By Adam Pagnucco.
Liquor. Leaks. Termination. Resignations. A whistleblower complaint. A pair of power grab bills. A fecal fracas at a state legislative hearing. Not since the clamor in Clarksburg more than 15 years ago has the planning board been such a cauldron of controversy. The council has tried mightily to quell the unrest by installing an interim planning board. But now it’s time to start picking a new board. Will this new one be better than the old one?
One of the most frequently uttered criticisms of the council during the planning board drama was a lack of transparency in the council’s actions. Why did the council lose confidence in the former planning board? They won’t exactly say, citing “confidential” personnel issues. Then-Council President Gabe Albornoz even refused to confirm that the council requested their resignations. (Are we supposed to believe that when the liquor was removed from their office that the entire planning board voluntarily decamped to the nearby Limerick Pub?) What will happen to the whistleblower complaint? And what about the council’s decision to pick the interim board in closed session? I have yet to see mass public support for that. County Executive Marc Elrich cited transparency as grounds for attacking Thrive 2050 and the council three different times on this site alone – October 19, October 21 and October 25 – and since he commands a significant communications apparatus, his characterization of the council might just stick.
Overall, the council has made the right calls in trying to get the planning board to a better place. But it needs to improve the transparency of its procedures or it risks losing the PR battle to its critics. One way the council could do so is to debate and appoint the new permanent planning board in open session.
When I first broached this subject with several occupants of the council building, they were unaware that planning board appointments had ever been decided in open session. But as I co-wrote in Greater Greater Washington back in 2017, that was standard procedure for decades. Open, split votes on planning board nominees were common and reported in the press. In my post above, I provided four examples, two of which had runoff votes.
If you don’t believe me, consider my article from 2008, in which I reported on a runoff vote for a planning board seat. I wrote in part:
On the Democratic seat, the first vote taken by the council resulted in four votes for Action Committee for Transit President Ben Ross (from George Leventhal, Valerie Ervin, Duchy Trachtenberg and Phil Andrews), three votes for Kentlands developer [Joe] Alfandre (from Marc Elrich, Roger Berliner and Mike Knapp) and two votes for former Prince George’s County Director of Parks and Recreation Marye Wells-Harley (from Nancy Floreen and Don Praisner). Since no candidate had a majority, a run-off vote was held. Ms. Floreen and Mr. Praisner supported Alfandre, giving him a 5-4 victory.
Oh the irony of Elrich voting for a developer! Despite that revelation and others in the post, Rockville did not fall into a bottomless abyss because an open split vote was reported and life went on.
Three years later, I was working at the council when they held an open discussion and vote on another planning board seat. The council split again, with 7 members voting for Casey Anderson and 2 voting for Alan Bowser. That fact was recorded in the minutes of the council and it was even reported by the council’s own TV channel. See the video below.
Once again, Rockville survived an open, split vote and life went on.
At some point afterwards, the council lost its way and began discussing planning board appointments in closed sessions. Such sessions were followed by open sessions held to make the pre-decided secret picks official and allow the full council to unite behind the winners. The practice attracted baleful attention when Just Up the Pike author Dan Reed applied for the board in 2017. He had worked at the council briefly and had fervent supporters, but he also came under attack for comments he made years ago about Bethesda. The council retreated behind closed doors and picked Germantown business owner Tina Patterson instead. Council Member George Leventhal was the only council member to dissent in the official, public vote because Patterson was not a Democrat. But other council members rushed to social media to proclaim their preference for Reed after the vote, creating confusion and recrimination.
Let’s be clear: however one feels about Reed or Patterson, the act of hiding inside a closed cocoon to debate their merits was an act of craven cowardice by the council. No one outside the building favored it and I joined forces with Greater Greater Washington founder David Alpert to deplore it. We wrote, “A free and fair debate would uphold public confidence in how the county makes its decisions far more than opaque proceedings outside of public view.” We were right then and we are right now.
Two years later, the council did not change their ways. Then-chair Casey Anderson was up for reappointment and an all-star field ran for both his seat and another open Democratic seat. Public interest was high. The LGBTQ Democratic Club sponsored a well-attended forum for the applicants in the Silver Spring Civic Building that I was lucky enough to moderate. So what happened?
You guessed it – the council once again passed on an open debate and went behind closed doors to discuss its picks. Here is what the recorded minutes from the closed session had to say about it.
Report of Closed Session of June 18, 2019
In compliance with §3-306(c)(2), General Provisions Article, Maryland Code, the following is a report of the County Council’s closed session of Tuesday, June 18, 2019. The Council convened in closed session at 2:08 P.M. in the 3rd floor Council Conference Room to discuss appointment, employment, assignment, promotion, discipline, demotion, compensation, removal, resignation, or performance evaluation of appointees, employees, or officials over whom it has jurisdiction, pursuant to Maryland Code, State Government Article, §3-305(b)(1)(i). The topic was Planning Board appointments.
The meeting was closed on a motion by Mr. Riemer, which carried without objection. The following persons were present: Councilmembers Navarro, Katz, Albornoz, Friedson, Glass, Jawando, Hucker, Rice and Riemer; Confidential Aides Mandel-Trupp, Gibson, Kunes, Silverman, Ikheloa, Thorne, Nurmi, Carranza and Ledner; Ms. Michaelson, Council Executive Director; Mr. Drummer, Senior Legislative Attorney; Ms. Mihill, Legislative Attorney; and Ms. Brown, Deputy Clerk.
Action: None.
The meeting adjourned at 2:46 P.M.
This had all the transparency of the black monolith from 2001: A Space Odyssey. In hindsight, there was no need for secrecy. The winner of the open seat, Partap Verma, was then a respected civic activist who probably would have won any vote whether it was open or not. What exactly did the council gain by following a large, open civic forum with a secret debate?
Let’s bear in mind this fact: closed sessions resulted in the appointment of a majority of the now-resigned former planning board. If the intent of such procedures was to minimize controversy, that backfired in an EPIC way.
Council Members, I am now speaking directly to you. Let’s consider something that I know you care about: your own self-interest. We all know that there is a group of people who will criticize you and the planning board no matter what because they don’t like development. (One of those folks is ensconced on the second floor of the executive office building.) Then there is a MUCH larger group in the public who don’t know what the planning board is or what it does. Their opinions are up for grabs.
The question for you on the council is whether you intend to give ammunition to your critics for use in characterizing the board, yourselves and development in general before the eyes of the public. Secretive planning board appointments are an easy and obvious weapon for the critics to use. Instead, you should do what your predecessors did for decades – debate and decide your planning board picks in public. Failure to do so will only empower your opponents.