{"id":12285,"date":"2020-02-24T12:45:14","date_gmt":"2020-02-24T17:45:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/?p=12285"},"modified":"2020-02-24T12:45:22","modified_gmt":"2020-02-24T17:45:22","slug":"picture-this","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/?p=12285","title":{"rendered":"Picture This"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

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

Picture this, dear readers: two events, both scheduled\nfor today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Picture 1: Robin Ficker, author of numerous charter amendments on taxes and term limits, has announced his intention<\/a> to deliver 16,000 signatures in support of his latest anti-tax amendment to the county executive\u2019s office.\u00a0 Ficker needs at least 10,000 signatures to place his amendment on the ballot.\u00a0 Let\u2019s remember that no one in the history of Montgomery County has more experience in gathering signatures than Robin Ficker.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Picture 2: Just a short walk away in the county council building and almost simultaneously, County Council Member Will Jawando and Delegate Julie Palakovich Carr have announced a press conference<\/a> in support of two state bills that would enable the county to levy tax hikes.\u00a0 One bill<\/a> would allow counties to set different property tax rates for commercial properties, industrial properties and residential properties with more than 5,000 square feet.\u00a0 The other bill<\/a> would allow counties to increase their maximum income tax rates from 3.2% to 3.5% and establish income tax brackets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Picture 1 is to be expected; we have seen Ficker\u2019s grandiose signature deliveries<\/a> before.\u00a0 Picture 2 is problematic for two reasons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First, Jawando and Palakovich Carr justify their bills<\/a> partly \u201cin order to pay for the increased local share of education funding required under the Kirwan Commission.\u201d\u00a0 Counties around the state are concerned about how they might pay for any additional local obligations to schools stemming from the Kirwan Commission\u2019s recommendations.\u00a0 Those obligations are laid out in Appendix F of the Kirwan Commission bill\u2019s fiscal note<\/a>, which is reprinted below.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

A careful look at the phase-in schedule shows that Montgomery County is not currently required to contribute any more to its public schools than it already has been doing until Fiscal Year 2027, which is MORE THAN SIX YEARS AWAY.\u00a0 Why are these elected officials pushing tax hikes now?\u00a0 One struggles to see how this is linked in any way to Kirwan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Furthermore, even in years in which no tax hikes are levied, the Montgomery County government gets an average of more than $100 million in new revenue a year<\/a>, and that excludes intergovernmental aid.\u00a0 If the phase-in schedule above were altered to allow a more gradual phase-in for the county\u2019s local obligations \u2013 say, $25-30 million a year instead of cramming it all into four years \u2013 the county might not have to raise taxes at all.\u00a0 The county might have to restrain spending in other areas to allocate greater shares of new revenue to MCPS, but that would make up for the fact that local money for MCPS has been one of the slowest growing parts of the county budget for a decade<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Second, this plays directly into Ficker\u2019s hands.\u00a0 There was a time not so long ago when Ficker\u2019s name was so radioactive due to his NBA heckling<\/a> and his rampant placement of illegal campaign signs<\/a> that his very association with a ballot question was enough to kill it.\u00a0 Those days are gone.\u00a0 In 2008, the county raised property taxes by 13%<\/a>.\u00a0 Voters responded months later by passing Ficker\u2019s charter amendment requiring that nine county council members must vote in favor of any property tax increase breaking the county\u2019s charter limit.\u00a0 In 2016, the county raised property taxes by 8.7%<\/a>.\u00a0 Voters responded by passing Ficker\u2019s charter amendment on term limits by a landslide<\/a>.\u00a0 Now, counting the bills supported by Jawando and Palakovich Carr as well as a separate bill by Council Member Evan Glass calling for new taxes on teardowns<\/a>, there are three different bills pending that allow county tax increases just as Ficker is pushing for a new anti-tax charter amendment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ficker must be the happiest man in MoCo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ficker does not win passage of his charter amendments because voters love him.\u00a0 He has run in almost every four-year election cycle since the 1970s, with just one victory (a 1978 Delegate race) that was reversed after a single term.\u00a0 He has not come close to being elected since.\u00a0 Ficker wins because he has deduced something that county politicians hate to admit, at least in public: voters are skeptical that our elected officials are capable of behaving responsibly with their tax dollars.\u00a0 Indeed, the county has levied nine major tax hikes since Fiscal Year 2003<\/a>, with only one (an energy tax increase in Fiscal Year 2011) occurring during a recession.\u00a0 The most recent tax hike, the 8.7% property tax increase in 2016, was marketed in part as a way to close MCPS\u2019s achievement gap<\/a>.\u00a0 Three years later, the council\u2019s Office of Legislative Oversight found that the county has made little or no progress on the achievement gap<\/a> despite the massive tax hike.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This kind of thing is why Ficker wins.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let\u2019s think of what is at stake.\u00a0 In 1978, Prince George\u2019s County passed an anti-tax charter amendment only a little more draconian than Ficker\u2019s.\u00a0 Five years later, in the wake of the devastating recession of the early 1980s and lacking an ability to raise taxes, the county had to gut services<\/a> and lay off more than 500 teachers<\/a>, laying the groundwork for decades of problems.\u00a0 Heaven help MoCo if we proceed in that direction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If MoCo\u2019s elected officials want to avoid that sort of outcome, they need to behave responsibly.\u00a0 Save the tax hikes for times of desperate need, like recessions.\u00a0 The rest of the time, figure out how to live within your means just like your constituents do.\u00a0 Above all, stop giving ammo to Ficker.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The alternative? \nPicture this.  Ficker celebrates\nin November, bellowing in victory at the passage of yet another charter\namendment.  And the county government,\nstruggling in fiscal chains strung up by distrustful voters, becomes more\nvulnerable to the next recession.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Adam Pagnucco. Picture this, dear readers: two events, both scheduled for today. Picture 1: Robin Ficker, author of numerous charter amendments on taxes and term limits, has announced his intention to deliver 16,000 signatures in support of his latest anti-tax amendment to the county executive\u2019s office.\u00a0 Ficker needs at least 10,000 signatures to place … Continue reading Picture This<\/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":[151,286,134],"tags":[1545,1436,1596,1539,703],"class_list":["post-12285","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adam-pagnucco","category-robin-ficker","category-taxes","tag-adam-pagnucco","tag-julie-palakovich-carr","tag-robin-ficker","tag-taxes","tag-will-jawando"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4mKJE-3c9","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12285","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=12285"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12285\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12290,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12285\/revisions\/12290"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12285"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12285"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12285"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}