Category Archives: Larry Hogan

Governor Trump

By Adam Pagnucco.

One of the reasons why Donald Trump was elected President is that he made things up out of thin air and the press, for the most part, let him get away with it.  Now Governor Larry Hogan is doing the same thing.  And so far, it’s working.

We refer of course to the Governor’s all-out campaign to repeal this year’s transportation transparency law.  The law, passed over the Governor’s veto, would require the Maryland Department of Transportation (MDOT) to rank transportation projects according to a variety of numerical criteria to bring transparency into what has been an opaque funding process.  The Governor claims that it would require him to kill most state transportation projects.  But in fact, the plain language of the law lets the Governor have final say over which projects get funded.  It states, “Nothing in this Act may be construed to prohibit or prevent the funding of the capital transportation priorities in each jurisdiction.”

So just like Trump, the Governor is making things up and trotting them out to the press.  How did the press react?  Erin Cox of the Baltimore Sun got the facts right, quoting both the law’s language and an advisory letter from the Attorney General’s office to demonstrate that Hogan is wrong.  A reader had to review the article carefully to glean these things, however, as it also included lots of back-and-forth between politicians.  The Washington Post and the Capital Gazette also quoted the law’s language, though only in passing.

Other press outlets got suckered.  The Hagerstown Herald-Mail, Frederick News-Post, Ocean City Today, WMAR (Baltimore), WJLA (Washington), Bethesda Magazine, Afro-American, WMDT, WTOP and Montgomery Community Media (MCM) never mention what the law actually says, depicting the issue as a he-said-she-said dispute between politicians.  Ocean City Today, WJLA and WMDT never bothered to quote any Democrats, giving the Governor free rein.  WJLA, WMAR, MCM and the Afro-American stated falsely that certain transportation projects either “were,” “will be” or “have been” canceled.  Again, the law says no such thing and a simple fact-check could have uncovered that.

The real story here is that one side is accurately characterizing state law and the other side is making stuff up.  No one in the press wrote that story.

Even more incredibly, the Governor said in his press conference about the law that the General Assembly “rammed it through without hearings or any public input.”  You can see that in the video below at the -10:40 mark.

In fact, video of the hearings in both the Senate and the House are available on the General Assembly’s website.  Pete Rahn, the Governor’s Secretary of Transportation, attended both.  This is a pants-on-fire lie that no press outlet exposed.

rahn-testimony

Secretary of Transportation Pete Rahn testifying at the Senate hearing that Governor Hogan says never happened.

For a person who is known as not being a fan of Donald Trump, the Governor is remarkably quick to embrace his tactics: make stuff up, ignore the truth and bully anyone who disagrees.  Most of the press is letting him get away with it.

Will the Democrats?

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Larry Hogan’s Alternate Reality

By Adam Pagnucco.

Everyone knows that elected officials sometimes disagree on issues.  They may have differences of philosophy or values.  They may emphasize different sets of conflicting data.  They may prioritize one thing over another.  But how many of them actually make stuff up and use that as a basis for policy arguments?

One does.  His name is Larry Hogan.

The Governor’s target is a law passed by the General Assembly over his veto known as the Maryland Open Transportation Investment Decision Act of 2016.  The law was intended to open up the opaque process used by the Maryland Department of Transportation (MDOT) to decide which transportation projects to fund in the state’s capital budget.  The law requires MDOT to use a scoring procedure to evaluate future proposed major projects using measurements of safety and security, system preservation, quality of service, environmental stewardship, community vitality, economic prosperity, equitable access, cost effectiveness and local jurisdiction priorities.  The score of each project included in MDOT’s capital budget would be released publicly.  But the law makes clear that the scores themselves would not determine a project’s fate.  MDOT would have the final say over which ones get funded.  The law says explicitly that “the Department may include in the Consolidated Transportation Program a major capital transportation project with a lower score over a major capital transportation project with a higher score if it provides in writing a rational basis for the decision.”  The law also says, “Nothing in this Act may be construed to prohibit or prevent the funding of the capital transportation priorities in each jurisdiction.”

Sounds harmless, yeah?  Not to Governor Hogan.  He is calling the law “the Road Kill Bill” and has released a huge list of transportation projects it would allegedly cancel.  The Governor said in a public statement that the law was a “disastrous bill which will absolutely be responsible for the elimination of nearly all of the most important transportation priorities in every single jurisdiction all across the state… It will wreak havoc on the entire state transportation system and usurp important authority away from local governments and away from the executive branch of state government, giving authority instead to lobbyists and special interest groups.”  He has launched a fierce social media campaign to repeal it.

And yet the plain language of the law itself would not kill any transportation projects.  Not a single one.

