On July 8, 2026, Executive Director Yesim Sayin was quoted in Washington Business Journal:
Yesim Sayin, executive director of research and analysis with the D.C. Policy Center think tank, which grew out of the pro-business Federal City Council, said the business activity tax won’t support economic growth in the District at a time when it’s already struggling to attract and retain investment.
“We’re kind of like diving onto these ideas, hoping to think that these will solve our problems, but they won’t, because the underlying problem is that the demand for the city is really, really low, and our expenditures are growing much faster than our revenues, so we’re trying to tax parts of our economic base that’s already dwindling,” Sayin said.
“I think the bigger problem that the city has is, how do we balance our budgets in a way that our recurring expenditures are being paid by our recurring revenues?” she added. “We’re not there at all.”
Read more: D.C. Council orders study of new business tax as officials eye budget-gap fillers
Additional reading: A city that works