The List

OUT

Short hair
Corona
iPic
Spring weddings
Socializing
Giving up social media
President
Donald Trump
The Buck Stops Here
Viral marketing
90-day session
Eating out
Montgomery Mall
Early voting
Trump
Revolution
Public transit
Charmin Ultra
Please Like Me
Handing in papers
Jared Kushner
Tom Steyer
Family time
Premieres
Tax cuts
Covids 1 through 18
Hooking up
Shaking hands
Airline travel
CEOs
Stockbrokers
Washington Sports
Emissions tests
Apple Stores
Beltway traffic
Casual Friday
Café Deluxe
Barnes & Noble
Tulsi Gabbard
MGM National Harbor
Employees washing hands
Rainy day funds
Glad you got a raise
Watching sports
Buying homes
Sneaking In
Bill de Blasio
TicketMaster
Trump Bashing Mexico
Door Handles
Burr & Loeffler
Kale
Open Table
Vacation
Superman
Greeting Cards
Purell
Peapod
Social Safeway
Friendship Heights Giant
ESPN
Panic Buying
Block Parties

IN

Long hair
Denizens Delivery
Netflix
December birthdays
Social media
Tweeting too much
Governors
Larry Hogan
I’m Not Responsible at All
Going digital
Sine die
Take out
Amazon
Absentee voting
Biden
Results
Private transit
Martha Stewart’s DIY TP
Everything’s Gonna Be OK
Online submission
Anthony Fauci
Andrew Yang
Go play with the iPad
Straight to video
Sending checks
Covid-19
Sexting
Waving goodbye
Armchair travel
Garbage collectors
Nurses and Doctors
Peleton
COVID-19 tests
Apple Pay
Telecommuting
Working in Pajamas
Q by Peter Chang
Politics & Prose
Katie Porter
Binge Online Shopping
Everyone washing hands
Rain
Glad you have a job
Xbox
Refinancing
Sneaking Out
Andrew Cuomo
Matt & Noah Colvin
Trump Bashing China
Automatic Doors
Schiff & AOC
Canned Peas
Door Dash
Staycation
UPS Driver
E-Cards
New York State Clean
Giant Delivers
Social Distancing Safeway
Pescadeli & Butchers Alley
C-SPAN
Cherry Blossoms
Gardening

Share

County Screw-Up Led to Tax Hike Proposal

By Adam Pagnucco.

Buried in the fine print of County Executive Marc Elrich’s recommended FY21 operating budget is a shocking revelation: the executive claims that a mistake made by county revenue estimators two years ago has caused tens of millions of dollars in losses for the county.  One reason why the Elrich administration is proposing a tax hike now is to recover that money.

To understand what happened, we have to understand how the county’s charter limit on property taxes functions.  Here is the exact text of the charter limit.

Unless approved by an affirmative vote of all current Councilmembers, the Council shall not levy an ad valorem tax on real property to finance the budgets that will produce total revenue that exceeds the total revenue produced by the tax on real property in the preceding fiscal year plus a percentage of the previous year’s real property tax revenues that equals any increase in the Consumer Price Index as computed under this section. This limit does not apply to revenue from: (1) newly constructed property, (2) newly rezoned property, (3) property that, because of a change in state law, is assessed differently than it was assessed in the previous tax year, (4) property that has undergone a change in use, and (5) any development district tax used to fund capital improvement projects.

In plain English, what this means is that the county’s real property tax receipts (with a few exceptions) may not rise at an annual rate exceeding inflation unless the entire council votes to exceed it.

Calculating the charter limit involves three basic steps.  First, one must estimate the value of the assessable base subject to the charter limit.  Second, one must calculate the value of the many property tax credits offered by the county.  Third, one must calculate the levels of real property tax rates that, when applied to the assessable base and taking account of the credits, produce an increase in receipts equal to the rate of inflation.

