All posts by David Lublin

Montgomery County Council, Montgomery County Planning Board

Planning Board Resigns

The entire Montgomery County Planning Board has resigned at the Council’s urging. Daniel Wu and Katherine Shaver over at the Post have the story. They were going to face removal proceedings if they didn’t resign.

It’s a start but more work needs to be done.

High level staffers seem way too invested in the political outcomes and agendas rather than providing separate information and insight. Senior staff also need remedial training on how to deal with harassment claims, as they clearly don’t know or abide by accepted practices.

No outgoing councilmember should be appointed to any temporary or full-term on the Board. That it got to this point was a failure of oversight, a core function of the Council, and occurred despite the Board sending up numerous flares about its dysfunction. Too many cozy relationships are part of the problem.

Instead, the Council should appoint citizens who are not professional planners but represent the community and know something about the related issues. There is entire staff of planners, so let the Board exercise informed judgement separate from them.

No doubt there will be more recriminations but I’m more interested in seeing how the Council can continue to untangle this morass that goes well beyond the Board’s self-immolation.

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Casey Anderson, Montgomery County Council, Montgomery County Planning Board

Knives Out at Planning

It’s hard to keep up. Since I last wrote, a lot has happened.

Planning Board Chair Casey Anderson was removed from the Kojo in Our Community segment on WAMU on Thrive. (Disclosure: WAMU is owned by American University, my employer.)

Planning Board Vice Chair Partap Verma has gone on medical leave from the Planning Board.

Parks Department Deputy Director Miti Figueredo filed a complaint against Partap Verma. Fired Planning Director Gwen Wright says that the complaint is accurate. Though employed in the capacity of professional staff, both are staunch allies of Anderson. Figueredo, highly personable and well-regarded, previously worked as Anderson’s senior advisor. Extremely effective and well-connected, she also worked for two current members of the Montgomery County Council and the Chevy Chase Land Company.

Does anyone at Planning know anything about harassment law? Figueredo’s complaint against Verma could well be seen as illegal retaliation for his original complaint, especially since it was made public. Even if every word is true, and I don’t know the veracity of any of the complaints flying around, the information in Figueredo’s complaint related to the Verma’s complaint should have been given to appropriate person investigating these issues.

As with Wright’s comments before she was fired, there should be procedures in place–enforced by the Board and Staff leaders–to handle this correctly. Figueredo complained about the firing of Wright as retaliation for speaking out in defense of Anderson but nobody should be commenting publicly, let alone dismissing, harassment complaints whatever one thinks of Verma’s complaint or Wright’s dismissal.

Both Verma’s and Figueredo’s complaints appear like timely power plays. Verma had hoped to have Anderson’s support to become Chair. But Anderson hurt Verma’s reputation with his office booze offs and is rumored to support Councilmember Hans Riemer, another ally who has run up against term limits and came in third in the exec primary.

Now, Anderson’s supporters—Wright and Figueredo—are striking back even though both are supposed to be professional staff and not involved in Planning Board disputes. (One also wonders which staffers, if any, drank with Anderson in his office.)

The County Council seems to be unable to get a grip on this. While expressing grave concern about Wright’s dismissal, Council President Gabe Albornoz has not expressed concern, at least to my knowledge, about the massively inappropriate handling of these issues by virtually everyone concerned.

The debate among Planning Board members isn’t about Thrive 2050, as they all support it. But it does reflect on the process. These scandals indicate both political and staff leadership being willing to take extreme measures to achieve their goals.

Albornoz’s statement regarding the great community consultation during the creation of Thrive is naïve and uninformed at best. Most of the consultation consisted of Planning staff telling people positive spin about it rather than seeking input. Only input from firm supporters has been truly considered by either the Planning Board or the Council. Anderson’s approach is a big part of the problems at Planning.

Much about Thrive 2050 makes sense. We should have more density in urban nodes, which has been a consistent part of Master Plan revisions. But this document is visionary only in the sense that it looks backward. It takes no account of the massive rise in telecommuting and its impact on either transportation or housing patterns. Fewer people are riding public transit or riding in cars because of systemic changes. People working form home are likely to want more interior space and privacy as well as easy access to a little green. Thrive 2050 would have been a great plan to adopt in 1990.

