Sierra Club District of Columbia Chapter
Budget Hearing on the Department of General Services
Committee on Facilities
Monday, April 27, 2026
Councilmember Lewis George, thank you for this opportunity to testify at this budget hearing on the Department of General Services, and thank you for your leadership. My name is David Whitehead, and I’m testifying on behalf of the Sierra Club District of Columbia Chapter. The Sierra Club is America’s largest and most influential grassroots environmental organization, with millions of members and supporters, including 7,000 DC residents. We are a proud member of the Fair Budget Coalition, which seeks a budget for care and sustainability that we believe requires equitable revenue raisers to adequately fund the safety net.
In this testimony, I will touch on the energy efficiency and use of fossil fuels in District-owned buildings, the procurement of solar energy sited on District-owned facilities and spaces, and DGS’s role in fully implementing the requirements of DC law and the Zero Waste DC Plan for DGS to provide composting collection services in all public schools. My colleagues will go into further depth on each issue.
Before we get into our environment and climate testimony, the DC Chapter joins the chorus of concern about DGS’ overspending. Just last week the DC Auditor released a report highlighting over $2 billion of transfers from the District’s Contingency Reserves - all inappropriate and many illegal. The report reveals a pattern of executive agencies “spending and obligating funds in excess of appropriations,” prompting the Mayor to request withdrawals from the District’s reserves. Said another way, multiple agencies routinely overspend the budgets set for them by the DC Council, and then withdraw from DC’s reserve without Council approval to cover their costs. Out of the $2 billion of withdrawals detailed in the auditor’s report, DGS was responsible for $263 million. This agency has a pattern of vastly overspending its legislated budget.
DGS does important work, but we have concerns about what appears to be a lack of spending controls and budget discipline. As we’ll get into later in our testimony, over the past two years the Mayor has shifted over $150 million of funds from clean energy programs directly into DGS, essentially to pay for the government’s own energy bills. These transfers are a blatant disregard for the intent of our clean energy policymaking. The money comes from the Sustainable Energy Trust Fund, which is funded by small fees paid on the utility bills of all DC residents, businesses, faith institutions, and even the federal government. To know that this money is being transferred away from its legislated purpose is bad enough, but considering it is being used to fill budget holes in an agency with a documented history of irresponsible spending adds insult to injury. We ask the Councilmember and members of this committee to enforce spending discipline on DGS, end the misuse of all of our collective fee money, and return these funds to the programs they were meant for.
ENERGY
Mayor continues to raid the Sustainable Energy Trust Fund to pay DC’s utility bills
Last year, the Council acquiesced to the Mayor’s proposal to transfer more than $70 million from the Sustainable Energy Trust Fund (SETF) to pay the District government’s utility bills. In the proposed FY27 budget, the Mayor increases the raid on the SETF by $10.5 million dollars (as authorized in the FY26 Budget Support Act). We urge the Facilities Committee to reject this transfer and restore this $10.5 million–and more if possible–to the SETF to resume funding programs that help DC residents who are struggling with high energy costs.
The Council created the SETF and funded it through a small charge on our gas and electricity bills to pay for sustainable energy programs run by the Department of Energy and the Environment. In response to the needs and requests of community members, the Council has added new programs, including the Healthy Homes Act, which provides free home electrification for low- and moderate income residents.
The SETF’s clean and affordable energy programs are largely implemented by the DC Sustainable Energy Utility, which is a contractor managed by DOEE. The proposal to sweep another $10.5 million from the SETF will significantly reduce funding for the DCSEU, likely causing staff layoffs. Even if funding for the DCSEU goes up again in future years, it will take time to rebuild the knowledge and expertise lost with those staff.
Furthermore, currently DC has access to $60 million in federal matching grants for our energy programs. Those funds will expire in February 2029, only one full fiscal year away. DC has woefully underspent these federal grants because of our chronic lack of local funding; to date, we have only spent $3 million of the available grants. Slashing DCSEU and yet again defunding these programs imperils our access to all of these federal grants. While District budgets are tight, leaving free money on the table is negligence. Your committee has the opportunity to undo this move by the Mayor, we ask you to lead here.
Deplorable delays on net-zero energy buildings
The Sierra Club opposes the proposal in the Budget Support Act to delay the net-zero energy standards for new construction or substantial renovation of buildings by a year, from the end of 2026 to the end of 2027. The executive claims more time is needed, after creating the problem by failing to take any action since the law went into effect in 2022. The Mayor agrees that this delay will not save the District a cent. The Council should insist that the Mayor issue the regulations on time, as the law requires.