Think that’s bad enough?  It’s even worse.  One of the projects the Governor says the law would kill is the Watkins Mill/I-270 interchange in Gaithersburg.  This is a top priority for MoCo’s state legislators and was a significant reason for their support of a 2013 transportation funding increase.  And yet the Hogan administration indefinitely postponed it and later mulled cutting exit ramps to save money.  Only after the MoCo delegation introduced legislation to mandate funding the project did MDOT relent and reluctantly put it back on track.  And now the Governor is falsely blaming the transportation scoring law for killing a project that his own administration tried to kill!

Folks, what we have here is not a failure to communicate.  It is a failure to live in reality.  The Governor’s attacks on this law are contradicted by the plain language of the law itself.  It does not kill ANY projects.  In fact, it explicitly preserves MDOT’s ability to decide which projects get funded.  This dispute is not about killing projects at all.  What it’s really about is that the Governor can’t stand any law that subjects his decisions to public scrutiny.  And this concept is so alien to him that he is willing to make false statements in public about what the law actually does.  This is not a matter of right vs left or Democrats vs Republicans.  It’s a matter of making stuff up to justify what you want.

Now what other soon-to-be GOP officeholder does this remind you of?

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Hogan’s Strategy and New Terrain II

The election of Donald Trump has upended much of Gov. Larry Hogan’s reelection plan for 2018. Midterms are usually hard on the president’s party, which would have been great news for Larry Hogan except that Hillary Clinton didn’t win the election.

Midterm Elections Hard for Party with Unified Control
An examination of periods of unified party control of Congress and the Presidency since 1990 does not augur well for the Republicans. After Bill Clinton’s 1992 victory, Republicans swept in and took control of both the House and the Senate in 1994.

In the wake of 9/11, George W. Bush proved an exception, as the Republicans held up well in 2002. However, Democrats swept back into control in 2006, taking both the House and the Senate despite the structural barriers faced by Democrats in both cases.

Republicans also well remember that they eliminated the sizable Democratic majority in the House in 2010, just two years after Barack Obama gained election and ushered in unified Democratic control. While Republicans didn’t take the Senate, they made major gains, and the GOP took control of that body in the next set of midterms in 2014.

Democrats face enormous barriers to Senate gains in 2018 because they already hold so many of the seats up for election. However, the Republicans will likely face much less favorable trends than this year and this structural advantage won’t aid Larry Hogan.

Gubernatorial Elections Too
Indeed, a close examination of gubernatorial elections during midterms held under unified federal control by one party should not give Larry Hogan much comfort.

Republicans made stunning gains in 1994, as they picked up a walloping 10 governor’s mansions. They held the chief executive spot in 30 of the 50 states after this banner year election.

The post-9/11 2002 elections were less of an exception to the rule in gubernatorial than federal elections. The Republicans lost seats, though Bob Ehrlich did pick up the governor’s mansion in Maryland to become the first Republican since Spiro Agnew  in the 1960s to hold that office.

The 2006 midterms were a great year for the out party–the party that did not hold the presidency–as Democrats went from a minority of 22 state houses to 28 after the elections. Gov. Ehrlich lost reelection in Maryland.

As the out party in 2010, Republicans reversed that trend. They  went from having a minority of 23 governorships prior to the election to 29 afterwards. Yet Ehrlich, trying for a comeback, lost by an even greater margin to Gov. O’Malley. In 2014, despite already holding 29 governors, the GOP managed to pick up two more for a total of 31.

Declining Split-Ticket Voting
Something new happened in the U.S. Senate elections in 2016. Not one state elected a senator different from the party of the presidential candidate that won that state. This caps a long downward trend in the number of congressional districts that split their ticket.

Put another way, partisanship has grown much stronger and it is harder to win. Impressively, Hogan managed it with a strong prevailing wind behind him in 2014. But can he repeat the feat in 2016 when the Republicans appear likely to be facing a backlash based on historical trends? More discussion in Part III.

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Hogan’s Strategy and New Terrain, Part I

Governor Larry Hogan’s action since his election point to one major goal: avoiding the fate of Bob Ehrlich by winning reelection in 2018. His strategy on these points seems relatively clear. However, the 2016 election results may upend his strategy. Today, I look at the path he has pursued so far.

Poll-Tested Popular Gestures
Hogan has become the master of making popular moves that, in the end, are nice gestures but do little to reshape state government in a meaningful way. His new mandate that schools begin after Labor Day is a perfect example of this approach.

No Meaningful Cuts in Taxes or Spending
If you look at the state budget as a whole, the difference between what Maryland has done under Gov. Hogan and would have done if Anthony Brown had been elected is small and focused on popular but very small cuts.

The reduction in tolls is a perfect example. People love it and see it but it’s practically a rounding error in the state budget. Hogan has much derided the “rain tax” but it’s a federal mandate and sending it back to the counties doesn’t make it disappear, so the impact on Marylanders is less than appears.

