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). Today we list very important events, which are those in our third grouping (events 11-15). Here they are in chronological order.
First phase of public school desegregation is completed (1961)
Source: As with many other groundbreaking milestones, Montgomery County was the first in its state to desegregate the schools. But it was tumultuous, divisive, and was only accomplished in stages. Yet ultimately it happened in 1955, just over a year from the Supreme Court decision. According to a history of MCPS desegregation, “All other counties in Maryland were slower to respond to the mandate, choosing more conservative methods that delayed compliance with the ruling into the late 1960s. Prince George’s County, for example, was not significantly integrated until 1974.” After MCPS integrated, “Montgomery Junior College began to accept black students. The Montgomery County Recreation Department opened all 49 recreation centers to an integrated public and buses were no longer segregated.” There was perhaps no other event so defining for what Montgomery County stood for and still does today.
AP: This was a nationwide process mandated by the U.S. Supreme Court’s Brown vs Board of Education decision. The Montgomery County Historical Society has an excellent presentation documenting how this played out in MoCo from the experiences of five Black women who lived through it. I call this a “first phase” because this issue has never been truly resolved, playing a role in the 2020 school board race and perhaps future elections.
First Adequate Public Facilities Ordinance (1973)
AP: This was the beginning of MoCo’s efforts to systematically link growth to infrastructure. Here is how the Maryland Department of Planning defines adequate public facilities ordinances:
Adequate Public Facilities Ordinances (APFOs) are an effort to phase the provision of public facilities consistent with a locally adopted comprehensive plan. An APFO ties development approvals under zoning and subdivision ordinances to specifically defined public facility standards. They are designed to slow the pace of development or in extreme cases to delay development approvals in an area until adequate service levels are in place or reasonably assured.
In plain English, an APFO says that if the roads are too congested, if the school classrooms are too crowded, if the water system cannot provide enough water, if the sewer pipes or treatment plant are full, or if there are not enough playing fields for recreational use, then development cannot be approved until the problem is corrected. At the same time, however, an APFO is not the appropriate tool to stop growth that is otherwise consistent with local zoning. The application of an APFO must be associated with a funding source to remedy whatever the constraint on growth approval might be.
Source: Efforts to measure, manage and control growth have failed to relieve traffic congestion or school overcrowding but they have limited economic development in the East County and made it harder and more expensive to build housing.
Council passes Moderately Priced Dwelling Unit (MPDU) ordinance (1974)
Source: Along with the creation of the Housing Opportunities Commission as a quasi-independent agency, this helped facilitate the development of affordable housing despite strong political opposition in many if not most parts of the county.
Source: It has had less of an impact than anticipated.
Source: It accomplishes the goal of increasing moderately-priced housing stock without public subsidies, but at the cost that the non-MPDU units will be priced higher whenever feasible for developers to make the dollars lost (in their view) on building MPDUs. The revisions to the MPDU law two decades ago eliminated the loss of future MPDU units, which used to happen after ten years if the owner remained that long.
AP: This was an early and important step for inclusive zoning because it mandated that large new developments must set aside fixed percentages of their units as housing for moderate incomes. As of this writing, the ordinance has produced 16,703 moderately priced units.
Collective bargaining for county employees (1980s)
Source: Huge impact on our politics and budget.
Source: Made it harder but no less important that the county executive look out for taxpayers in negotiations since labor costs comprise 80% of the county budget, and that the county council members not outsource their judgement about the opportunity-cost, affordability and sustainability of collective bargaining agreements. Not surprisingly, union leaders seek blanket “yes” vote guarantees in candidate questionnaires. Although sometimes overlooked, it’s also critical to protect management rights for efficient and effective government. The long delayed but ultimately successful battle over effects bargaining with the police union is a prime example.
AP: This one was in my personal top five. Prior to the passage of multiple charter amendments and laws in the 1980s and later, county government labor organizations could meet and confer with management but did not have official collective bargaining. Once they got it, the county’s budget and politics changed forever. Unions with collective bargaining can negotiate provisions requiring the government to deduct member dues from paychecks and send them directly to the union treasury, enabling them to hire staff. They can also beef up their PACs and use them to play in county elections. And as the county council staff mentions every year, compensation growth is the number one driver of increased spending. The quest to pay for it is arguably the biggest single budget question in county government.
Public campaign financing (2014)
Source: Heralded as an antidote to the undue influence of developer contributions to the county executive and council races, public financing never had a chance to reach its full potential before developers set up PACs and began raising money for candidates outside the system. Then, because that didn’t end in a surefire victory for their candidates of choice and a lock on what they considered a “business-friendly” environment, they funded a ballot measure that would create an all-district member council. The at-large council members got their knickers in a twist in a big way. Even the district council members hated the idea. A deal was cut with the developers to back off their ballot initiative and the result was an 11-member council with four remaining at-large and seven district seats instead of five. However, fate is fickle and because of some unfortunate missteps by the developers that created a slate of candidates, not one which was Black in a county with a significant African American population, they ended up with egg on their face and a surprising swell of support and victory for one of the non-incumbent Black at-large candidates.
Source: Public financing reduced, especially for participating candidates in district races, the influence of big-money campaign contributions, and resulted in many more constituents making small contributions to candidates. Public financing made it possible for Marc Elrich and future small-donor-based candidates to compete for county executive (though David Blair probably would have won in 2018 if Berliner hadn’t mailed against him and would have won in 2022 if the Washington Post had endorsed earlier). Enables more candidates, including those without deep pockets or access to others with deep pockets, to run viable grass-roots campaigns for council and spurred several other Maryland counties and DC to enact very similarly-structured systems.
AP: Public financing is important, no doubt. But at this early point it’s a bit hard to properly compare it to other events. I have a huge amount of data for a long series examining it in the future.
Coming next: five extremely important events!