The elaborate July 4 celebration on the National Mall cost Washington D.C. $1.7 million from the city's emergency security fund, and if it's not reimbursed, that will mean the city will have less to spend on support for upcoming events, Mayor Muriel Bowser warned Thursday.
"This emergency planning and security fund is a fund set aside in our local homeland security department to support federal events, the inauguration, for example," Bowser told CNN's "New Day." "Every four years there's a federal allotment made for inauguration expenses. Our local police department supports crowd control, First Amendment demonstrations, the movement of officials. And, it's a lot of man-hours used as well as equipment used to support these events."
The district is "happy" to host the federal government and its events, "but there's a cost, and that cost must be borne by the federal government."
She noted that traditionally, the "White House pays its bills," and President Donald Trump will be asked to do that as well.
There were issues getting reimbursement for the $7.3 million incurred for the inauguration, said Bowser, and D.C. is going to work with Congress and the White House to recoup those costs and to prepare for the next inauguration.
"Regardless of the administration, the D.C. government works with the White House to make sure that we have the expenses that we need," said Bowser. "In the last inauguration, we had extraordinary First Amendment demonstration activities, which accounts for more than what was allotted. So it's critical in the upcoming '21 budget, that the federal government accounts for these extraordinary costs."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
© 2026 Newsmax. All rights reserved.