,” Baca replied, with a level of sarcasm that feels fitting given her past as a City Paper staffer.
Ward 6 Councilmember Charles Allen, the Council’s transportation committee chair, says he’s been working behind the scenes with Kershbaum and City Administrator Kevin Donahue to reach a resolution. He notes that this dispute has been going on so long that it dates back to his predecessor on the committee, former Ward 3 Councilmember Mary Cheh, who “put that money in for a legally required purpose.”
“I have a responsibility to stick up for what the Council did years ago,” Allen tells LL. A similar line of thinking brought the Council to the brink of suing Bowser over her refusal to expand SNAP benefits, in defiance of a law passed by the legislative branch, a few weeks ago.
“If they’re just refusing to do the work, then give the money back and I’ll get somebody else to do it,” Allen says, noting he would gladly have the Council hire its own consultant to do such a study. “This reticence to just do the work is a problem.”
Like Baca, Allen stresses that “we’re talking about a study, not even implementation here.” He is the author of last year’s budget language forcing the report’s release and he admits feeling some disbelief that this fight is still going on all these years later.
It’s entirely possible that a report finds that congestion pricing doesn’t look particularly palatable for the city, after all.
There have long been suggestions that D.C. can’t impose these sorts of fees until it gains statehood—Congress tried to explicitly ban any such “commuter tax” when it gave the District limited autonomy 50 years ago, though there are some theories about how the city could circumvent this ban—and the report could find that there just aren’t the legal mechanisms to pull this off. And there’s no doubt that any congestion pricing scheme would need to be legally airtight if New York City’s case is any example—the state of New Jersey and several of its municipalities are currently challenging the Big Apple’s attempts to implement the policy in court.
Or the study could find that the federal government’s continued reliance on remote work have made road pricing less financially attractive than it once was, particularly if it’s going to require a huge political fight with D.C.’s suburban neighbors and congressional overseers. Baca says preliminary estimates for revenue from congestion pricing range between $90 and $500 million a year, but there’s scant updated research on this subject post-pandemic.
And that is precisely the problem with Bowser’s refusal to let anyone see this study. Some report isn’t going to magically sweep aside all of the opposition to this idea, especially if Bowser herself is harboring doubts. But at least it would lend some data to this otherwise largely hypothetical debate and help policymakers seriously consider it—LL noted with interest that the city’s influential Tax Revision Commission briefly discussed, but didn’t seriously consider, congestion pricing as it gathered ideas to shape the future of D.C.’s finances.
In a world where the city can’t count on commercial real estate taxes to bolster its budget with the same regularity as it once did, it seems foolish to ignore a new source of revenue (particularly via a tax that would fall most heavily on more affluent residents and address the city’s long-standing problem of spending more on services for visitors than they contribute back in taxes). That’s to say nothing of the myriad other potential benefits of congestion pricing, such as better traffic management, reduced carbon emissions, increased transit ridership, and fewer vehicular deaths.
But, sadly, intellectual curiosity and vigorous policy debates have never really been strong features of the Bowser administration. It feels to many involved in this dispute as if Herroner is, once again, reflexively rejecting an idea the Council’s embraced just because it cuts against the beliefs of some of her small circle of pro-business advisers. Never mind that some influential business groups have previously supported congestion pricing, if it smells like progressive change for the city, Herroner isn’t interested, no matter what the Council has mandated.
Broadly speaking, the relationship between the executive and legislative branches isn’t great these days. Between the SNAP fight and Bowser’s attacks on the Council over crime, tensions are still a bit high. Yet another brouhaha over the Council’s authority to pass laws that the mayor will actually follow surely won’t help matters. (LL had to laugh that Bowser offered at Tuesday’s joint mayor-Council breakfast to hold weekly “office hours” so lawmakers can drop in and discuss issues with her on a regular basis, just a few minutes after telling many of the councilmembers in attendance how wrong their ideas were about crime and downtown development.)
Allen, for his part, says he’s willing to endure some awkwardness to get this all resolved. The law bars DDOT from reprogramming any money for capital projects (think large construction efforts) until it releases the study, and it’s a very common occurrence for agencies to move money around in the middle of a fiscal year to address new needs. DDOT has avoided doing so, for now, but there’s no guarantee that lasts.
“I’m sure there will need to be a reprogramming eventually,” Allen says. “Either that, or they can just give us back the money.”