Hence, estimating the size of the assessable base is critical.  If it is underestimated, property tax rates will be set too high and the charter limit will be violated.  If it is overestimated, property tax rates will be set too low and the county will not collect as much revenue as it could at the charter limit.  These are extremely technical considerations but this affects tens of millions of dollars (at least) for the county budget.

In his recommended budget, the county executive makes this statement:

I am proposing this supplemental tax rate this year to partially offset an unexpected underperformance of the property tax for the last two years. In preparing the FY19 County budget, the taxable property base of the County was overvalued. As a result, the property tax rate needed to generate revenues at the Charter limit for the past two years was set too low. This resulted in lost revenues of $80 million, now permanently embedded in our revenue projections.

The amount of revenue lost by this mistake was $35 million in FY19 and $45 million in FY20.  Because of compounding, the lost revenue will rise each year unless it is recovered.

It’s important to note that Elrich was not yet the county executive when the FY19 charter limit was estimated.  That was done by the finance department in former County Executive Ike Leggett’s last year.

Must the losses be stanched?  The county usually allows property tax receipts to rise up to the charter limit each year, but there is nothing in county law requiring that.  For example, in FY13, Leggett recommended level-funding of property tax receipts, which actually kept them below the charter limit.  The amount of forgone revenue was estimated at $26 million that year, which would have risen in subsequent years.  However, this was not the result of an estimation mistake.  The county had doubled the energy tax two years before and had not sunset it as was promised.  Forgoing a bit of property taxes was something of a consolation.

This issue must be frustrating for all concerned.  County leaders have a choice.  They can live with the mistake and move on.  Or they can tell voters, “We screwed up and now we need to raise your taxes.”

If option number two is selected, how do you think folks will respond to that?

Dear reader, if you are someone who is considering running for office someday, remember this story.  Something terrible could happen to you when you run.

You could win!

Share

Board President & School Superintendent Support Elrich Budget

Montgomery County Board of Education President Shebra Evans and Montgomery County Public Schools Superintendent Jack Smith released the following statement in response to County Executive Marc Elrich’s recommended Fiscal Year 2021 Operating Budget:

“We are in unique times facing an unprecedented challenge. We greatly appreciate County Executive Marc Elrich’s understanding of the need to face the challenges of today while planning for the future for our children and community. His recommend budget nearly equals the Board of Education’s requested budget and is more than $35 million over Maintenance of Effort. This investment is especially significant given the financial uncertainty our county and country face as we combat the COVID-19 pandemic. It is important to remember that investments in our students now will ensure a strong future economy for our county that will thrive in good times and can weather crises. The County Council has had enduring support for public education in our county. We look forward to working with the councilmembers in the coming weeks to discuss how our operating budget will continue to meet the unique needs of each of our 166,000-plus students.”

In February, The Board of Education voted unanimously to adopt a $2.805 billion budget for Fiscal Year (FY) 2021. This includes an increase of $124.1 million from FY 2020. The budget will allow Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) to manage significant enrollment growth and focus on strategic investments to address disparities in student achievement.

The budget includes funding to expand and implement strategic key bodies of work. This includes:

  • Additional English for Speakers of Other Languages teachers and counselors;
  • The expansion of prekindergarten seats;
  • Increasing exposure to language opportunities;
  • Creation of three new regional International Baccalaureate centers to provide more access to rigorous coursework;
  • Addition of mental health support staff to support student mental health and well-being;
  • Opening of upcounty career readiness hub at the new Seneca Valley High School;
  • Providing additional support for language and science, technology, engineering and mathematics programming;
  • Equity and innovation initiatives; and
  • An expansion and enhancement of teacher recruitment and retention efforts to ensure all classrooms have highly qualified teachers from a diversity of backgrounds.
  • Additional positions based on student enrollment adjustments;
  • Accelerators for Learning, Accountability and Results and Operational Excellence strategies;
  • Blueprint for Maryland’s Future legislation-directed grants; and
  • Additional identified savings.

