City to Lay Off Hundreds of Workers

The District government will lay off hundreds of employees over the next several months to balance its budget in the wake of sharply declining revenues, city officials said today.

Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D) is scheduled to release tomorrow his fiscal 2010 budget proposal, which will be lower than the previous year for the first time in more than a decade. The city is facing a revenue shortfall of about $800 million, and Fenty said today that the pain will be spread across city agencies and that a personnel reduction is likely.

"It is impossible to close a budget gap and manage it properly without finding savings in personnel," he said after delivering his State of the District address at a senior citizens' center in Northwest.

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