Taking Credit for O’Malley’s Hard Decisions
Gov. Martin O’Malley had the misfortune to govern during the horrendous Bush recession. While the budget will always need further work, he and the General Assembly made the tough deep cuts and righted the ship on pensions.

Most interestingly, O’Malley took the unpopular decision to raise the gas tax. So far, despite Hogan’s vehement attacks on it during the campaign, it’s still with us, and Hogan seems very happy to go around the state taking credit for roads and other projects it funds.

His Cancer Fight
I am sure that Gov. Hogan and his family wish deeply that he had never been diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. I am grateful, as are Marylanders, that he is making a great recovery. Indeed, he has been a fine example of the fight against a major illness. The publicity surrounding his brave fight has naturally engendered a great deal of sympathy.

One Downside: Touchy Persona
While Hogan generally presents a determined and happy face to the world, he doesn’t deal well with criticism. He can get petty and surprisingly touchy in response to it, lashing out negatively in response to even mild disagreements.

Conclusion
In short, Larry Hogan has presented a pleasing persona happy to do  small things in the wake of the frenetic O’Malley years and enjoy the benefits of previous hard decisions. This approach has resulted in high approval ratings. But will Trump’s election upend Hogan?

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Does Larry Hogan Really Care About Jobs?

By Adam Pagnucco.

Larry Hogan has worked hard to portray himself as a Jobs Governor.  In nearly every one of his public appearances, speeches and press statements, he talks about jobs, jobs, jobs.  Here’s a quote from his inaugural address that has set the tone for his administration.

“Maryland has an educated workforce, world-class universities and colleges, great community colleges, and public schools. We have our beautiful Chesapeake Bay, the Port of Baltimore, and a great location in the heart of the Mid-Atlantic region. We must leverage these amazing assets to transform Maryland into a place where businesses can flourish and create more jobs and opportunities for our citizens. Starting today let me say loudly and clearly: Maryland is open for business.”  Governor Hogan, Inaugural Address, 1/21/15

The statement above deserves a big asterisk.  In practice, Hogan’s enthusiasm for jobs depends on where they are.  When jobs are located at a Northrop Grumman facility in Anne Arundel County, the Governor proposes tens of millions of dollars in state subsidies for them.  When employment growth lags in the Eastern Shore and Western Maryland, Hogan promises a new jobs initiative.  But when the Red Line was projected to add billions of dollars in economic activity and over 15,000 badly needed jobs to the City of Baltimore, Hogan cancelled it.  And last week, he sent another large public works project into limbo: Montgomery County’s Corridor Cities Transitway.  What do Montgomery County and the City of Baltimore have in common?  You guessed it – they voted for Hogan’s opponent in the last election.

The Corridor Cities Transitway (CCT) is one of the state’s preeminent transportation projects, and one that has an awful lot of job growth tied to it.  The CCT, a 15-mile Bus Rapid Transit Line from the Shady Grove Metro Station to the southern part of Clarksburg, has been planned since the 1970s.  It would link some of Montgomery County’s fastest-growing places, including Gaithersburg, Germantown, Clarksburg, the Life Sciences Center and the federal government’s National Institute of Standards and Technology, in an area that has few transit options.  A 2011 economic impact analysis by Parsons Brinckerhoff estimated that the project would create $2.2 billion of economic activity through 2050 and would create over 6,000 jobs during its construction phase.  Those jobs would go to craft employees like carpenters, laborers, operating engineers, cement masons, iron workers and electricians – blue-collar workers whom the Governor cultivates.

“The government needs to do everything it possibly can to help people provide for themselves and get a job.”  Larry Hogan, candidate for Governor, 10/9/14

But the CCT is far more than just a transportation project.  It is tied to the massive Great Seneca Science Corridor Master Plan passed by the Montgomery County Council in 2010.  The plan leverages the CCT to allow new development including 10.6 million additional square feet of commercial space, 5,700 more residential units and 31,300 new jobs.  This would be one of the biggest developments in the state, comparable to Baltimore’s Port Covington project.  Many of the Great Seneca plan’s jobs would be professional and high-paying, including scientists, doctors and engineers.  All of this is worth countless billions to the State of Maryland.  But because the area’s existing infrastructure can’t handle the traffic volume created by this level of development, the plan is contingent on the CCT’s construction.  In other words, no CCT – no jobs.  As Council Member George Leventhal has said, “By deferring this project, Governor Hogan is deferring our high-tech economy.”