The Montgomery County Council will hold public hearings on the county budget in April before passing a final budget on May 21, 2020. After the County Council’s action, the Board of Education will vote on June 11, 2020, for final adoption of the FY 2021 operating budget.

Share

Marc Elrich’s Budget Message

The following is the overview from the $5.9 billion budget proposed by Montgomery County Executive Marc Elrich. You can find the full budget proposal below:

This budget is focused on providing our youngest residents with a great start to life. To that end, I have proposed funding of $2.8 billion for the Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS). I am also proposing $10.4 million for our Early Care and Education Initiative so that we can continue to expand and improve early education services.

This budget contains a modest 0.8 percent increase in tax-supported spending for County Government, which is directed primarily at increasing affordable housing and addressing structural gaps in our fire service and transit budgets. This budget provides our residents with a great amount of detail about my entire $5.9 billion recommended budget.

This budget also ensures that we attain our fiscal policy goal of holding 10 percent of our adjusted gross revenues in reserve in FY20, and we maintain that level in FY21. This is of particular importance now as we face uncertain times.

As I finalize the details of my recommended budget, I am keenly aware of the public health emergency facing our community and the nation. I am proposing this budget with a focus on both the next few days and weeks, as well as the next year and beyond. As we respond to this global health emergency, the economic situation of our residents and our nation are changing rapidly. While this budget reflects my view of County Government on March 16, we all need to be flexible to respond to changing conditions and needs. These conditions may result in me submitting revisions, supplementals and amendments to alter this proposal as conditions warrant.

As we address the immediate needs of our residents and plan for the future, one thing has become abundantly clear to me – our County Government’s revenue structure has reached the breaking point and must be fundamentally altered.

Our County Charter includes a provision that limits the growth in property tax revenue – not property tax rates – to the growth in the Consumer Price Index (CPI) for all consumers in the Baltimore-Washington Region from the December 1 to November 30 of the preceding year. Since the Federal Government no longer publishes this index, we have been using the CPI for just the Washington Region. For the period of December 1, 2018, to November 30, 2019, the CPI for the Washington region was only 1.27 percent. No matter how much assessments increase, the total amount of property tax revenues cannot grow by more than 1.27 percent.

It is important to note that this revenue limit does not mean the average property tax bill will only increase by 1.27 percent. Quite the opposite. Most individual bills will increase (or decrease) by the change in one’s taxable assessment. Since County law limits growth in assessments to 10 percent in any given year, a property with such an increase in value will see its tax bill go up by roughly 10 percent. The Charter revenue limit only redistributes the tax burden from properties with little to no increased value to those properties with the greatest increase in value. This has meant that some residents in modestly priced homes have faced 10 percent increases while some high-value properties actually saw their tax bill cut.

When the County Council proposed to the voters our current Charter limit on property taxes in 1990, few people could have foreseen the dramatic changes that would take place in Montgomery County and around the globe. In the past 30 years, our school population has grown by 65 percent and our overall population has grown by 40 percent. The services we provide are now more complex and seek to address a range of challenges, from traffic congestion and climate change to health care disparities and linguistic diversity. And over the past four decades, our property tax rate has declined by 35 percent.

We have all witnessed other local governments regionally and nationally experience generational decline due to conflicting, irreconcilable fiscal policies. Montgomery County is at the precipice of such a decline if we cannot get ourselves out of this cycle of self-enforced structural deficits and inequitable, unpredictable revenue caps. Therefore, I will be sending the Council a proposal for a Charter amendment that will revise our revenue cap to provide certainty to homeowners. This proposal will eliminate our old, cumbersome revenue cap and replace it with a three percent cap on the increase in any homeowner’s taxable assessment. This will give our taxpayers real protection from unexpected increases in property values. It will also provide the County Government with a higher degree of predictable tax revenues like every other jurisdiction in our region.

