By Adam Pagnucco.
“I can never trust them again.”
That’s what one source told me recently. I’ll get to the targets of that quote, but first a story from days past.
One of my favorite elected officials from my time in the county is former Council Member Phil Andrews. That’s not because of his positions on issues, with which I occasionally disagreed. Phil was one of the best because of how he behaved in office. Specifically, he had a kind of boy scout honesty that belonged more in Mayberry than Rockville. When I worked at the council, I would often shop bills to other offices. Phil never, ever misled me. He would often say, “I haven’t studied that bill yet so I don’t have a position right now.” OK, I would come back later. He often took his time to develop his stance on legislation. Sometimes he would have questions, sometimes not. Once he made up his mind, that was it. There would be no squirming, no caving, no fingers in the air, no retreating in the face of pressure. He did exactly what he said he would do on the dais. Whether he was with you or against you, you could always count on his word.
I can’t say the same thing about every council member with whom I worked.
That brings us to the present day and the issue of the hour: rent control. Originally, there were two rent control bills at the council: a weak one sponsored by a council majority (Council Members Gabe Albornoz, Marilyn Balcombe, Natali Fani-Gonzalez, Andrew Friedson, Sidney Katz and Dawn Luedtke) and a much stricter one called the HOME Act sponsored by Council Members Will Jawando and Kristin Mink. I knew that some of the supporters of the council majority bill, both inside and outside the building, disliked rent control and I asked them why they favored it. There were two reasons. First, they thought that something would pass and they wanted to minimize the damage. Second, they wanted six votes and the only way to get them was to protect Council Member Natali Fani-Gonzalez. “Natali has needs,” one told me.
Fani-Gonzalez is a freshman council member who told Our Revolution that she supported rent control during last year’s campaign and was supported by many pro-rent control progressive groups. But she was also endorsed by the developer group Progressives for Progress and the realtors, both of whom oppose rent control. She was in a jam. At the same time, rent control skeptics needed every vote they could get, especially since County Executive Marc Elrich has wanted to institute rent control for decades. So the weak rent control bill was designed in part to give Fani-Gonzalez a way out. It would allow her to thread the needle, or so folks believed at the time, and allow the cobbling together of six votes.
Fani-Gonzalez climbed on board eagerly. When the weak bill was introduced on March 7, she said the following from the dais:
I wanted to make sure that we, that in Montgomery County, that we will leave something that is actually responsible and that won’t stop development and it will also protect tenants. So I am very happy and glad and honored to have Council Members Luedtke, Council Member Gabe Albornoz, Council Vice-President Friedson, Council Member Balcombe and Council Member Sidney Katz join on this. This isn’t an issue that shouldn’t be led by one or two people. It should be led by the council as a group with different ideas, with different perspectives, working with every single segment of our community to put something forward. And with that, I look forward to the public hearing and to council sessions to make sure that we have a bill that makes Montgomery County proud of.
No one loved the weak bill. Its backers had to hold their noses to support it and most of them would have preferred no rent control at all. Those who favored rent control were all in for the much stronger Jawando-Mink HOME Act. And the latter group could bring genuine political muscle to bear. So it goes almost every time that centrists face off against progressives in MoCo.
Progressive pressure, including an ambush of Fani-Gonzalez at the Gaithersburg Book Festival, paid off. The week before the Planning, Housing and Parks (PHP) Committee met to consider the rent control bills, at least one of the weak bill’s sponsors began to wobble. My sources disagree on whether it was Sidney Katz alone or both Katz and Fani-Gonzalez. One said, “It’s a distinction without a difference” since both were now in play. It was clear that a change was necessary to hold the council majority. By the end of the week, my sources were reporting that the weak bill would be amended and advanced. Specifically, the maximum allowable rent increase would be changed from CPI plus 8 points to CPI plus 6 points with a cap of 9. While this amendment was disliked by more than one sponsor, it was hoped that it would hold Katz and Fani-Gonzalez and potentially pick up one or more votes from the three council members who did not sponsor either bill (Evan Glass, Laurie-Anne Sayles and Kate Stewart). When the PHP committee held its work session on Monday, June 26, Fani-Gonzalez – a PHP member – was expected to introduce the change.
Rent control supporters confront Fani-Gonzalez at the Gaithersburg Book Festival in May.
Instead, Fani-Gonzalez introduced an amendment changing the maximum allowable rent increase to CPI plus 3 points with a cap of 6 percent, to which fellow PHP member Jawando ultimately agreed. (He reserved the right to press for a lower rate at full council.) Fani-Gonzalez also agreed with Jawando to scrap the bill’s exemption for single family homes and condos. This differed from the language she proposed in the committee packet which would have replaced that exemption with an exemption for “a rental unit owned by a corporate or natural person who owns no more than one rental unit in the County.”
Supporters of the weak bill inside and outside the building were blindsided and shocked. Before adjourning the committee session, PHP chair Friedson said, “We essentially amended the anti-gouging bill to look very similarly to the HOME Act.”
Afterwards, one of my sources said of Fani-Gonzalez and Katz, “I can never trust them again.” Several others agreed with this sentiment. One source who favored the weak bill said, “I have more respect for Jawando and Mink than these flip floppers because at least they are up front about where they stand.” It’s notable that Albornoz, Balcombe, Friedson and Luedtke all dropped their sponsorship of the bill after Fani-Gonzalez’s amendments.
What should we make of all this?
First, while most of the anger is currently directed at Fani-Gonzalez, it’s not just about her. Katz flipped too. In fact, he showed up at PHP to support Fani-Gonzalez’s rate amendment. Katz is 73 years old and term limited. He has likely run his last campaign and is therefore immune to electoral pressure. He changed his position anyway. My sources can’t explain his behavior.
Second, it’s not just about these council members. The business community never mobilized in any meaningful way to oppose rent control. Instead, some naively believed that the weak bill would pass. But with all the pressure coming from the left, there was no way the center could hold. The very existence of the weak bill conceded the principle of rent control with only the details left to be decided. In this environment of progressive militancy and business apathy, of course those details were going to be tightened.
Third, Fani-Gonzalez’s credibility has taken a huge hit. She had three paths. She could have supported the Jawando-Mink bill, which would have been expected given her support of rent control during the campaign. She could have avoided sponsoring either bill, which was the path chosen by Glass, Sayles and Stewart. But since she chose to sponsor the weak bill, she voluntarily got out on a limb with several colleagues. And then she sawed it off. No one in the building will forget this and it will permanently haunt her political career. Finally, she showed progressives that she would shift under pressure. The result will be more pressure. Believe that.
The last consequence is to the institution of the council. In Annapolis, the governor and the General Assembly’s presiding officers wield real power that can deter this kind of behavior. Punish one offender and others will fall in line. At the council, there is no equivalent structure. No council member has any power comparable to the speaker or the senate president and in a body with just 11 members, every vote matters. When trust breaks down and words are worthless, the result is free agency, back stabbing and anarchy. Blood sport reigns supreme while good policy withers and dies.
This story may appear to be about the rent control bill. It will certainly be part of that bill’s history, but at heart, it’s really about how to be an elected official. Phil Andrews understood that. He always told people exactly what he was going to do whether they agreed with him or not. As a result, he got respect.
And what will those who regularly choose the opposite path get?
Enemies. Misery. And ruin.