WASHINGTON (Map, News) - President Bush rejected most of D.C.’s funding requests for the proposed fiscal 2009 budget, offering instead nearly the same amount as was provided in the previous federal budget.

Overall, the proposed federal payment to the District came up short of what the city requested of the Office of Management and Budget. The city’s $104.6 million bid for education was cut to $74 million. Its $12.7 million request for the libraries was pared to $7 million. The $31.1 million pitch for the forensics lab was cut to $5 million. And the $25.3 million request for security costs related to the federal presence, including the 2009 inauguration, garnered only $15 million.

But Mayor Adrian Fenty nevertheless heralded an extra $33 million to support educational initiatives, including $20 million to “jump-start public school reform.”

“I appreciate that the Bush administration has given this attention to my top policy priority in this year’s funding package,” Fenty said in a statement. “I am confident that it will significantly bolster our work to improve public education in the District of Columbia.”

The District’s $20 million education payment breaks down like this: $3.5 million to recruit and train principals; $7 million to develop new school programs; $7.5 million for a student performance accountability system; and $2 million to support data reporting tied to a teacher-incentive programs.

Bush provides another $54 million for school improvement — $18 million each for public education, charter schools and private school vouchers. Gregory Cork, president and chief executive officer of the Washington Scholarship Fund, said there’s “enormous demand” for the voucher program, which received about $12 million this year, but he couldn’t say how many more students would benefit from the extra dollars.

Recommended curtailments to Medicaid, housing and other social service programs will likely affect the District’s bottom line, though Democrats are already promising to trash most of those cuts.

The $3 trillion federal budget, the last of the president’s two terms, was designed to “create the conditions for economic growth, keep taxes low, and spend taxpayer dollars wisely or not at all,” Bush said in his budget message.

mneibauer@dcexaminer.com