Without such a change in the Charter, our community could be facing a situation in FY21 where a recession and deflation cripple our ability to provide emergency services and a quality public education system. This perfect storm would threaten lives and diminish the value of properties in our County. I will not stand by and let our community be harmed by the ghosts of voters from four decades ago.

In order to meet the challenge of our rapidly growing school system over the next year, this budget proposal also calls for the creation of a 3.1 cent supplemental property tax rate. State law provides each county with the authority to establish a supplemental property tax rate exclusively for its public schools. While this will be the first use of this State authority in our county, three other counties have already established a similar supplemental tax for their public schools. Even with this additional funding, we will still be providing the school system with less support per pupil than in 2010. A decade of slow growth nationally, unpredictable tax policy changes at the Federal level, and our severe Charter limit has left our schools playing catch-up on funding while absorbing an enrollment growth of more than 25,000 new students.

I am proposing this supplemental tax rate this year to partially offset an unexpected underperformance of the property tax for the last two years. In preparing the FY19 County budget, the taxable property base of the County was overvalued. As a result, the property tax rate needed to generate revenues at the Charter limit for the past two years was set too low. This resulted in lost revenues of $80 million, now permanently embedded in our revenue projections. Fortunately, the income tax has overperformed estimates during FY20 to offset this loss. However, even before the current COVID-19 crisis developed, we were forecasting income tax revenues to drop to a lower level. With this supplemental tax rate, we will be back to the rate set for FY17. We will remain significantly lower than other Maryland counties and in line with the residential rates in Northern Virginia. It is also important to note that the Northern Virginia counties charge higher rates for commercial properties with even higher rates for commercial properties in business districts like Tysons and Crystal City.

Share

Elrich Then and Elrich Now

By Adam Pagnucco.

The big news coming out of County Executive Marc Elrich’s recommended Fiscal Year 2021 budget is that he is proposing a tax hike.  As you might imagine, I will have something to say about the specifics of that tax proposal in future days.  But first, it’s worth remembering what Elrich said about taxes when he was running for executive two years ago.  Over and over, he made statements ranging from saying that he did not want to raise taxes all the way to flatly refusing to raise them.  Consider the following:

1.  In July 2018, Elrich told WAMU that he “doesn’t want to raise taxes, but would like to see developers pay a greater share of infrastructure costs in the county.”

2.  In a candidate forum in October 2018, Elrich said, “I’m not raising taxes and I’m not raising fees.”  Check out Elrich’s remarks at 1:25 of this video.

3.  In May 2018, Bethesda Beat reporter Lou Peck asked Elrich this question:

As county executive, could you foresee yourself proposing a property tax increase above the charter limit of the rate of inflation, requiring another unanimous council vote?

Elrich replied:

I would seriously hope not. I feel that before you go talk about a tax increase, I would have to demonstrate to people that I’ve done everything I can do to lean out the county, to make sure we’re as efficient as possible, that I’ve taken people and been able to repurpose them, rather than just going to taxes first. I think the days of going to taxes first are over.

4.  In November 2018, Elrich said the following to Source of the Spring:

“A lot of people ask me about taxes,” Elrich said. “One of the issues in the campaign, people said, ‘Oh, Marc is going to bring in all these massive numbers of social programs and raise taxes on everybody.’ And actually that’s not what we’re doing. We know that the budget is going to be constrained.

“We’re pretty committed to staying inside the box and trying to run the government more efficiently,” he continued. “I’ve been telling people I’ve got $5.5 billion or more in revenue, and if I’m going to look for doing new things and being creative, I’m going to look at the revenue I have [and] figure out how to use it better. I think we can do a better job.”

5.  Immediately after he was elected, WAMU asked Elrich about taxes.

Despite being Maryland’s largest county with more than a million people, Montgomery County tax revenues aren’t growing fast enough to keep up with rising costs, Elrich said.

But, he said, a tax increase is out of the question.

“If you don’t handle the money you have better, you’re gonna have a hard time doing what you’re doing today, let alone doing things that you need to [in the future],” Elrich said. “But I think it’s actually a good thing to have this decision that there’s not going to be additional taxes because it means you actually have to think about what you’re doing.”