“The primary focus of our administration is economic development, growing our private sector and creating more jobs.”  Governor Hogan, MACo conference, 8/22/16

Governor Hogan is uniquely qualified to understand the ties between growth, development and jobs.  He is, after all, a real estate developer who has made a fortune building projects not so different from those that would be located near the CCT.  He requires no education on the economic merits of this issue.  But the politics are a totally different matter.  The Governor’s political play is obvious: he gets to kill (or at least indefinitely delay) a transit project in a blue county so that he can spread highway money around to the red counties who will presumably vote for him.  And because he (barely!) allowed a stripped-down version of the Purple Line to proceed, he can ax the CCT and still raise money from his friends in the real estate industry.

“The primary focus of my administration is to get Maryland open for business once again and create jobs for our citizens.”  Governor Hogan, 5/12/15

In economic terms, the CCT and its associated development would be a huge win for everyone around the state.  That’s because the state government is the primary recipient of income tax revenues from new residents, and it’s the only recipient of sales taxes and corporate income taxes from new businesses.  Because of how Maryland’s wealth formulas work, the huge majority of those state revenues would not stay in MoCo – they would go to the poorer counties of the state, many of whom are in rural areas that vote in huge numbers for Hogan.  In his effort to score points with his supporters, the Governor is actually damaging their economic interests.

So what does the Governor really care about?  Is it jobs?

Or politics?

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Democrats, Be Careful on Labor Day

By Adam Pagnucco.

Last week, Governor Larry Hogan caused a splash in Ocean City with his new Executive Order mandating a post-Labor Day start for public schools.  A few Democrats, led by Baltimore City Senator Bill Ferguson, Montgomery County Delegate Eric Luedtke and Montgomery County Senator Rich Madaleno, have pushed back hard.  The two sides occupy their natural political territory: Hogan touts the economic benefits that employers in resort areas could receive from busy Labor Day weekends, while the Democrats reassert their traditional defense of public schools (whose officials overwhelmingly oppose the order).

Some Democratic lawmakers are spoiling for a fight, but wiser heads should prevail.  If the Democrats try to overturn Hogan in the next general session, they will be handing the Governor a nice win for three reasons.

  1. A post-Labor Day start is popular.

The Governor’s use of polls, especially those showing his high job approval ratings, clearly gets under the Democrats’ skin.  But Hogan is not the first politician to leverage polls to his advantage and he certainly won’t be the last.  Three different polls taken by Goucher College in the fall of 2014, the spring of 2015 and the fall of 2015 find support for starting school after Labor Day at 71%, 72% and 72% respectively.  The most recent poll finds support at 69% or above for every gender, racial, age and party group isolated, including 72% approval among Democrats.  Support for starting school after Labor Day is about even with support for sick leave and redistricting by an independent commission (another signature Hogan issue) and is above support for legalizing marijuana and opposition to fracking.

  1. The Democrats are divided.

A number of Democrats have sponsored at least one of three recent bills mandating Labor Day school start times.  They include the following five Senators and nineteen Delegates:

Senator John Astle (Anne Arundel)
Senator Ed Kasemeyer (Baltimore County/Howard)
Senator Katherine Klausmeier (Baltimore County)
Senator James Mathias (Eastern Shore)
Senator Jim Rosapepe (Prince George’s/Anne Arundel)
Delegate Curt Anderson (Baltimore City)
Delegate Darryl Barnes (Prince George’s)
Delegate Kumar Barve (Montgomery)
Delegate Pamela Beidle (Anne Arundel)
Delegate Eric Bromwell (Baltimore County)
Delegate Mark Chang (Anne Arundel)
Delegate Diana Fennell (Prince George’s)
Delegate Barbara Frush (Prince George’s/Anne Arundel)
Delegate Tawanna Gaines (Prince George’s)
Delegate Cheryl Glenn (Baltimore City)
Delegate Keith Haynes (Baltimore City)
Delegate Anne Healey (Prince George’s)
Delegate Sheila Hixson (Montgomery)
Delegate Carolyn J. B. Howard (Prince George’s)
Delegate Aruna Miller (Montgomery)
Delegate Sheree Sample-Hughes (Eastern Shore)
Delegate Theodore Sophocleus (Anne Arundel)
Delegate Jay Walker (Prince George’s)
Delegate Alonzo Washington (Prince George’s)

In addition to those Democrats who support the Governor’s position (even if they’re not happy with implementing it through an Executive Order), many more will be loath to vote against something that has more than 70% public support.  If the General Assembly leadership tries to ram through a bill next year overturning the Executive Order and they cannot get enough votes to override a veto, that would be a nightmare scenario.  The Governor would look strong on a popular issue and the Democrats would look weak – VERY weak.