Thrive 2050 represented an opportunity to bring the community together around a land use vision for the future. This was far from impossible. It occurred around the Bethesda Master Plan, which pleased many of the constituencies at odds here. But both the Planning Board and the County Council have failed in this endeavor and assured intense acrimony into the future. The current pile up of scandals shows why.

Rather than saving the next Council from these issues, the current one is simply storing up trouble. Adam and I disagree about lots of issues around Thrive but we agree that the Council needs to fix this.

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Montgomery County Planning Board

Scandal, Drama Enveloping the Planning Board

On October 6, WJLA reported that Planning Board Vice Chair Partap Verma sent an email accusing Planning Board Chair Casey Anderson of creating a “toxic misogynistic and hostile workplace.” The Montgomery County Council appoints and oversees the Planning Board, which is part of M-NCPPC and an independent agency.

Lots of questions remain to be answered beyond the veracity of the allegations directed at Anderson. For starters, when did Verma learn about these problems. Is Verma a required reporter who must report allegations like these immediately and cannot keep them confidential? Did he report them to Human Resources or other appropriate personnel in a timely manner?

Commissioner Partap Verma sent his letter only to Carol Rubin and Marlene Michaelson, so who leaked the allegations to the press? These matters should be kept confidential to protect everyone involved, including Casey Anderson.

Planning Director Gwen Wright issued a statement defending Anderson: “There may be people who have concerns with Casey, but they are not my employees.” Except that there is no way for her to know the experience of every staff person at Planning. Wright’s definitive statement could discourage other employees who might want to come forward with similar experiences.

It’s a sign of how gone wrong matters are at the Planning Board that Wright also thinks it’s appropriate for staff to lobby the Council in support of Thrive, rather than providing information when requested. It gives credence to views that staff joined Anderson in skewing this process to a pre-determined outcome. In any case, Thrive is now supposed to be with Council staff.

In a shocker, the Planning Board voted 4-0 to dismiss Wright on October 7. Casey Anderson recused himself from the vote. Wright is an at will employee, so the Board did not have to give a reason for her dismissal. It’s also a personnel matter, so they may be constrained in discussing it. But it’s still stunning to see a longtime, highly experienced senior staff person fired just a few months before her retirement.

The commissioners voting to remove Wright included Carol Rubin, who worked 16 years at M-NCPPC as an attorney and special projects manager, prior to her appointment to the Board and thus knew Wright from both the perspective of a staff member and planning commissioner. Like Verma, Rubin was caught in the undertow of Anderson’s office bar scandal. The County Council reprimanded and docked one day’s pay from both Rubin and Verma.

On Facebook, Wright said that she suspects that she was “fired because I showed support for Casey and attempted to protect my staff from being dragged into the Board’s conflicts.” But the Planning Director should not be taking sides in Board decisions or intervening in investigation of these and other serious allegations beyond relaying what she knows to the appropriate people and ensuring that proper processes are followed.

Meanwhile, at least some defenders of Anderson are already parading “locker room talk” excuses for his alleged inappropriate statements. Here are several tweets from former Council Candidate John Zittrauer:

And now the County Council has scheduled a meeting for later today to discuss a personnel matter:

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Montgomery County Planning Board

Less Oversight Proposed for M-NCPPC and WSSC

Even as problem after problem continues to envelop the M-NCPPC and the Montgomery County Planning Board, three county councilmembers have put forward a bill that would reduce oversight of M-NCPPC (Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission) and WSSC (Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission ).

Councilmembers Nancy Navarro, Andrew Friedson and Sidney Katz have proposed legislation (also embedded below) that would remove both agencies from oversight by the county Inspector General. The stated grounds for this change is that each agency now has its own Inspector General under state law.

Normally, I’d support ending duplication of this sort. But the ongoing mess at M-NCPPC mitigates against reducing oversight. Over the past year, the following has occurred:

All of these failures lead me to wonder that anyone is doing oversight, not that there is too much of it. Until the situation is brought under control, this portion of the bill needs to be binned.

UPDATE: Sonya Healy, the Legislative Information Officer for the County Council, writes that the county Inspector General already lacks authority over M-NCPPC and WSSC in the wake of the county’s successful advocacy for “dedicated oversight” at the state level. Whether this was a good idea remains an open question given the serious problems and seeming lack of oversight that continue to plague the Planning Board.