As a candidate, Elrich proposed an alternative to tax hikes: restructuring the government to increase efficiency and save money.  In a November 2018 op-ed in the Washington Post, Elrich wrote:

Far from saddling taxpayers with higher bills, I will streamline county government. Unions and their members, our county’s workforce, know and trust me. That is why we announced our plan to restructure county government together. Our county is facing difficult financial times; without thoughtful changes, employees will face across-the-board cuts.

Elrich elaborated on his restructuring plans in his 2018 questionnaire response to the Greater Silver Spring Chamber of Commerce.

I have explained how I would begin to rethink government in my First 90 Days Financial To-Do List, which you can find on my website. In this list, I lay out how I would initiate a long-term financial plan, increase the net profit contribution from the Department of Liquor Control, begin a structural review of county departments in partnership with the county workforce, implement a labor-management partnership called gainsharing (in which both parties agree on targets for improving performance and reducing cost and everyone receives a share of the savings generated), leverage a business process improvement system called Lean, assess the appropriateness of county reserve levels, improve data practices, review non-competitive county contracts, establish an innovation fund, increase government accountability, and develop budgets that prioritize spending and ensure that the county meets financial commitments in a sustainable way.

After Elrich’s election, the Sentinel interviewed him and reported, “Elrich said he plans to restructure the County government to make it run more efficiently, saying that doing so will help pay for the new programs he proposes without needing to raise taxes.”

So according to candidate Elrich, there would be no need for tax hikes because he would work with the unions to restructure government and save money.  What is his actual governing record through his first two budgets?

1.  Elrich’s recommended FY20 operating budget contained an increase of 82 full-time equivalent (FTE) positions in county government.  This does not include position increases in other agencies like MCPS, the college or park and planning.  The personnel cost increase recommended for county government was $37 million.  For the three county government unions, Elrich negotiated contracts containing raises of up to 9.4% for some employees.

2.  Elrich’s recommended FY21 operating budget contains an increase of 189 FTEs in county government with a personnel cost increase of $21 million.  Again, this omits increases in MCPS, the college and park and planning.  Elrich’s negotiated contracts with the three county government unions contain raises of up to 8% for some employees plus lump sum bonuses of $1,000 and longevity increases for some employee categories.

3.  The county council trimmed Elrich’s contract with MCGEO last year but his contracts and increases for managers and non-union employees this year will cost a combined $27.4 million in FY21 and $37.7 million each year thereafter.

And so, if there has been any restructuring at all, it has not saved any money or created any obvious new efficiencies.  Instead of streamlining government – as he said he would do – Elrich just wants a tax hike.

Would anyone like to rerun the 2018 county executive election right about now?

Share

Is This the Worst Communications Debacle in County History?

By Adam Pagnucco.

As MoCo residents are just now starting to find out, County Executive Marc Elrich has recommended a property tax hike as part of his Fiscal Year 2021 budget.  And how did they find this out?  The first mention of it came from a county council statement released at 1:05 PM today opposing the tax hike.  As of this writing, the public knows little about the budget other than the fact that it contains a tax increase.

With the coronavirus spreading and the local economy on its knees, how do you think folks are going to feel about that?

Let’s set aside for the moment any analysis of the merits of the tax hike.  (That will come.)  Instead, let’s consider how a competent administration would try to roll this out.  In the past, administrations held press events with the council on the mornings of their recommended budget releases.  Right after those events, press releases went out containing loooooooong lists of all the goodies in the budgets.  More money for schools?  Check.  More social workers?  Check.  Increased numbers of police officers?  Check.  Big Macs for every girl and boy (or quinoa for the healthy eaters)?  Check.  Doug Duncan, Ike Leggett – it didn’t matter who it was, they all put on a Santa cap and handed out cookies from the chimney, at least when there wasn’t a recession.

