{"id":11316,"date":"2018-06-26T07:00:41","date_gmt":"2018-06-26T11:00:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/?p=11316"},"modified":"2018-06-26T01:12:14","modified_gmt":"2018-06-26T05:12:14","slug":"the-reasons-for-my-votes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/?p=11316","title":{"rendered":"The Reasons For My Votes"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Adam Pagnucco.<\/em><\/p>\n

Just like (hopefully) all of you, I am voting in the primary this year.\u00a0 We talk a lot about candidates on Seventh State but not as much about what guides our voting decisions.\u00a0 These are the factors guiding me.<\/p>\n

There are two things in my background that weigh heavily on how I evaluate the county and its candidates.\u00a0 First, I\u2019m a native of the Hudson Valley and the Catskills in Upstate New York.\u00a0 I admit bias, but these are two of the prettiest places on Planet Earth!\u00a0 From the end of World War II up through the 1980s, this area was relatively prosperous.\u00a0 The three pillars of the economy were agriculture, tourism and manufacturing with the Borscht Belt hotels and IBM acting as anchor employers.\u00a0 Middle class jobs were common from Poughkeepsie through Monticello.\u00a0 But by the end of the 1980s, the Borscht Belt began emptying out and IBM started layoffs a little later, closing its massive Kingston facility in 1994<\/a>.\u00a0 The area never recovered.\u00a0 At a young age, I learned this lesson: there is no law of economics holding that a prosperous economy will remain prosperous forever.<\/strong><\/p>\n

There is more.\u00a0 In 1989, I was a bell captain at one of those dying Borscht Belt hotels.\u00a0 My crew was composed mostly of adults who lived paycheck to paycheck, so they were seriously put out when the paychecks started bouncing.\u00a0 One Friday during check-in, my crew and I went into the management offices to demand timely payment of VALID checks.\u00a0 When they refused, I led a walkout.\u00a0 I was fired and about half my crew was too.\u00a0 (That was the start of my interest in the labor movement.)\u00a0 Within a couple years, the hotel was closed.\u00a0 The former owners cashed out and moved to Florida.\u00a0 The workers were out of jobs.\u00a0 Here\u2019s another lesson: economic decline doesn\u2019t hurt the rich.\u00a0 They will be just fine.\u00a0 It\u2019s working people who need a strong economy to live decent lives.<\/strong><\/p>\n

My beloved old hotel, the Stevensville Country Club of Swan Lake, NY, in its glory days.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The second relevant thing in my background is that I\u2019m a corporate and economic researcher.\u00a0 When I decided to move out of D.C. fifteen years ago, I picked MoCo because it had so much going for it: enlightened leadership, good schools, nice amenities, high-quality county services, access to transit and a decent economy.\u00a0 But that was then.\u00a0 Here is some of what I have published on Seventh State over the last two years.<\/p>\n

1.\u00a0 MoCo has had one of the worst job creation performances in the entire region since 2001<\/a>. As of 2016, its employment has still not returned to its pre-recession peak.\u00a0 (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics)<\/p>\n

2.\u00a0 MoCo\u2019s real per capita personal income took a bigger hit than most of the rest of the region<\/a> from the Great Recession. (U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis)<\/p>\n

3.\u00a0 The county\u2019s establishment growth is almost last in the region<\/a>. It lags D.C. and Fairfax by huge amounts.\u00a0 (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics)<\/p>\n

4.\u00a0 The outmigration of taxpayer income from the county has hit record levels for the last few years<\/a>. (Internal Revenue Service)<\/p>\n

5.\u00a0 While wage and salary employment is flat, MoCo is creating lots of lower-paying proprietor jobs<\/a>. Most other jurisdictions in the region are creating both.\u00a0 (U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis)<\/p>\n

6.\u00a0 Despite telling us that the economy is just fine, county leaders have grabbed tens of millions of dollars in health insurance money just to balance the budget two years in a row<\/a>. That is despite the nine percent property tax hike of two years ago<\/a>.\u00a0 And where is the money going?\u00a0 Since the recession ended, spending on education and transportation \u2013 two huge investment categories of paramount importance to voters \u2013 has increased at half the rate of everything else<\/a>.\u00a0 (Montgomery County budget documents)<\/p>\n

Back in Upstate New York in the 1980s, those who were paying attention could see a little weakness.\u00a0 But for the most part, we didn\u2019t understand that we were in the middle of a tipping point.\u00a0 So it is in MoCo.\u00a0 We have enough strength left that a lot of people don\u2019t feel the above trends in their wallets yet, though they did feel the big tax hike and many suffer long commutes to jobs in D.C. and Virginia.\u00a0 Unless Donald Trump is worse than I think he is, the federal government won\u2019t close down like IBM did.\u00a0 But the data does not lie \u2013 we are slipping, folks.\u00a0 <\/strong>And that\u2019s a problem because we need strong revenue growth to fund progressive priorities<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The reaction of the governing establishment to the above posts and more has been disappointing.\u00a0 Some have been indifferent.\u00a0 Others have questioned the economic numbers.\u00a0 (I guarantee that the federal economists downtown who produce those numbers have no hidden agenda to make MoCo politicians look bad!)\u00a0 Some have interpreted discussion of this information as primarily an attack on their records.\u00a0 A few even regard it as a personal attack.<\/p>\n

Guess what, politicians?\u00a0 It\u2019s not about you \u2013 it\u2019s about us.\u00a0 And we need to do better.\u00a0 Luckily, as one of the few jurisdictions in the nation that combines wealth, education, diversity, tolerance, good schools, low crime, a triple-A bond rating and no municipal corruption, there\u2019s nothing we can\u2019t deal with IF<\/strong> we decide to deal with it.<\/p>\n

This year, I am only voting for candidates who understand the nature of the above challenges, have specific ideas for coping with them and \u2013 fingers crossed! \u2013 have the courage and strategic vision to lead us to our full potential.<\/p>\n

And if you want a finer county, so should you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Adam Pagnucco. Just like (hopefully) all of you, I am voting in the primary this year.\u00a0 We talk a lot about candidates on Seventh State but not as much about what guides our voting decisions.\u00a0 These are the factors guiding me. There are two things in my background that weigh heavily on how I … Continue reading The Reasons For My Votes<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[151,338],"tags":[1545,1993],"class_list":["post-11316","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adam-pagnucco","category-economy","tag-adam-pagnucco","tag-economy"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4mKJE-2Ww","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11316","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11316"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11316\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11319,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11316\/revisions\/11319"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11316"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11316"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11316"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}