Washington Mayor Deems Entire City Government ‘Essential’ to Avoid Shutdown

A shutdown of the federal government, which could come next week if Congress does not pass a stopgap budget measure, would also require the government of the District of Columbia to discontinue its nonessential spending and send some employees home.

But Mayor Vincent C. Gray on Wednesday declared all of the district’s government operations “essential,” and told the White House that all employees would continue to work even if Congress could not reach an agreement on the spending bill by Monday, the end of the fiscal year.

“It is ridiculous,” Mr. Gray said in a statement, that the district “cannot spend its residents’ own local tax dollars to provide them the services they’ve paid for without Congressional approval.”

District spending is budgeted by the mayor’s office and approved by the City Council. The budget must then be approved by Congress each year as part of federal appropriations bills. Like federal government agencies, when a shutdown looms, the district government must submit its contingency operation plans to the White House’s Office of Management and Budget.

In a letter to Sylvia Mathews Burwell, the director of the budget office, Mr. Gray said that he had determined that all operations of the district government were “essential to the protection of public safety, health and property.”

The announcement came two days after Mr. Gray said that 21,000 of the district’s 35,000 employees would be considered excepted, or deemed essential. Among that number were police officers, firefighters and emergency medical technicians, school employees and some other social services workers.

The idea to keep the entire district government open during a shutdown seemed to emerge on Tuesday morning during a breakfast meeting between Mr. Gray and the City Council.

But it is unclear whether residents could actually expect the continuation of trash collection or the operation of libraries and the Department of Motor Vehicles.

The district’s attorney general, Irvin B. Nathan, told the local radio station WAMU on Tuesday that such a plan to keep the city’s government open could violate the Antideficiency Act, which prohibits spending money that has not been appropriated by Congress.