By Adam Pagnucco.
In Part One, I summarized how I asked my sources to help me construct a list of important events in county history since the 1960s. Part Two listed honorable mentions. Part Three listed significant events (events 16-20). Part Four listed very important events (events 11-15). Today we list extremely important events, which are those in our second grouping (events 6-10). Here they are in chronological order.
First election for district-based council seats with residency requirements (1990)
Source: Alters politics and responsiveness considerably.
Source: Together with the expansion from 7 to 9 and now 11 members, district-based council seats have changed how the body operates and have made it more parochial.
Source: Enabled grass-roots candidates and made possible successful door-to-door campaigns. Reduced interest group influence because of increased personal bonds between district council members and their constituents. Crucially, for a significant period of time, it led to more viewpoint diversity. Republicans were elected in two of the five district seats, and both Betty Ann Krahnke and Nancy Dacek were re-elected twice, with another Republican succeeding one of them for six years. (Democrats on the council tried to knock one or both of them out by placing them in the same district, but it failed when Dacek thwarted it by moving her residence).
AP: Prior to 1990, the council had district seats but any resident could vote for them, the same system the school board has. Since then, only district residents can vote for the council members who represent those districts. This has accomplished two things. First, district council members (at least the good ones) have a strong incentive to focus on constituent service. Second, this made it hard to defeat them. The last time a Democratic district council incumbent was defeated was in 1998 and most of them get no real opposition.
Redevelopment of Silver Spring (1990s-mid 2000s)
Source: The redevelopment of Silver Spring was a seminal moment in county history. It was also the symbolic peak of the business-labor alliance. Businesses supported more growth to expand the economy and support top-notch schools. Labor supported more growth to fund their contracts. The mistakes and dysfunction of the current council can largely be attributed to the fact that they didn’t live through this period.
Source: In the late 80s and early 90s, Silver Spring was dying. By all estimates, more than 200 businesses had fled the area and the vacancy rate hit 40 percent. Areas around Silver Spring were being pulled into the vortex and the blight was spreading. But because of the vision of what could be, the county took the bold step of investing more than $200 million to transform Silver Spring into a thriving city. It has since been dubbed both the “hippest city” and “most diverse city” in America. Unfortunately, Silver Spring has again fallen on hard times. Crime has been surging and businesses are leaving. The Washington Post called Discovery’s departure a “shot across the bow,” admonishing Montgomery’s political leaders that business climate matters. They obviously failed to heed that message as evidenced by the recently passed rent control law, which may not only pull Silver Spring down, but take the county with it.
AP: Downtown Silver Spring has regressed a bit over the last 15 years but it’s still a much more vibrant place than it was in the 1980s and the 1990s. Its success showed that the county government can substantially revitalize a community with vision, leadership, money and a real partnership with the private sector. Can we ever do this again?
Gazette ceases operations (2015)
Source: The Gazette’s comprehensive local coverage of Montgomery County and municipalities had a moderating impact on liberal county officials. The Gazette ended at the same time that Washington Post coverage of Montgomery County was steadily declining, which has continued since 2015. The Post now all but ignores county government issues, except for sensational crimes and scandals, an occasional story about a high-level political candidate, and a few stories with national implications.
Source: Representative of the erosion of local journalism that is shattering local small-d democratic participation in government.
Source: The death of the Gazette seemed irrelevant at the time. But politicians are attention-seekers, so something needed to fill the vacuum. Now, politicians seem to make policy based on the loudest voices on social media. I once attended an event where a council member spent the entire time on Twitter. There’s no way this can be good for government.
AP: A terrible loss for the county. I’m grateful that MoCo360 exists but it is nowhere near the Gazette at its peak, when it had individual beat reporters focused on many specific county communities. It’s coldly ironic that the Washington Post, which chose to close the Gazette, now has as its motto “Democracy Dies in Darkness.”
Term limits (2016)
Source: Important because it showed the electorate’s disgust with the overlordship of Silver Spring and Takoma Park.
Source: Simply put, term limits means that you can’t overtax Montgomery County residents and not pay the consequences. It also means more competition, accountability and churn for the county’s politicians.
Source: New blood can be healthy in any organization or group, but the influx of rookies in each of the last two election cycles has produced a Council that as a group does not seem to have a clear sense of its role or responsibilities. The addition of two district seats in 2022 aggravated the problem by throwing two more newbies into the mix.
AP: During my time in the county, I have never seen the voters more angry than when they approved term limits by 40 points. My precinct analysis showed how universal this was – consider that of the county’s 257 precincts, only four voted against term limits. County voters – a majority of whom are Democrats – do not want excessive tax hikes or political extremism. If only county leaders heeded that lesson.
Rent control passed (2023)
Source: Passing rent control was a generational mistake. This one policy will single-handedly doom the county for decades or until it is wholly repealed. Our county always risked a cycle of decline. Why you would carve that cycle into stone is unfathomable.
Source: Demonstrably bad public policy that will reduce future housing stock and result in at least slow degradation of existing apartments covered by the law as landlords minimize maintenance costs and cancel improvements if the law is in place for a significant period of time. However, it’s a little early to rank it higher on this list since it won’t take effect for another year and could be weakened through regulation, or, much better, repealed as was the county’s first rent control law.
Source: A sign that the lurch to the left is real and that the council is incapable of saying no to progressive activists.
Source: After more than a decade of stagnant business and employment growth, the council recently sealed the county’s fate by passing rent control and shoving Montgomery headfirst into an inescapable Doom Loop. Not only was the county’s office construction and occupancy already falling prior to the pandemic, but because rent control is one of the strongest disincentives to real estate investment, it will now face an escalating downward trajectory and a shrinking tax base.
AP: The biggest single mistake I have personally witnessed in my time of writing about and working in county government.
Coming next: the series concludes with our top five events!