But this budget contains a tax hike.  No problem, plenty of budgets in the past contained tax hikes.  You sell those tax hikes based on what they buy and other factors making them necessary.  Leggett, for example, sold his FY11 doubling of the energy tax hike as being the only way that he could preserve the bond rating.  In FY17, the county council sold its 8.7% property tax increase as an “Education First” budget.  It didn’t matter so much whether they were right.  The point is that they had an argument to make.

And now to today.  The administration was always going to face hurdles in selling a tax hike.  After all, the council just two weeks ago said that they didn’t want more taxing authority from the state because they weren’t interested in raising taxes.  So what do you do?  First, you line up advocates who benefit from the tax hike and forge them into an army.  That shouldn’t be so hard since the teachers, the service employees, MCGEO, the non-profits, the enviros and lots of other stakeholders are getting a piece of the new money either directly or indirectly.  Invite them to your presser.  If the coronavirus prevents that, get them in writing.  Have them make videos.  Include supportive quotes from them in your own communications.  Have them all up team up on an online petition.  (MCGEO already has one that they promoted through a mailer.)  Have them send out supportive blast emails and social media posts the very morning on which the budget is released.  And so on.  The point here is that this isn’t just the executive’s budget.  It belongs to all of these other groups too.  This makes the council members understand that they would pay a price by voting no.

The budget isn’t drafted overnight; it takes weeks to prepare.  That means the executive branch had time to get ready.  They should have lined everything up and beat the council (and everyone else) to the punch.  Yeah, the critics are going to cry about it, but let them go last so YOU can define this budget first.  Instead, the administration did… apparently nothing.  There was no morning press event, even a livestreamed one, and there were no preemptive communications – at least none that I saw.  The very first communication released from the county came from eight council members who opposed the tax increase.  As of this writing, other than a brief statement from Elrich defending the tax hike, there is STILL no comprehensive communication from the county listing all the benefits of the budget.  Is anyone other than Elrich out there defending it?

What a disaster!

So who should be upset about this?  It shouldn’t be the tax opponents.  The administration’s incompetence allowed them to define the budget around the tax increase.  Robin Ficker has to be bellowing in joy right now.

The folks who should be really upset are the ones who might benefit from the tax hike.  A proper communications effort should have been designed to get the council to hold off on expressing opinions about the increase, thereby buying time for the advocates to lobby them and start shifting some votes around.  Instead, eight council members said no immediately in the most public way possible.  (Council Member Nancy Navarro, who has chaired the council’s tax-writing committee for ten years, followed up with a hell no.)  It would be very hard for the council to move off that now.  As for the advocates, instead of waging a common battle for a bigger pie, they might have to fight each other for scraps as the council figures out how to reduce the executive’s increase in county expenditures.

And so, because of an epic communications debacle, a tough sell has become damn near impossible.

Congrats to the administration.  Or something.

Share

Elrich Defends His Tax Hike

By Adam Pagnucco.

Forty-five minutes after eight members of the county council released a statement opposing the property tax hike contained in County Executive Marc Elrich’s recommended budget, the executive has released a statement defending it. We reprint it below.

Montgomery County Executive Marc Elrich’s Statement on Release of his Recommended Fiscal Year 2021 Operating Budget

As required by the County Charter, I submitted my annual budget to the County Council earlier today. My staff and I have been working on this budget for more than six months. During that time, we received budget requests from the community, the school system, our departments and Councilmembers that help to shape this budget proposal. The three-cent increase is a special tax that is specifically designed for education and would help to fund the budget request from Montgomery County Public Schools.

At the time that we were developing this budget, COVID-19 was not on the horizon and now, during these unique and difficult times, we have to factor in its impact. I stand by the need for us to increase our investment in education, but I understand the unique situation that we are currently in. We have all known from the beginning that funding the school system’s request could not be funded within anticipated revenues and, as we have been working at the State level to increase school funding through the Build Act and Kirwan, I believe that we should make the additional investment in schools that they need today, even if it required a special tax increase dedicated to the schools.

