By Adam Pagnucco.
After reading County Executive Marc Elrich’s statement on recent events at the planning board, I had some follow-up questions for him. The county executive has graciously responded. Our Q&A appears below, with my questions appearing in italics. His answers appear as I received them.
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What went wrong inside the planning board and how can we prevent similar behavior there in the future?
While I don’t have the details of what happened recently, it must have been quite serious for the Council to find it necessary to disband the entire Planning Board. Remember, M-NCPPC has been around for over 90 years, and there is a lot of history, but as far as I know this is a first. I am aware that some problems, including a number of Open Meetings violations and ignoring lobbying disclosure requirements, have been cited against the Planning Board, as has been documented by Seventh State blog, and the PB chair has been defiant about some of these violations. It’s not that there has been just a single violation, it’s that there have been multiple ones and a lack of concern about correcting the problem.
There are also long-term problems with transparency and accountability at the Planning Board. Miranda Spivack, a former Washington Post reporter who reported on land use and planning issues for almost 20 years, laid out some of the issues clearly.
As Ms. Spivack notes, many Board members lack any prior planning experience. The Board is supported by a professional Planning staff, but such knowledge and understanding of land use issues has not generally been required of Planning Board appointees. The Board works well when its decisions show regard for Staff’s expertise and even-handed consideration of the concerns of all parties, including residents. There are multiple reported incidents of the Chair’s unwillingness to listen to residents’ views or even those of his own Board members. This is preventable if the Council chooses appointees who show independence, understand the effects and importance of land use decisions on a wide variety of issues, and share a willingness to listen to all sides. I would also recommend closer oversight by the County Council. In fact, when Director Gwen Wright reported at a Planning Board work session that the Planning Board Chair Casey Anderson was rewriting the public hearing draft with the help of one staff person, that should have been an alarm bell.
In your statement on the matter, you called for more transparency. The council was pretty quiet through most of the disruption at the planning board, saying that it was a set of confidential personnel issues. Should they say more about what happened and why they ultimately got rid of the entire board?
What happened goes beyond confidential personnel issues. There is widespread confusion and dismay among residents over what transpired over the past month, and trepidation that what happened will be minimized and swept under the rug. Given the seriousness, we need to know why the Council took this unprecedented action. We need to know what happened, and whether the underlying problems have been resolved or not. To the casual observer, only three people were implicated, and it would be good for the public to understand what happened. For the average member of the public, this must feel like politics at its worse. An unelected appointed Board with incredibly broad-ranging powers summarily dismissed, a temporary Board being hastily appointed, and almost all of it being done out of public view. The Council should issue a report explaining what happened and what investigations, if any, are still ongoing, and what other investigations may need to be done. We need more transparency about what led to their decisions so that this doesn’t happen again. Additionally, the Inspector General (IG) should report to the County Council, not to the Planning Board chair. The county’s IG reports to the County Council; this situation is no different – it needs to be overseen by people who aren’t running the agency.
Even more important, we need transparency going forward, not only in the process of selecting temporary Board members but also in reassuring residents that the Open Meetings Act and other processes and requirements will be respected – that would be a start toward restoring people’s trust.
You have called the board “dysfunctional.” They are the board which came up with Thrive 2050. Should the current council hit the reset button on Thrive and send it to the new council which will shortly take office?
Yes, they should, but it is not because of the most recent scandals at the Planning Board. The problems with Thrive in its current form are numerous, but the most glaring problem is the insufficient attention given to equity issues. The Planning Board exempted themselves from a racial equity analysis, and while the Council did eventually request a consultant to conduct a racial equity analysis of community involvement, the consultants reported that they did not have enough time to do a thorough review, and they raised some serious concerns that cannot be addressed quickly. And it is important to note that the consultants did NOT conduct an equity review of the plan itself; there has been no analysis of whether the zoning and recommendations would improve current conditions or exacerbate existing racial inequities.
Furthermore, despite the rhetoric, there are no concrete proposals in Thrive to improve housing affordability. The Thrive conversation included discussion about “missing middle” housing and “attainable housing.” Planning’s own study in Silver Spring showed that “missing middle” housing would be more expensive than existing housing and unaffordable to most people. Planning’s definition of “Attainable Housing” is “unsubsidized market housing that is appropriate and suitable for the households that live here.” It further notes that “Attainability is being used in recognition that our housing needs go beyond a sole focus on affordability of the housing unit.” [emphasis added]
https://montgomeryplanning.org/planning/housing/attainable-housing-strategies-initiative/
Sadly, this County has never had a “sole focus” on affordability; that statement is an insult to the approximately 50,000 households here today who are burdened by housing costs. Additionally, our innovative MPDU program has only produced a net total of 6,700 rental units since its creation in 1973 – 6,700 units for a county of 1 million+ and in 50 years.
