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Committee hearing hears pleas to restore Attorney General grants and warns cuts would hollow legal staff
Summary
Public witnesses and Attorney General Brian Schwab told the Committee on Judiciary and Public Safety that proposed FY27 cuts to the Office of the Attorney General would eliminate dozens of paralegal and legal-assistant roles and zero out small outreach grants for domestic workers and workplace rights, weakening consumer and tenant services and enforcement capacity.
Council Member Brooke Pinto opened the Committee on Judiciary and Public Safety's April 22 budget hearing by flagging proposed reductions to the Office of the Attorney General (OAG), including an $11 million personnel cut and the elimination of grants for domestic workers and workplace-rights outreach.
Attorney General Brian Schwab told the committee the mayor's proposed FY27 budget would eliminate about 58 locally funded positions, most of them paralegals and legal assistants. "Eliminating paralegal and legal assistant positions wholesale would devastate OAG's work and do serious harm to the district's bottom line," Schwab said. He said the office is a net payer for the District, generating more in savings and enforcement recoveries than its local operating cost.
Community groups and residents gave the committee dozens of concrete examples of programs and cases they said would be weakened. Witnesses praised OAG's Consumer and Tenant Response unit for recovering consumers' money and helping tenants, and said the small outreach grants for domestic and workplace-rights education (about $1 million total across programs) reach thousands of residents.
Alana Eichner of the National Domestic Workers Alliance asked the council to restore funding for the Domestic Worker Employment Rights grant, saying the program has produced trainings, materials and legal supports that reached hundreds of workers. "We were really disturbed to learn just yesterday that the mayor's budget proposal is completely eliminating and zeroing out this program in FY27," Eichner said.
Council members pressed OAG on whether cuts could be made more surgically. Schwab told the committee his office submitted a flat, minimally adequate budget and that many of the mayor's reductions remove critical operational support rather than discretionary items. He urged the council to weigh short-term savings against the long-term costs of reduced enforcement and greater settlements or judgments against the District.
The committee kept the hearing record open for written testimony and asked agency staff for more granular cost and staffing breakdowns. Chair Pinto said the committee will continue working with OAG and the mayor's office to try to preserve programs that serve vulnerable residents.
