By Adam Pagnucco.
County Executive Marc Elrich, opining on management decisions under the purview of Superintendent Thomas Taylor, lashed out at MCPS’s decision to acquire more diesel buses last week. NBC4 carried this quote from Elrich:
“I actually think it’s wrong,” Montgomery County Executive Marc Elrich said.
“Maybe the county council and us need to consider legislation saying that county money can’t be spent on diesel buses,” he said. “Diesel buses are dirty. You know, they’re not even using natural gas buses, which are a step up. They’re picking the dirtiest vehicles to put on the road, and that’s not a good idea.”
Elrich appears unaware of the circumstances surrounding MCPS’s $168 million experiment with electric buses. It was one of the most wasteful procurements in MCPS history, a debacle bequeathed by Taylor’s predecessors which he has tried to fix. Elrich’s ignorance defies years-long reporting on the issue by local media including the Washington Post, Bethesda Today, WTOP, Fox 5, WJLA-7, WUSA-9, DC News Now and the county-funded Montgomery Community Media among others.
MCPS’s much-maligned electric bus contract had a shocking origin. According to the Appellate Court of Maryland, MCPS issued an RFP for electric bus acquisition in August 2020. Two of MCPS’s four bid scorers were managers in the district’s transportation department who had financially exploited an affiliate of the winning bidder. These managers later pleaded guilty to criminal activity and one went to jail, prompting State’s Attorney John McCarthy to label the episode “one of the worst financial crimes to ever victimize Montgomery County Public Schools.”
After the criminals were sentenced, the county’s Office of Inspector General released a bombshell report describing extensive contract failures by the vendor and openly calling the procurement “wasteful spending.” MCPS officials soon admitted to the county council that the vendor owed the district $1.5 million in performance fees due to its shortcomings in fulfilling the contract.
Later, this site revealed that MCPS management had been warned about the failures of the buses even before the inspector general’s report was released. Between September 2023 and January 2024, the Center for Effective School Operations (CESO) conducted a five part study on MCPS’s transportation program finding massive problems including overstated claims of performance, inaccurate estimates of costs and budget neutrality, problematic contract provisions and more. Afterwards, Taylor (who assumed his position long after the contract was signed) noted, “Electric buses require charging after morning routes and will not have adequate time to charge at an optimal capacity to perform transportation services during the middle of the day.” That limited their use in circumstances such as early release.
The final shoe to drop was a determination by the State Board of Education last November that the original contract was illegally awarded due to the criminal activity of two of MCPS’s bid scorers as described above. The contract is in active litigation even as I write this.
Clearly seeing the contract’s financial and performance problems, Taylor chose to discontinue more electric bus purchases while retaining the vendor to maintain the buses already in MCPS’s possession. That was a sensible compromise given the fact that the electric buses now comprised roughly 20% of MCPS’s fleet, creating a difficult operational challenge to quickly replace them. But legal issues remain and have yet to be resolved.
This is only part of the long history that has apparently escaped the county executive’s attention.
On the issue of electric buses, Elrich should look to his own administration. In 2024, the county government’s Ride On service released a plan to fully transition to electric buses by 2035. However, two months ago, Ride On admitted, “Due to infrastructure constraints, 61 small diesel buses have been refurbished to extend their service lives, delaying replacement until zero emission charging/fueling infrastructure plans are developed for all depots.”
Elrich’s opposition to spending county money on diesel buses apparently does not constrain his own bus service from doing exactly that. Here, the stench of hypocrisy joins the reek of ignorance.
Like all new technologies, electric buses are experiencing growing pains. Just because they can’t fulfill MCPS’s needs (and apparently Ride On’s needs) at this moment does not mean they won’t be able to do so in the future. That’s why Taylor’s decision was a reasonable one; he is keeping a presence in the electric bus market while also making sure that students have transportation to school. Such prudent decision-making does not deserve criticism from an executive whose own administration fails to implement his edicts.
Elrich should stick to what he is good at – proposing tax hikes and antagonizing other elected officials. And while happily engaged in all of that, he should leave the job of being superintendent to Taylor, the person who had the good sense to change course on one of the most wasteful procurements in MCPS history.