We recognize that the proposed delay of the net-zero building code falls in the jurisdiction of the Transportation and the Environment Committee. We mention it here because the Mayor seems to be trying to informally delay compliance with the net-zero energy requirements for government buildings in the Greener Government Buildings Act.
Net-zero energy buildings have three main characteristics. First, they do not burn any fossil fuels on site; they are all-electric and do not contain methane gas equipment for space heating, water heating, or cooking. Second, they are highly energy efficient. Third, they maximize their use of electricity from renewable energy resources, including solar, ground-source geothermal, and wind power.
Of these three characteristics, the all-electric requirement is the most crucial. A new building with methane gas equipment will continue to burn polluting fossil fuels for decades to come. Construction and operation of all-electric government buildings saves taxpayer dollars now and in the future since electric heat pumps are so much more efficient than methane gas equipment. Please see our DGS oversight testimony from January 29 for more information on the benefits of the Greener Government Buildings Act.
The Facilities Committee has allowed some exemptions from the GGBA through emergency legislation. We recognize the need for flexibility in some cases, most notably for renovations of existing buildings for affordable housing. We urge the Facilities Committee to stand firm in requiring that new or substantially-renovated DC government buildings adhere to net-zero energy standards, especially the prohibition on combusting fossil fuels inside buildings.
Building Energy Performance Standards (BEPS)
Due to a lack of funding and support, DGS continues to lag in complying with the requirements of the Building Energy Performance Standards (BEPS) to make efficiency improvements to existing government buildings. With the current challenges to the DC budget, the most viable pathway for energy efficiency improvements in existing DC government buildings is through the use of Energy Savings Performance Contracts (ESPC), and we again commend DGS for pursuing this approach.
An ESPC is a partnership between an energy service company (ESCO) and a facility owner such as DGS. The ESCO designs and installs energy savings measures. Savings are monitored and verified, and the facility owner reimburses the ESCO over a certain number of years out of operating budgets. Please see our February DGS oversight testimony for more information on this topic.
We ask the Facilities Committee to provide some additional funding to DGS to implement building electrification measures along with the ESCO upgrades. Converting existing DGS buildings off fossil fuel combustion provides many benefits but does not generate energy efficiency savings in the near term. We realize that budgets are tight, but the up-front costs of measures such as adding geothermal heat pumps to a building’s system will pay off in substantial savings over the longer term.
Commendable progress on adding solar on DGS buildings
After about a decade without any large-scale solicitation of solar power purchase agreements (PPA), DGS had an excellent year in FY26 for deployment of solar. DGS signed a PPA for about nine megawatts (MW) of solar on government-owned buildings and announced it would procure another roughly nine to 10 MW of solar PPA before this fiscal year ends. We congratulate DGS on such an outstanding year and urge the agency to finalize the additional solar PPAs swiftly so that the PPA price can reflect the value of the soon-expiring federal tax credits. Once these contracts are completed, DGS would host around 34 MW of solar on its buildings. To put this into perspective, Sierra Club estimates that the long run potential to host solar on the roofs of government owned buildings and property is over 100 MW. Thus, DGS is already one-third of the way towards its maximum potential for solar, but there is a lot more work to be done over the next decade.
The Sierra Club recommends that the DGS become more transparent in the success it has already had in installing solar. DGS should report annually on all government-owned sites where solar is already installed, the capacity of each solar system, and its annual electricity production. Furthermore, the report should contain details about all feasible sites that are not yet used for solar, such as total potential solar capacity on the site, age of the roof, square footage of the roof or parking lot, and what is holding back solar PV installation on the site. Such a report would help the public appreciate the excellent work that DGS has already done for the deployment of solar, as well identify where future work could occur.
Reject cuts to DGS facility maintenance
We are opposed to cuts in the maintenance of government facilities. CFO Glen Lee’s budget transmittal letter to Chairman Mendelson includes several “items of note” on the operation budget. One of the notes states the following: “In FY 2027, Local Funds for Department of General Services (DGS) facility maintenance was reduced significantly compared to FY 2026. The result of this decrease in funding could result in reduced janitorial services, HVAC inspection, testing and maintenance.”
Councilmember Lewis George, you have probably heard hours of testimony in this committee over DGS’s failure to provide adequate maintenance of the more than 800 buildings that the agency is responsible for. This is a sustainable energy issue because less maintenance means lower energy efficiency and higher water use. Furthermore, modern highly efficient buildings require more sophisticated management, not reduced maintenance. Surely maintenance is not a place to cut funding, especially with significantly increased costs for gas, electricity, water, and steam projected for FY27 in the DGS budget–and proposed to be paid with funds that should be dedicated to energy sustainability.