  1. It’s a regional wedge issue.

If the Democrats try to overturn Hogan, understand what that could look like to Marylanders who live near places like Deep Creek Lake and the Eastern Shore: an effort by politicians from MoCo and the City to prevent economic prosperity in their areas.  As one Democratic lawmaker who is not from the resort counties told us, “The jurisdictions that need the tourism are desperately in need of local government revenues, they are among the poorest in the state.  To ignore that borders on public policy malpractice.”  Governor Hogan wants to depict Democrats as pointy-headed, urban elitists who don’t care about the rest of Maryland.  Democrats need to be careful about giving him ammunition for that argument.

Some may point out that Labor Day is not as strong a voting issue as education, transportation and taxes (the latter being OWNED by Hogan) and that the numbers may move as school systems rearrange their calendars.  Fair enough: poll numbers can and do move, with those on marriage equality being the prime example.  But making them move far enough and fast enough to justify a legislative response will likely require a massive PR campaign to do it.  Who is going to wage such a campaign?  It won’t be the Democrats themselves, whose communication capacity is dwarfed by the Governor’s – a problem on which no apparent progress is being made.  It probably won’t be the state teachers union, which opposes the Executive Order but told the Post that overturning it was not a focus of theirs in the next general session.  If not the Democrats or the teachers, who else is going to do this work?

ItsaTrap

Hogan WANTS the Democrats to fight him.  There’s a reason why he did this through an Executive Order and a press conference rather than simply having the State Board of Education do it for him.  The Governor wants this story to go on for months to maximize his benefits from it.  So does the original architect of the issue, Comptroller Peter Franchot, whom the high priests of the Democratic establishment regard as an apostate.  Do General Assembly Democrats really want to give these two a bigger win than what they already have?

Let’s remember the Governor’s goals here.  First, he wants to increase his reelection vote percentage above the 51% he received last time.  Second, he wants to get enough Republicans elected to the General Assembly so that his vetoes can be upheld, thus forcing Democrats to negotiate with him on virtually everything (including redistricting).  The easiest way to do that is to pick up seven GOP seats in the House of Delegates, which the Republicans did in 2014.  And third, he would like to eradicate the Democratic Party from all areas outside the Baltimore-Washington corridor, a feat that is already dangerously close to reality.  If the Governor can accomplish all three objectives, he will change Maryland into a genuine two-party state, at least at the level of state and local government.  And he thinks the Labor Day issue will help him get over the top.

The Governor is dangling the bait.  Will the Democrats take it?

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MoCo’s Giant Tax Hike, Part Six

By Adam Pagnucco.

Montgomery County’s giant tax hike will have consequences.  Here are a few of them.

1.  Term limits are more likely to pass.

There are several reasons why Robin Ficker’s newest term limits amendment will probably pass if he gathers enough signatures to place it on the ballot, but the tax hike is one of the biggest.  The last time the council broke the charter limit in 2008, voters responded by passing Ficker’s charter amendment to make tax hikes harder.  With a new tax hike in place, voters may be tempted to respond with term limits.

Ficker has taken notice.  He regularly runs Facebook ads linking term limits, the tax hike and the council’s 2013 salary increase like the one below.  Commenters respond predictably.

Ficker vs Elrich

Ficker may have a new ally in his quest to evict the council: MCGEO President Gino Renne.  After the council voted to abrogate his union’s collective bargaining agreement, Renne told the Post, “I’m tired of these clowns,” and said his union might support term limits.  An alliance between Gino Renne and Robin Ficker would be one of the strangest events in the history of MoCo politics.  Whoever can produce a picture of these two smiling and shaking hands will be awarded a gift certificate from Gino’s beloved Department of Liquor Control.

2. Outsider candidates could be encouraged to run for county office.

If term limits pass, two things will happen.  First, the County Executive’s seat and five seats on the County Council will be open in 2018.  Second, the tax increase will be blamed for the success of term limits.  Both factors could lead to the entry of outsider candidates with a message like this: “We need new leadership.  We need to do things differently.”  Translation: we need to run the government without giant tax hikes.

Some of these outsiders may use the county’s new public financing system to run.  But the strong performance of David Trone, who started with zero name recognition and won many parts of CD8, will encourage self-funders.  This being Montgomery County, there are a LOT of potential self-funders, including those who have previously run for office.  Candidates in public financing can raise as many individual contributions of up to $150 each as they are able to collect, but the system caps public match amounts at $750,000 for Executive candidates, $250,000 for at-large council candidates and $125,000 for district council candidates.  A wealthy self-funder could easily overwhelm candidates who are subject to these caps and make a mockery of public financing.

3.  More charter amendments on taxes are possible.

Ficker’s 2008 property tax charter amendment, which instituted the requirement that all nine Council Members must vote to override the charter limit on property taxes, was a mild version of his previous ballot questions on the subject.  His 2004 Question A, which would have abolished the override provision entirely, failed by a 59-41 percent margin.  Now that the 2008 amendment has been proven ineffective, Ficker could be encouraged to bring back his more draconian version soon.  In the wake of this new tax hike, would voters support it?

