By Adam Pagnucco.
Below are the top ten stories on Montgomery Perspective in April 2023, ranked by page views.
3. They Have Been Warned Again
4. Planning Board Applicant List Released
6. Police Critically Understaffed as Crime Keeps Rising
7. MoCo Loses Population Two Years in a Row
10. Former Planning Director Sues Park and Planning, Part One
I have been writing about state and county budgets for a long time, starting all the way back in 2007. Most of these posts don’t get a lot of traffic, but I write them anyway. Budgets are ways of quantifying important aspects of a polity’s political system, particularly its interest groups, its values and the relative sway of different regions and different actors. I am endlessly fascinated by them and I don’t care if they are well-read or not.
Well, April 2023 broke that trend BIG time. They Were Warned is easily the most-read post in the short history of this site and it would have ranked highly on Seventh State, where I wrote off and on for six years. That post tells the real story of County Executive Marc Elrich’s current tax hike – how the stage has been built for it for years and how the county council was warned about that by its own staff. Thousands of county residents now know that story and they are not happy about it. I hear from them nearly every day.
Here is one example. After I published MCPS and Unions Warn Council On School Budget, I heard from a reader who was not an insider, but rather a resident who wants to keep up with current affairs. Political civilians like this person account for most of the growth in this site’s traffic. Here is what this resident had to say.
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Dear Adam:
I have written to the Council repeatedly this cycle, too, “warning” them to remember the last time a few of them raised taxes on us and how angry the taxpayers were about that. New or old, the council will surely not want to repeat history.
Now the executive has badly bungled his budget making. Just as an example, onetime covid money came in, and he spent it lavishly instead of investing it. One place he put it was toward doubling the pay of “volunteer” election judges. Several friends of mine signed up for a cycle, then didn’t again when the pay fell back to normal. What good did that do?
Now the council can’t or won’t rein him in. Too much “temporary” money, too many full-time, long-term positions and other priorities that can’t be sustained. As you’ve noted, supporters try to sell this as for the schools and students, but all those unions wouldn’t be pushing the tax hike if they weren’t due to get a considerable amount of the payout.
Please don’t quote me by name. I’m sure there are a lot of us out there, though. My husband has written in, too, stressing the unsustainability of the economics here. But we’re afraid no one is listening because the unions are too loud.
The irony is we are solid Democrats and union supporters but find ourselves lumped in with tax-hating Republicans and “crazies.” Ugh. No, we just don’t like being stuck with the bill because of a spendthrift executive and a namby-pamby council.
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If there are more Democrats who feel like this, the county may be headed for a day of reckoning in November 2024 as at least one charter amendment – and possibly others – could be on the ballot.