By Adam Pagnucco.
Yesterday, the county council began consideration of County Executive Marc Elrich’s FY27 operating budget, which contains a property tax increase, an income tax increase, many fee increases and advocacy for two new special taxing districts. The tax and fee recommendations follow many years of lagging economic competitiveness which has been exacerbated by President Donald Trump’s assault on MoCo’s core industry, the federal government. MoCo has raised taxes before, but this year, Democratic primary voters are overwhelmingly opposed to another broad-based tax hike.
Council Member Andrew Friedson, who is running for executive and spotlighting his opposition to tax increases, offered a full-throated condemnation of the county’s fiscal policy from the dais yesterday. The context of his remarks can be found in the council staff’s introductory memo on the budget, which found in part:
1. Average annual increases in property tax bills, mostly driven by rising assessments, have “far exceeded the average annual inflation rate” in the last four years. The staff’s analysis tracks with my estimate of double-digit property tax bill increases this year and I will be offering more historical data on that issue soon.
2. Despite these rising revenues, the executive’s budget proposes using “$191.1 million from the County’s Undesignated Reserves to fund the proposed FY27 Operating Budget, $181.5 million of which is for ongoing uses.” This use of one-time revenues to fund ongoing spending creates an obvious sustainability problem that will inevitably create pressure for future tax increases.
3. Mostly due to the above use of reserves for ongoing spending, the current budget is projected to create a $257 million structural deficit in FY28. Let’s note that Elrich, who is term limited, will no longer be the county executive by then.
I will have a lot more about that staff memo (read the whole thing, folks!), but for now, let’s turn it over to Friedson. A video of his remarks along with a transcript appears below.
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@Andrew_Friedson really hits the nail on the head here. pic.twitter.com/oX0qZwNPVO
— Aaron (@AaronDrol) April 7, 2026
We’re not talking about cuts. We’re talking about what is the rate of increase in the county budget that we can actually afford.
The county budget has increased by 44% over the last eight years. There are very few residents whose household budgets are increasing by 44%. And you heard colleagues talk about this dynamic. This is a continued frustration that this council has been raising the alarm on of the use of one-time funds for ongoing expenses. It is unprecedented to have a situation where year in and year out, we are increasing taxes as proposed by the county executive and increasing the structural deficit. That’s almost impossible to do. And yet somehow you have figured out a way to do it. And that is crazy.
So we’re raising taxes on working families and increasing our fiscal problems. Generally, you ask residents to sacrifice, to pay higher costs, in order to solve fiscal problems. And here we’re asking residents to increase their costs and make tremendous sacrifice at a time when they are struggling more than they have before and we’re increasing our fiscal problems and we’re going to have only more issues down the road.
And so we’re going to ask them to pay more and more. And this is going to become, as it has, a vicious cycle.