Passage of a hard tax cap would have very grave consequences for the ability of county government to deal with downturns.  In 2010, the County Council responded to the Great Recession by passing a tough budget combining cuts, furloughs, an energy tax increase and layoffs of 90 employees.  When the next recession comes, if the county has no taxation flexibility, it might have to pass a budget laying off hundreds of people and gutting entire departments.  If the levying of giant tax hikes in non-emergencies causes the voters to abolish the possibility of levying them in true emergencies in the future, it would be a serious calamity.

4.  Governor Larry Hogan is a big winner.

One of Governor Hogan’s favorite political tactics is to play the Big Three Democratic jurisdictions against the rest of the state, with the City of Baltimore being his prime target.  But he can also point to Prince George’s County, where the County Executive (and a potential election opponent) proposed a 15% property tax hike, and also to Montgomery County, where the council passed a 9% increase.  His message to the voters will be a simple one.

“Look, folks.  This is what you get when you allow liberal Democrats to have one-party rule: giant tax hikes.  That’s why you need people like me in office to stop them.”

How many MoCo Democrats will ask themselves this question: “What is easier for me to live with? Larry Hogan or nine percent tax hikes?” What do you think their answer will be?

Hogan received 37% of the vote in Montgomery County in 2014.  He had a 55% approval rating in MoCo according to a Washington Post poll last October.  A Gonzales poll taken in March found that registered voters in the Washington suburbs (defined as MoCo, Prince George’s and Charles) gave Hogan a 62.6% job approval rating, with 35% strongly approving.  If Hogan can use the tax issue to run in the low 40s, or even as high as 45% in MoCo, he will be very difficult to beat for reelection.

Reelecting himself is not Hogan’s only priority.  He would also like to elect enough Republicans to the General Assembly to uphold his vetoes.  That task is easier in the House of Delegates, where Democrats hold 91 seats, six more than the 85 votes required to override vetoes.  If the GOP can pick up seven seats, as they did in 2014, they can uphold the Governor’s vetoes on party line votes.  That would cause serious change in how Annapolis operates.  Could big tax hikes in Democratic jurisdictions like Montgomery help the GOP get there?

5.  It will be harder to get more aid from Annapolis.

In 2007, former Baltimore State Senator Barbara Hoffman commented to the Gazette on Montgomery County’s ultra-wealthy reputation in Annapolis.  “They have to overcome the view that they’re rich and trouble-free. … That’s not true anymore.”  She was right then, and she is even more right now.  The county has massive needs for transportation projects and both operating and construction funds for the public schools.  But when the county levies giant tax hikes on itself to pay for these needs, is it letting the state off the hook?  State legislators from other cash-strapped jurisdictions that lack wealthy tax bases like Bethesda, Chevy Chase and Potomac are perfectly happy to let MoCo tax itself while they ask the state to tax MoCo even more to pay for their needs.  (Remember the 2012 state income tax hike, of which MoCo residents paid 41% of the new revenue?)  As a result, the next time the Lords of Annapolis are asked to help Montgomery County, they could very well reply, “Tax yourselves to pay for it. You always do.”

6.  A major argument in favor of the liquor monopoly has been proven hollow.

County officials predicted that if the liquor monopoly was lost, annual property taxes would have to rise by an average $100 per household.  Instead, the monopoly was preserved and the council passed a property tax hike that will cost an average $326 per household.  The tax hike was in the works since at least January 2015, long before small businesses and consumers launched their campaign to End the Monopoly.  And the $25 million in new spending added by the council to this year’s budget actually exceeds the $20.7 million that the liquor monopoly is projected to return to the general fund.  This proves once and for all that liquor monopoly revenues do not prevent tax hikes!

7.  There will be pressure in the future for another tax hike.

As we discussed in Part Three of this series, the U.S. Supreme Court’s Wynne decision, which requires counties to refund taxes paid on out-of-state income, was one reason for the current property tax hike.  Senator Rich Madaleno’s state legislation extended the time that counties had to pay for refunds from Fiscal Year 2019 to 2024.  Below is a table showing the fiscal impact on all Maryland counties combined, of which Montgomery accounts for roughly half.  While the legislation enables counties to spend less in FY 2017-2018, it requires them to spend more in FY 2020-2024.  MoCo will have to spend around $20 million a year in most of the out years.

Madaleno Wynne Bill Fiscal Impact

Given its $5 billion-plus annual budget, Montgomery could easily afford the out-year payments by slightly slowing the growth rate in its annual spending.  But instead, the council added $25 million in new spending on top of the Executive’s FY 2017 budget, and unless it is cut, that spending will continue in future budgets.  The cumulative impact of that new spending plus future Wynne refund payments will start to be felt in three years.  At that point, the council could very well face a choice between trimming back their added spending or raising taxes.  What do you think they will do?

