By Adam Pagnucco.
In the introduction, I explained the methodology my panel of historians and I used to compile a list of the most important events in MoCo history since the 1960s. Each part of this series will contain a list of five events, with each list of five shown as a bucket of ascending importance. The final part of this series will list the top five, those that my sources regard as transformational.
Today, we will start with five events that did not make the final lists but received enough comment to warrant honorable mention. They are reported in chronological order with comments from me and my sources.
Ride On system starts (1975)
Source: Despite its self-image as a stubbornly and proudly suburban place, Montgomery County has more and better bus and rail transit service than almost any other county that does not include a major city, allowing the growth of several urban centers that make it fundamentally different than most suburbs.
Source: Ride On was established initially to feed Metrorail, but grew to be a vital general bus system.
AP: Ride On is the largest local bus service in the Washington region aside from WMATA and is one of the largest bus services in the country. Starting and maintaining it is a major achievement for the county. However, the system’s ridership is in long-term decline and it’s an open question whether it will ever rebound.
First Annual Growth Policy ordinance (1986)
Source: The Annual Growth Policy (AGP) establishes rules governing (1) how much money developers must contribute toward the cost of building roads and schools and (2) whether and how development will be restricted in the event roads or schools in the vicinity are congested or overcrowded. In the past related policies have included rules addressing sewer capacity and the AGP now also covers contributions toward transit, bicycling, and pedestrian infrastructure.
The policy is revised every four years and has evolved to adopt and then abandon a variety of extraordinarily complicated methods for measuring and evaluating whether a particular segment of roadway or school is adequate to accommodate additional traffic or school children and what to about it in the event of a finding of inadequacy.
AP: Now called the Growth and Infrastructure Policy, the AGP has historically been used to balance growth and infrastructure. It has changed over time as the council has swung between pro-growth and slow growth majorities. This briefing by planning department staff summarizes it well.
Republicans eliminated from county elected office (2006)
Source: This event is frequently undersold. It shouldn’t be. The elimination of Republicans turned Democrats on each other and incentivized some Democrats to lurch to the far left without consequence. A Howie Denis or two on the current council would certainly be something that could mitigate their madness.
Source: It was the beginning of the end of fiscal responsibility on the county council.
Source: While the Democrats who now hold a monopoly on elected office are not of one mind or ideological stripe, there’s no denying that the range of views represented has narrowed considerably, with the terms of debate among electeds shifting farther and farther to the left. Whether the voters have moved as far is another question.
AP: It seems like the ancient past but MoCo once had quite a few Republicans in office. In fact, in the 1994-98 period, one quarter of all MoCo state and county office holders were in the GOP. Many of these Republicans were pretty liberal by the standards of today’s national GOP. For example, the last two Republicans to be defeated in 2006 – Council Member Howie Denis and Delegate Jean Cryor – were both on the Apple Ballot in their general elections. With Republicans gone and unlikely to return soon, the Democrats have been free to move further and further left. The only brake might be ballot questions.
Great Recession devastates county budget (2009-12)
Source: Compared to many other parts of the country (see, e.g., Florida) the Great Recession had relatively little impact on Montgomery County at the time, because government employment provided a cushion or floor under the economy that prevented a huge meltdown in employment or the housing market. On the other hand, in retrospect the Great Recession marked the end of a long run of strong growth in Montgomery County, and we have never fully regained our mojo.
AP: I worked at the county council for part of this period. The Great Recession devastated the county budget and required a series of historic budgets cuts as well as a huge energy tax hike, the latter of which has been made mostly permanent. The fiscal discipline was temporary but any government officials who served during these years will never forget it. And in line with what my source above said, the county’s private sector employment has still not recovered to its pre-recession 2006 peak as of this writing.
COVID pandemic (2020-22)
AP: COVID was a huge event everywhere. Many of my sources disliked ranking national or worldwide events because we were focused on local history, but if I had explicitly told them to include such things, I am sure they would have ranked this much higher. Besides the loss of life, the advent of long COVID and the pandemic’s economic disruption, the legacy of COVID that’s relevant to the county may be the persistence of remote work and the resulting office vacancies. That could challenge our economy and budget for years while possibly providing a bit of relief for our beleaguered transportation system.
Coming next: five significant events!