ZERO WASTE
District Law and the Zero Waste DC Plan require compost collection in all public schools; composting is not an opt-in service
D.C. Code § 8-1031.03. Mandatory Source Separation, enacted through the Sustainable Solid Waste Management Amendment Act of 2014, requires universal composting once the Mayor establishes a compost collection program. DPW established the food waste collection program in 2024, according to the zerowaste.dc.gov website. The composting requirements for the District government are further spelled out in Section 8-1031.04a of the District Code. Again, Section 8-1031.04a calls for all agencies and facilities to compost once DPW establishes a compost collection program. In addition, DPW is required to collect data from all government entities on how each agency is satisfying these requirements. These DC Code requirements are reinforced by Actions 14, 26, and 37 of the Zero Waste DC Plan, as noted in the Sierra Club DC Chapter’s January 29, 2025 DGS performance oversight hearing testimony.
During the DGS performance oversight hearing for government witnesses DGS indicated that it only provides composting in the five or six public schools that have opted-in to receive this service. We appreciate that you, Committee Chair Lewis George, requested DGS to make efforts to further fund composting services in the Fiscal Year 2027 budget.
The Mayor’s Proposed Budget for Fiscal Year 2027, DGS Chapter (PDF p. 3), shows that budget line O01506-Waste Management has an allocation of $8,415,000 for Fiscal Year 2027, an increase of $5,586,000 from Fiscal Year 2026. This document further explains on PDF p. 5 that the Waste Management budget line covers a host of solid waste management services including the removal of organic and food waste along with sanitation education. While this budget increase looks promising, these funds may be allocated for other waste management services. We therefore made numerous attempts prior to this hearing to meet with DGS to understand whether this budget increase is designed to expand collection of compostable materials and related education in public schools. Unfortunately, DGS never scheduled the meeting.
We therefore request that this committee explore how much funding for composting services in public schools is included in the Mayor’s Proposed Budget for Fiscal Year 2027, to determine how many public schools will benefit from composting services in fiscal year 2027, whether schools will still be required to opt-in to receive composting services, and what education programs DGS will provide to guide both janitorial and cafeteria staff as well as students and teachers on how to properly source-separate their food waste. The District must do better than funding five public schools.
Also during the DGS performance oversight hearing for public witnesses, DGS seemed to indicate that teaching children how to properly source-separate compostable materials would be challenging, while at the same time expressing pride in its efforts to teach children how properly to recycle. What can and cannot be recycled in the District is complex. What can and cannot be composted is relatively simple. Indeed, not only are we confident that children can be taught how to source-separate compostable materials, we are confident that many children will, in turn, teach their parents about the benefits and logistics of composting.
There are numerous resources DGS can tap to learn how to effectively roll out compost collection in District public schools, all of which we had planned to share in our call with DGS, and instead provide here. We invite DGS to explore universal composting programs in other public school systems, such as those in Alameda, CA and Missoula, MT. DGS can also talk with commercial compost collection service providers in the District, such as Compost Cab and Compost Crew, both of whom provide compost collection for the Department of Public Works (DPW) curbside compost program which has educated District residents on proper source-separation. DGS should also consult with its sister agency, the Office of Waste Diversion in DPW which runs both the curbside collection program, farmers market collection programs and the growing network of smart compost bins located in all Wards. Again, all of these programs have successfully educated District residents on source-separation of food waste. We also suggest DGS consult with local organization Sistained8 which both provides compost education to residents in Ward 7 and has advised Baltimore public schools as well as the consultant to the Alameda public schools (also the lead consultant who developed the Zero Waste DC Plan) and the consultant to the Missoula public school system.
Making progress on providing compost services in public schools is clearly feasible. DGS provided composting in public schools 10 years ago, when composting was not nearly as familiar or widespread as it is now. DGS’s own website celebrates the 252 tons of organic waste that were diverted from incinerators or landfills in fiscal year 2015, and the 61 schools that participated in FY 2016-17.
We should not be moving backward: composting should be a permanent, routine part of operations in all buildings, not a program we have to constantly reestablish. The success of the curbside compost program and the farmers market and smart bin drop-offs demonstrates that DC residents are eager and able to participate in composting. DGS should step up to ensure that composting education begins in our schools. DGS should also abide by the DC Code, and contribute to the Zero Waste DC Plan’s goal to divert waste and cut greenhouse gas emissions. Food waste sent to landfills generates methane pollution, contributing to climate change, and food waste sent to incinerators generates particulate pollution, which is strongly linked to the development of asthma in children among other health impacts. We urge DGS to not let the call for composting in public schools go unheeded for yet another year.
Thank you, Councilmember Lewis George, for convening this hearing, and for the opportunity to testify.