By Adam Pagnucco.
As of this writing, there are two plans on the table for the county’s FY27 operating budget. There is County Executive Marc Elrich’s recommended budget, which relies on a property tax increase, an income tax increase and a large number of fee increases to produce a 5.7% tax-supported spending increase. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Washington-Arlington-Alexandria CPI-U rose by 3.0% between March 2025 and March 2026. Then there is Council President Natali Fani-González’s budget proposal, which would offer smaller raises for county employees and a smaller increase for MCPS to produce a 3.3% tax-supported spending increase. Both proposals contain unpopular components and would require tough votes to pass.
And now there is a “plan” from Council Member Will Jawando, who is running for county executive. Except here is the problem: it’s not a plan at all. Unlike the proposals from Elrich and Fani-González, Jawando offers rhetoric with no basis in math.
Consider this video posted on Jawando’s Facebook page.
Jawando wants to scrap the property tax increase, keep all of Elrich’s funding for MCPS, fund every penny of Elrich’s collective bargaining agreements and triple the inflation increase for nonprofit funding from Elrich’s 2.5% to 7.5%.
Let’s do some basic math. According to county council staff, Elrich’s 6.3 cent property tax hike would raise $165 million. That’s a nontrivial amount. Forfeiting that money would require alternative revenue sources and/or reduced spending growth (as Fani-González proposes).
I have not seen a written plan from Jawando as the county executive and the council president have offered. But he did tell Bethesda Today this:
To generate revenue without a property tax rate increase, Jawando called for keeping the income tax rate at 3.2% for most county residents while increasing it to 3.3% for those making more than $500,000 annually.
He said that plan would generate $8 million in additional fiscal year 2027 tax revenue that could be put toward a larger inflationary increase in funding the county provides to its nonprofit partners than what Elrich has proposed.
In the absence of other specific adjustments such as the ones offered by Fani-González, Jawando is attempting to replace $165 million in property taxes with $8 million in income taxes. And he proposes to keep the main drivers of county spending in place along with a tripling of the inflation increase for nonprofits. Where would the money come from to accomplish all this?
It’s absolutely bonkers. No mathematician – or anyone else with sanity and honesty – would claim that 165 equals 8. In twenty years of following MoCo politics, I have never seen anything like it.
One wonders what kind of budgets Jawando would craft if he were to become county executive.