By Adam Pagnucco.
Back in 2018, then-Council Member Marc Elrich campaigned for county executive on an important promise: he was going to work with his endorsers in the county government unions to restructure government, thereby avoiding the need for tax increases. He said this over and over again on the campaign trail. He was crystal clear about it in a November 2018 op-ed in the Washington Post, in which he wrote:
Far from saddling taxpayers with higher bills, I will streamline county government. Unions and their members, our county’s workforce, know and trust me. That is why we announced our plan to restructure county government together. Our county is facing difficult financial times; without thoughtful changes, employees will face across-the-board cuts.
The county council is now considering Elrich’s eighth – and last – recommended operating budget as county executive. In all that time, he has made no serious effort at restructuring. The closest his administration came was through a “Cost Efficiency Study Group” report that recommended eliminating nine positions. That’s not 900 or 90, folks – it’s NINE. For the sake of comparison, the county government (not including MCPS, the college and Park and Planning) has more than 11,000 full-time equivalent positions and Elrich has added FTEs in every year of his term.
Elrich may have done nothing to restructure government, but he has relentlessly sought tax hikes. Here’s a list.
In 2020, just as the county was entering the pandemic, Elrich proposed a $66 million property tax increase. The county council said no.
That same year, Elrich proposed a charter amendment making property tax increases easier.
He also proposed a new methodology of calculating the charter limit that would have collected more property taxes.
In his 2022 reelection campaign, Elrich took credit for not raising taxes despite proposing a property tax increase that the county council rejected.
In 2023, Elrich recommended raising property taxes by 10 percent. The council gave him almost half of what he wanted.
Elrich also recommended slashing the county’s match of the state’s Earned Income Tax Credit by almost half, a cruel tax increase on low income workers.
Last year, Elrich proposed another property tax increase which, if adopted, would have been the highest property tax rate in more than twenty years. When the council showed little appetite for it, Elrich proposed raising income taxes instead. The council rejected both options and wound up using a one-time diversion of retiree health care money to balance the budget instead.
In addition to all of the above, Elrich has relentlessly lobbied Annapolis to allow him to impose extra property taxes on commercial properties. Apartment buildings (which are defined as commercial buildings by state assessment classifications) already face limits on revenues imposed by the 2023 rent control law, which Elrich supports, so any new tax increases may threaten their solvency.
Elrich is of course not done. In his new recommended operating budget, he wants to raise the weighted average property tax rate to a new record level, raise the county’s income tax and create new special taxing districts within a half mile of most major county corridors (like MD-355). Since the spending in his budget depends on the new revenues he wants, the county council will face a challenge bringing it back into balance without his new taxes.
President Donald Trump’s return to office was always going to be a problem for Montgomery County, but if we had a leader who was interested in improving the efficiency of government, we would have had a better chance to deal with him without repeat tax increases. Instead, we have the worst of all worlds – some of the highest income tax rates on the East Coast, rising property tax rates, a non-competitive economy, soaring county employee compensation costs and an increasingly dire housing shortage caused by rent control. Linking all of it is a culture of denial among county leaders which Elrich did not create but nevertheless happily embraces.
Elrich will be poorly remembered for his broken promise and its ruinous results. Will the next county executive be better?