I combined this proposed three-cent special schools tax increase with a $108 increase in the County’s property tax credit so that a homeowner with a $500,000 home would see about a $42 annual tax increase—the three cents would raise the taxes by $150, but combined with the County property tax, the net increase is $42. A one million dollar home would have a net $192 per year increase. 

As in every budget cycle, I have informed the Council that I will work with it to find ways to deal with the budget.

Dealing with today’s emergency situation and having a long overdue community conversation about the future we want to build for our County will be a challenge in coming weeks.  The challenges we face in areas such as education, economic development and transportation will still be there long after this crisis is over and we can’t take our eyes off the future no matter how hard those decisions will be. I know that in today’s context it is hard to determine what the future looks like, but we will balance addressing our present situation with planning for the future of this County. And we will do it together.

To learn more about the recommended operating budget, go to https://www.montgomerycountymd.gov/operatingbudget

# # #

Share

Elrich Recommends Tax Hike, Council Says No

By Adam Pagnucco.

County Executive Marc Elrich has proposed a 3.18 cent property tax hike in his recommended Fiscal Year 2021 operating budget, which was released today. The budget does not state the exact size of the tax hike, but because state data indicates that the county collects almost $20 million per penny in real property taxes, the tax hike is probably in the vicinity of $60 million.

Soon after receiving Elrich’s budget, the entire county council except for Council Member Tom Hucker released a statement opposing the tax hike. Their statement is reprinted below.

Statement by Montgomery County Council President Katz and Councilmembers Albornoz, Friedson, Glass, Jawando, Navarro, Rice and Riemer on the County Executive’s Fiscal Year 2021 $5.9 Billion Operating Budget Recommendation

ROCKVILLE, Md., March 16, 2020—Montgomery County Council President Sidney Katz and Councilmembers Gabe Albornoz, Andrew Friedson, Evan Glass, Will Jawando, Nancy Navarro, Craig Rice and Hans Riemer, made the following statement on County Executive Marc Elrich’s proposed 3.18 cent property tax increase in the fiscal year 2021 Recommended Operating Budget:

“Our focus in the midst of an unprecedented health emergency must be on bringing together businesses and residents, nonprofits and government to address the immediate crisis we face. We also must provide as much certainty and support as we can for county residents who understandably fear what the economic realities of this global pandemic will have on their jobs, retirement savings, small businesses and families.

This is a time for cautious decision-making, not property tax increases. We look forward to working with the County Executive to address the initiatives in his budget recommendations.”

# # #

Share

Everyone Can Vote Absentee

The Maryland presidential primary on Tuesday, April 28th is still awhile off. Depending upon the situation, many people may be reluctant to vote at the polls in order to protect themselves, loved ones, and public health. So it seems a good idea to request your absentee ballot now.

Maryland has no-excuse absentee voting, so any registered voter can request an absentee ballot. You can have it sent to your home or another address. Voters can request an absentee ballot from their home either by mailing in the form or filling it out online.

If you find it easier to download a form and mail it, you can find the form online by clicking here or going to:

https://elections.maryland.gov/voting/documents/Absentee_Ballot_Application_English.pdf

Alternatively, you can fill out the absentee request form online by clicking here or going to:

https://voterservices.elections.maryland.gov/OnlineVoterRegistration/VoterType

This is a combined voter registration and absentee ballot request form. If you’re already registered, don’t worry that you’ll be registered twice — the form has questions to avoid this problem. The information is virtually the same as on the mail-in form, so it shouldn’t take any longer to fill out even though it serves a dual purpose.

Share

In MoCo, Public Media are Replacing Private Media

By Adam Pagnucco.

