By Adam Pagnucco.
Former Planning Board Member Partap Verma, who resigned along with the rest of the board in October, had this to say about Bill MC/PG 105-23 in testimony before the state delegation last night. The bill expands the authority of the county executive over the board.
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Good evening, for the record, I am Partap Verma, I am a licensed federal attorney with over 18 years of experience serving office of inspector generals in various federal agencies. And most recently, I served as vice-chair and commissioner of the Montgomery County Planning Board for three-plus years.
I support the Trust and Transparency Act of 2023 with amendments. Given what I experienced, what can only be described as a toxic work environment, it is clear that the commission needs a revamp.
One, in order for the OIG for the commission to be one hundred percent independent, it is important that the chair of the commission not have any ability to control the direction of the OIG inspector. In its current setup, the chair has the ability to change the work plan of the OIG inspector and influence the opening and closing of investigations. During my tenure as the audit committee representative, the former chair inappropriately kept two investigations open for the purposes of using this information at a later date. This included two investigations, one against a former commissioner on a state ethics violation and another against a sitting council member.
In both instances, the former chair in an abuse of power directed the OIG inspector to not close out the cases when both cases were either resolved or had no active issues associated with them.
Former planning board member Partap Verma.
Number two, there cannot be one political entity in charge of the planning board. As someone who has experienced the political fallout of the chair’s schedule first hand, I echo sentiments that the planning board should be as apolitical as possible. In the summer of 2022, I was directed by a sitting council member to fire director Gwen Wright for insubordination. When I stated that I didn’t think this was an appropriate action, that she only had a few months left before retirement, I was told and I quote, “The board reports to the council and we are your bosses.” After receiving this information, I immediately contacted the former chair and expressed what happened in the presence of Miss Rubin. The former chair confirmed to the both of us that he too was directed to fire Gwen Wright for insubordination and Miss Wright was also notified.
While Miss Wright was ultimately terminated due to her involvement in an active investigation that continues on today, it is not only highly inappropriate for the county council to direct planning board members based on their own personal politics or desires, but further exemplifies why reforms are needed.
Many critics of this bill have made references to power grabs and politics in a way that prevents open and honest public discourse. I along with Miss Rubin were also victimized with unsubstantiated claims of power grab when our memo describing sexually explicit language by the former chair was leaked to the media.
For the record, this confidential memo was drafted and disseminated to the county council per their own explicit instructions. It is to be noted that once this confidential memo was distributed to the council, it was almost immediately leaked to the former chair.
Finally, there has been a lot of misinformation during the past few months and I will say that the only body authorized to review unethical behavior in this instance is the Maryland State Ethics Commission. When they make a finding of a state ethics violation, it will be published on their website and I’ll look forward to giving a very important update to this body when I am legally able to do so.
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I have been writing about this county off and on since 2006 and I have never seen allegations of such a nature directed at the county council or members of the planning board. Casey Anderson, the former chair to whom Verma referred in his comments, has denied the allegations in Bethesda Beat. If there is a further response, I will print it.