8.  Economic development will now be harder.

Despite the wealth in some of its communities, Montgomery County struggles with the perception that it is not business-friendly.  While its unemployment rate is low by national standards, its real per capita income fell steeply during the recession, much of its office space is obsolete and it lacks Northern Virginia’s two major airports and its new Metro line.  The chart below shows the county’s private sector employment from 2001 through 2014.  Despite recent sluggish growth, the county had fewer private sector jobs in 2014 than it did in 2001.

MoCo Private Employment 2001-2014

And while the county lost private sector jobs, the Washington region as a whole grew by 9.5% over this period.

Washington Private Employment 2001-2014

There may be a variety of factors explaining MoCo’s weak economic performance, but consider this: in the last 15 fiscal years, the county has seen six major tax increases.  The county broke its charter limit on property taxes in FY 2003, 2004, 2005, 2009 and 2017 and it doubled the energy tax in FY 2011.  (Most of the latter increase is still on the books.)

Good government is an exercise in balancing needs.  Education, transportation, public safety and public services are valuable and require resources, at times necessitating tax increases.  But all of that is impossible without a vigorous private sector that creates jobs and incomes and pays the government’s bills.  Those priorities must be balanced, and when they are, progressive policies can be afforded.  But if they are not, economic growth will fail, government services will be harder to sustain, taxes will fall increasingly on a shrinking base and a downward spiral could begin.

In the wake of its long-term stagnant economy and its Giant Tax Hike, how close is Montgomery County to that tipping point?

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Franchot’s Staff Troll Ferguson on Facebook

Hogan and Franchot Get Ready for the Cameras

Governor Larry Hogan and Comptroller Peter Franchot have been grandstanding in fine fashion lately. They are both outraged that Baltimore County and City are not installing air conditioning fast enough throughout the school system.

Hogan has more control over the budget than any other governor in the nation. He could have easily included the money for A/C in the budget without an iota of opposition but chose not to do so. Instead, he has set up a grandstanding moment with Franchot to deny the City and County monies needed for other school projects until they agree to install A/C in one year.

They kindly dumped the decision of what other projects the City and County should forego for the A/C on the Maryland School Construction Committee (IAC). Normally, this Committee reviews local projects to make sure they are ready to go and comply with other complex state requirements. Local governments determine which projects are needed in line with the Republican principle of local control – something that has gone out the window here.

Former Sen. and IAC Member Barbara Hoffman is shrewd and nobody’s patsy. She said correctly that this wasn’t the Committee’s job and moved to pass the job back to Hogan and Franchot on the Board of Public Works, who are eager to take credit for A/C but don’t want to explain why they are nixing taking care of problems like unsafe drinking water, fire safety and collapsing roofs. Even Hogan’s representatives on the Board voted for Hoffman’s motion.

Baltimore County Executive Kevin Kamenetz has gone one better and agreed to speed up the A/C but on the condition that the State reimburse the County for its share. Will Hogan and Franchot put their money with their mouths and agree to Kamenetz’s plan? Or will they demand that the County install A/C but not fix other very serious problems important to student safety?

Franchot’s Facebooking Staff

Meanwhile, Franchot’s staff seems to have little else to do but harry Sen. Bill Ferguson (D-Baltimore City) on Facebook for standing up for his jurisdiction’s priorities. Montgomery’s state legislative delegation doesn’t try to reorder our County’s priorities either.

Here is Len Foxwell, Franchot’s Chief of Staff, interrogating Sen. Ferguson during normal business hours:

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Apparently, Deputy Chief of Staff Emmanuel Welsh also has time to attack Ferguson on his Facebook page:

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I suppose Communications Director Peter Hamm is arguably doing his job by spending time on Facebook taking potshots at Sen. Ferguson:

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And here is more of Chief of Staff Foxwell:

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Communications Director Peter Hamm condescendingly calls Sen. Ferguson “pal” on Facebook. Proof, once again, that you may grow up but adolescence is forever.

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Press Secretary Alan Brody is also getting in on the fun:

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I never understand why politicians, let alone their staff, go after other politicians on Facebook pages besides their own. It rarely looks good.

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Will Hogan Sign the College Affordability Act?

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The Governor has indicated his support for giving $37.5 million in corporate welfare subsidies to Northrup Grumman but he hasn’t yet taken a position on this bill. State Sen. Rich Madaleno has started an online petition to encourage Gov. Larry Hogan to sign the College Affordability Act:

We have a serious problem in our state.  Too many Maryland students simply cannot afford to go to college, and too many graduates are loaded down with excessive amounts of student debt – the average debt of a college graduate in Maryland exceeded $27,000 last year.  If we do not get control of the spiraling cost of college, we will confine a generation of our young people to poor employment and economic opportunities.