Zoning is not the problem. Right now, today, in the development pipeline, there are 35000 housing units already approved by the Planning Board; all the developer needs to do is get a building permit.
https://montgomeryplanning.org/tools/research/development-pipeline/
Add to that another 85000 units that are part of our approved master plans within existing zoning, the vast majority near transit.
https://mcplanning.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=53341fe3751749c191b9a2cb90a08c51
Those 120,000 (35,000 + 85,000) units are sufficient to accommodate the approximately 200,000 people forecast to come here by 2050. This information is never shared in Thrive; instead, Thrive asserts that there must be a countywide rezoning to accommodate future growth. We have zoned for the housing we need; the question we need to ask – and it is not asked nor answered by Thrive – is why is it not being built and how we can get the housing we need.
Another significant problem involves the recent addition of 3 new chapters on major issues: Economic Development, Environmental Resilience, and Racial Equity and Social Justice. No public hearings were held on these chapters, and I am told that none include all-important recommendations that should be a core part of a general plan. I have been told the reason there are no recommendations is that there was “not enough time” to include them. Council should find that time.
One major mistake is that both the Planning Board and PHED drafts of Thrive used the wrong Growth Map (the drafts used the 1964 map rather than the 1993 map). The public has not yet seen the correct Growth Map even though the Thrive Working Group–a collection of more than 10 Executive departments–pointed out this deficiency in comments to the Planning Board in August 2020.
The many problems with Thrive 2050 may stem from a departure of a long-standing, well-respected process of deep engagement with residents (years ago they were called “citizens committees.”). Residents took the time to work with professional planners and elected officials to develop long-term plans. The racial equity consultants hired by the County Council reported that many expressed concerns that Thrive “seems to assume ‘one size fits all’ …;” they noted that plans instead need to be “context-and-location-sensitive.” Unlike previous General Plan development, this time planning staff told community members why they should like Thrive rather than working with the community to develop a general plan together.
Thrive does not have to be passed quickly – it can be sent back to the Planning Board. Nobody – from the Council to Thrive’s group of social media supporters have made an argument as to why the County’s newly elected Council shouldn’t have the opportunity to weigh in on this plan. As one of the consultants told the Council, “Compressed time frames are the enemy of equity.” Thrive will guide future growth and development over the next 30 years – let’s take the time to do it right. Here’s the link to my letter asking the Council to pause Thrive.
https://www.montgomerycountymd.gov/OPI/Resources/Files/2022/Thrive2050_CEmemo_9-12-22.pdf
Here’s a link to all my correspondence on Thrive:
https://www.montgomerycountymd.gov/exec/thrive2050.html
Going forward, what qualities should the council look for in appointing future planning board members?
I hope we can put politics and ideology aside and appoint Board members who understand the economic, environmental, transportation, and housing issues the county faces, who represent our diverse community, and who show respect for the viewpoints of residents, developers, and others with business before the Board. Everyone is entitled to fair and transparent processes. It must be our task to restore trust and predictability in our planning process. Appointees should not be sitting elected officials – above all, there should be no hint of political interference.
In your statement, you indicated a desire to work with the council on future appointees. What would that look like specifically? Do you intend to endorse specific people for the board?
While it is unfortunate that we’re in this situation, we have an opportunity here to lay out a new vision. One where the Council doesn’t make an insular decision, but rather consults the stakeholders in government before making a decision that affects the County in such a massive way. I would hope that the County Council would seek input from me and my experienced team on identifying strong candidates who will restore trust in the Planning Board. We need Board members who wish to serve in order to advance the public good and not their own personal ambitions. At this point, it may be simply laying out the qualifications we hope for and conveying a strong desire for some “clearer eyes”. How the Council handles the appointment process is extremely important – appointing “insiders”, or not having an open clear process that the public can follow would further diminish public trust. While it isn’t my intention to endorse specific people for the Board, the County Executive can veto appointees, and I think it would be productive for me to be part of the conversations.