The disappearance of local media has been a worrisome trend around the nation for years.  MoCo is not immune.  In the last year, three local media outlets – the Town Courier, the Montgomery Sentinel and Germantown Pulse – have all gone dark.  That follows earlier closures of the Montgomery Journal (2005), TBD.com (2012), the Washington Examiner’s local print edition (2013) and the Gazette (2015).  Many remaining media outlets are strained by over-stretched staff and frequent turnover.  Long-time MoCo government reporters like A.J. Metcalf (formerly of Bethesda Beat) and Bill Turque (formerly of the Washington Post), both of whom worked their beat for more than four years and developed extensive source networks, are becoming rare. Even rarer are private media start-ups like Maryland Matters.

All of that is widely known.  But here is something that has attracted less notice: with the decline of private news media, the fact is that the largest, best-financed entity now covering county government is the county government itself.

Montgomery County’s government, like the huge majority of local governments, has always had a communications capacity.  That’s a legitimate governmental function as residents have a right to know how their tax dollars are being used.

But the county’s communications system has become larger, more sophisticated and more ambitious as the private media have become smaller.  Ten years ago, the county government had little social media presence.  Now, the county has multiple feeds on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr and Instagram along with several blogs.  County Cable Montgomery (CCM), which is part of county government, describes itself as “the local cable station you’ll want to turn to for local government news, public affairs programming, live Council sessions and County Executive press conferences.”  Montgomery Community Media (MCM), a non-profit that receives more than 80% of its funding from government, describes part of its mission as being “a valued, trusted, ‘go to’ source for news, information and programming relevant to Montgomery County.”  Both outlets pump out hundreds of professionally produced videos that look much like the work of private media outlets.  The lines between government communications, government-provided “news” and promotion have been blurred beyond recognition.

Unlike private media, government communications and media outlets are subject to funding decisions made by elected officials.  The table below shows budgets and full-time equivalent positions for five county government communications and media entities in FY15 and FY20.  These are only partial totals as they exclude communications positions in county government outside the Office of Public Information and funding for the television channels run by MCPS, Montgomery College and municipal governments.

While local private media have been shrinking, funding for MoCo public communications has grown by 45% in just five years.  More than 60 communications staffers work for the county and MCPS and that excludes employees of MCM.  With a combined budget of nearly $12 million, the county almost certainly dwarfs the private sector in its production of communications and local “news.”  Revenues for these public entities are derived from tax dollars and cable franchise fees paid through cable bills, meaning that private media entities are essentially required to fund their public competitors.

There is nothing inherently bad about the county government having a voice.  However, when the government’s voice is not balanced by vigorous private media, problems arise.  For example, many statements made by the county go unvetted and unchallenged for two reasons: the private media lacks the resources to do so and the county’s posture is to present its own view, not necessarily the views of others.  News stories by professional reporters often present multiple perspectives on an issue.  But when a county official expresses an opinion on County Cable Montgomery, the county government’s flagship “news” channel, how often are other people with different points of view interviewed and allowed to disagree?

County Cable Montgomery “news” program County Report This Week promotes the county liquor monopoly in an interview with Alcohol Beverage Services Director Bob Dorfman.  Monopoly critics were not interviewed.

Furthermore, consider that what the county wants you to know is not always what you need to know.  Government-controlled outlets are unlikely to do a lot of reporting on stories such as tax liens filed against County Council Members, ethics commission investigations of senior government officials, credit card abuses by school board members, elected officials pushing secret no-bid contracts, construction failures on huge county construction projects, epic failures of the liquor monopoly and massive outflows of taxpayer income.  If they did, they might offend the elected officials who fund them.  Without private media, such stories might never see the light of day.

Finally, think about what this means for political competition.  How are challengers supposed to defeat incumbents when the incumbents effectively control the dominant media entity in the county?  Is this one reason why no county-level incumbent lost reelection to his or her current seat in either 2014 or 2018?

Public media are here to stay but they must be balanced by private media.  If you agree, please patronize and financially support any private media outlets that you believe offer quality local news coverage of the county.  It’s in your own self-interest to do so.

Share