This year the Maryland General Assembly passed “The College Affordability Act of 2016” (SB676 & HB1014) to address this serious concern.

This landmark bill helps Maryland families and graduates in the following critical ways:

  • Encourages families to save for college by offering matching funds for anyone who puts money annual into a college savings account, and
  • Reduces the cost of student loans by providing tax credits to Marylanders paying down their student debt.

The College Affordability Act of 2016 will impact up to 20,000 Maryland families every year, and it passed the General Assembly with overwhelming majorities.

Now it’s time for Governor Hogan to sign the bill into law!

Sign the petition to help amp up the pressure on the Governor to take a small step towards reducing college debt. It’s a Change Maryland should support.

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The Content of the Governor’s Character

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Gov. Larry Hogan has already failed two character tests in this year’s presidential race. Will he fail a third?

Chris Christie

The George Washington Bridge scandal was rightly a major turning point in Chris Christie’s reputation. This unbelievably petty revenge on the Mayor of Fort Lee for not endorsing his reelection bid revealed Christie as a bully and possibly also incompetent.

Christie may well have ordered the closure of the access lanes that led to the completely unnecessary gridlock, as suggested indirectly by his effort to stop New York Gov. Cuomo from investigating and attempts to downplay the events.

Alternatively, we can believe that Christie’s claims that he didn’t know. Of course, this requires belief that the same guy who took credit for being all over the Hurricane Sandy recovery effort had no idea what was going on in his office let alone the State. Moreover, he did such a poor job setting the tone among top aides that they thought this was acceptable behavior.

Neither option says much about Christie’s leadership skills but Hogan endorsed him anyway. No doubt Hogan sees himself as Christie’s ideological soulmate and wanted to repay Christie’s support during Hogan’s successful campaign.

The depth of Hogan’s poor judgement in supporting Christie became clear to all when beta male Christie rushed to endorse Donald Trump effusively after the Donald had beaten the bully and showed him who was the pack leader.

The Maryland Primary

By the time Maryland’s primary rolled around, the race was down to Trump, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, and Ohio Gov. John Kasich. Not an enviable set of choices but a pretty easy one. I may not care for Kasich’s policies but he seems like a decent person. He probably wouldn’t be a great president (most aren’t) but I think most Americans wouldn’t sleep badly with him in the White House.

In contrast, Trump and Cruz are genuine dangers to the country. Trump is out of the same mold as extreme-right European politicians like France’s Marine Le Pen. Like her, he doesn’t care much for immigrants, is xenophobic to the point of suspicion of even our allies, has authoritarian tendencies, and lacks confidence that America can compete in a global economy. And these are his good qualities.

Cruz is a more home grown version of the extreme right. An social and economic extremist – one hesitates to label him “conservative” – this attorney believes that the president can nullify Supreme Court decisions that he deems unconstitutional, such as on gay rights. More popularly, he wants to eliminate the IRS, which will make collecting taxes for his expanded and busily bombing armed forces difficult.

While anyone who runs for president surely has a healthy ego, the level of narcissism in both and Trump and Cruz is extreme. During the unforgettable debate that discussed the size of Trump’s anatomy, Kasich was the only person on the stage who passed the “normal human” test.

Yet Gov. Hogan took a pass on exerting his considerable influence on Republican voters during the primary. Kasich may have had zero chance of winning the nomination even at that point but Hogan failed to stand up for his party or the country, as Trump went on to win 54% of the vote here.

Third Strike?

And so it has come to this.

The Republican Party, a party with an illustrious history, is now reduced to nominating someone completely unfit for the office. He and his policies are not just disagreeable in the ordinary way that one often doesn’t care for the policies of the other party of their nominee. Trump’s ideas, such as they are, are abhorrent and ruinous. While terms like bigoted and sexist are sometimes thrown around too easily, they apply here.

Larry Hogan now faces a set of unenviable choices. He can endorse Trump, which seems unlikely if only because Hogan has a healthy instinct for political survival. Hogan could continue his silence in an effort to stay out of the fray and avoid alienating the majority of Republican voters who chose Trump and overlap with much of his own constituency.

Alternatively, Hogan can step up and speak plainly as to why Donald Trump doesn’t represent him, and should not lead the country that he loves. Hogan can explain that he’ll enthusiastically support other Republicans down the ballot but that he will leave the presidential ballot blank or write-in the name of some decent individual who shares his political convictions.

In short, he can do the right thing.

The real test of leadership is not when the path is easy but when you have to make politically difficult choices. The good news with this one is that the “man in the mirror” test should make it easy to make and to live with come what may.

I hope the Governor makes the right one. Frankly, the Republican Party and the country are going to need people who do.

 

 

 

 

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