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Casey Anderson, Montgomery County Planning Board

Verma Accuses Anderson

The rumored internal turmoil at the Montgomery County Planning Board has burst into the open. Last night, WJLA reported that a confidential informant—revealed to be Planning Board Vice Chair Partap Verma—sent an email accusing Chair Casey Anderson of creating a “toxic misogynistic and hostile workplace.”

You can read the details of the accusations on WJLA’s website but we’ll keep them out of this family publication. The email doesn’t portray Anderson as someone open to hearing, let alone incorporating, ideas at odds with his own. Planning Director Gwen Wright defended Anderson.

Anderson and Verma had previously been very tight. Verma has been a staunch supporter of Anderson and clearly hoped to succeed him as Chair. But that alliance had fallen apart by September 22nd, when Verma purged Anderson from a Facebook photo of him and the governor:

Originally posted on August 18th
By September 22nd

All of this drama could have been avoided if either the other members of the Planning Board or the County Council had exercised proper oversight and taken action much earlier on the other numerous issues over at M-NCPPC.

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Hans Riemer, Thrive 2050

He Blinded Hans with Science

Tuesday’s Thrive Worksession

Councilmember Hans Riemer became strangely animated at Tuesday’s Thrive 2050 worksession over urban heat islands. Or rather that they shouldn’t be called “urban” heat islands as the above clip reveals. Once again, Riemer showed his ideological fervor while simultaneously making clear he doesn’t know his brief.

Riemer referred to Tom DiLiberto, the claimed source for his ideas, as the head of climate.gov. Except he’s not.

Then Riemer went on at great length about how heat islands aren’t really “urban” heat islands because tall buildings provide a lot of shade and shield people from the sun. If there is more heat, it shows we need taller buildings.

That’d be news to NY1, which reported earlier this year that New York—the city with by far the greatest concentration of tall buildings in the country—is the country’s third hottest urban heat island with temperatures 8 degrees above the surrounding area.

Riemer lays much of the blame on roads, which along with buildings trap and then radiate heat. But it’s hard to have a city without roads even in a place with as much public transit as NYC. Riemer likes and doesn’t mention sidewalks and bike lanes but they trap and radiate heat too.

After sharing his empirically false views, Riemer then asked to remove “urban” from urban heat islands. This nomenclature fetish is mainly about protecting urbanism, Riemer’s ideological church, from the slightest negative taint. This is the sort of zealotry that can’t acknowledge issues are complicated. That, for example, NYC is hotter and more polluted than most places yet also has far less environmental impact. Instead, density solves all problems.

This waste of time and the rest of the Council’s bored acquiescence with this balderdash perhaps wouldn’t be so bad if the Council were meaningfully engaged with either the issues or the community. After poring over the privileged submissions of two lobbyists, far less attention is being given to the 1500 pages of input from community members with less access.

One issue, for example, that merits more scrutiny is telecommuting. This supposedly forward thinking visionary plan the next 30 years gives no thought to how already skyrocketing telecommuting rates will reshape living, working or transportation patterns. Presumably, it will also influence where people want to live and in what housing types.

The Council instead chooses to focus its limited attention on Riemer’s dotty notion to rename urban heat islands. Meanwhile, Planning Board Chair Casey Anderson and pals continue to hold court and dictate the plan despite the ever growing laundry list of troublesome behavior by this highly paid public official: flouting rules for community consultation, routine violations of the Open Meetings Act, failure to register lobbyists, and an open office bar.

Urban heat islands. It’s exam time for the Council. Time to engage more deeply with the community and the issues. But it feels like they’d rather punt than study. If Thrive is to have any scrap of legitimacy, this needs to change.

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Casey Anderson, Montgomery County Planning Board

No Need for Casey Anderson to Drown His Sorrows

In a blow to Montgomery County’s increasingly debatable reputation for clean government, the County Council gave Planning Board Chair Casey Anderson a slap on the wrist earlier today for his open bar in his M-NCPPC office. Planning Board Vice Chair Partap Verma and Commissioner Carol Rubin were also reprimanded. Apparently, Anderson didn’t feel badly about it as he was all smiles and business as usual around the Council building yesterday. How this compares to punishments for others one can only wonder. The Council statement is below.

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Montgomery County Council, Thrive 2050

Yet More Evidence of a Closed Process and that the Fix was In

It’s even worse than I thought.

When the new Thrive chapters were completed, there was no Council press release, no official email notification, and no notice on Council social media. It’s as if they didn’t want anyone to know about it.

Residents had to directly enquire to learn that the chapters were posted to a website. I know of one resident who found out about the chapters this way on September 16. On September 20, the Council staff packet containing the new chapters for the September 22 work session was posted. This was the first opportunity many had to see the new chapters–two days before the meeting.

Yet the Coalition for Smarter Growth letter sent in by Jane Lyons is dated September 16 and the Greater Greater Washington letter sent in by Dan Reed is dated September 19. These two lobbyists are closely allied with Thrive supporters on the both the Planning Board and the Council with both having privileged access throughout the Thrive’s heavily skewed process.

Council staff were not as forthcoming with other residents. When a resident asked Pam Dunn, a Council staffer reviewing the new chapters, when citizens could see them, they were told: “There wont [sic] be a new final draft prior to the first worksession. The new chapters will be included in each staff report for the worksession that will review it (posting 5 days prior to the Council session).” No mention was made of posting them prior to the work session, consistent with radio silence when they were posted—except to CSG and GGW. The packet only appeared two days before the work session.

When the same person asked if there would be a public hearing, Dunn told her: “There will not be another public hearing.” No mention was made that the resident could nevertheless send in comments despite the lack of a formal hearing.

The Department of Environmental Protection letter on the environment chapter was submitted only September 22—the day of the work session and was not even included in the staff packet or addendum—so residents had no advance chance to see it.

It’s clear that the Council had no interest in anyone weighing in on Thrive who was not fully on board with its pre-determined agenda. This included ignoring numerous comments that were submitted previously but never addressed or discussed by the Council. It also included ignoring even recent comments made to the Council, such as the letter sent by 32 Montgomery-based communities and organizations (also embedded below).

This process makes a complete mockery of the ideas of transparency and inclusion that should be at the heart of any public process, let alone one where racial equity and social justice have been placed at the forefront. Expecting clairvoyance about the availability of materials unless you’re an insider and ignoring submissions from all except for two lobbyists is the opposite of an open and equitable process.
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Thrive 2050

The Fix is In, Part II

Montgomery County Council staff are now claiming that no comments about Thrive’s three new chapters (Environmental Health and Resilience, Economic Competitiveness, and Racial Equity and Social Justice) were received from anyone  besides Jane Lyons, a paid employee of the Coalition for Smarter Growth, and Dan Reed, a paid employee of Greater Greater Washington, and the County’s Department of Environmental Protection.

During the Council session on September 22, Council staff stated: “So we only received direct comments on the chapters from Coalition for Smarter Growth, from Greater Greater Washington, and from DEP.”

This is misleading in two senses. First, other organizations, including environmental and civic groups, have recently commented extensively on these issues even if they did not comment on the specific language in these new chapters. Put more bluntly, the staff omitted key information regarding recent comments.

Second, the very first draft of Thrive, proposed by Planning Staff (called the Working Draft Plan) had chapters similar to these three, which received multiple comments. Many comments made on this and subsequent versions of Thrive still apply to the version which the Council is now considering. Must residents resubmit the same comments repeatedly to have them heard?

Moreover, if the Council received no additional comments on these specific and very important chapters, councilmembers should question whether true consultation has actually occurred with either the hired experts or the residents–also known as their constituents. Clearly, either the chapters were not distributed and publicized widely or insufficient time was given to comment. It’s inconceivable in our vocal county that only two paid lobbyists have thoughts on a chapters of a plan supposed to shape Montgomery County for 30 years.

The new racial equity and social justice analysis suggests directly that more engagement is needed. In the Thrive work session this past Tuesday, councilmembers cut the session from two hours to about 70 minutes, and took an inordinate amount of time to congratulate themselves on their awareness of racial equity and social justice.

As a result, they limited the discussion time for the consultant, who had been paid nearly $100,000 for the analysis, and simply dispensed with several of his recommendations for more comprehensive engagement and improvements to Thrive.

In other words, this consultation is largely performative. It’s designed to tick off boxes rather than gain meaningful input. In this most recent work session, the Council spent much time  incorporating comments from two regional organizations that want to make the document more radical, and none from critics in the Montgomery community.

Truth be told, councilmembers don’t seem very engaged with the complex issues and just want to ram through Thrive Montgomery 2050.

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