By Adam Pagnucco.
Below are the top ten stories on Montgomery Perspective in October 2026, ranked by page views.
1. Council Bill Blows $25+ Million Hole in the Budget
2. Jawando Bill Expands Political Appointments
3. Which Schools Will Close? Part Two: Rockville
4. MCPS’s Huge Health Care Hole
5. Which Schools Will Close? Part One
6. Do You Want to Work for Jawando?
7. Is MCPS Losing Students to Private Schools?
8. MCPS Responds on School Closures
9. Six Months to School Closure Decision
10. Why MCPS’s New Consolidation Plan Raises Serious Concerns for Montgomery County Families
The post on Council Member Will Jawando’s bill to expand political appointments should have been the leader for the month because it was published relatively early (on the 10th) and circulated for weeks. However, the post on the county council’s MCPS tax credit bill was published much later (on the 28th) and in just a couple days, it led October and became the 9th-most heavily read post of the year. It also beat out several posts on MCPS, a reliable page view leader.
Why did the tax credit bill get so much attention?
Readers who communicated with me are not hostile to MCPS employees, although they suspected politics were at work. (One told me, “I’m calling the bill what it is: pork, pork for our unions.”) But more of them were concerned about how the tax credit would be financed. Many are convinced that its cost, now estimated at more than $20 million, will be merely tacked onto the next tax increase. Fortifying that fear is that when the county council’s Government Operations and Fiscal Policy Committee unanimously voted to amend and send the bill to the full council, there was no discussion of how it could be afforded given the county’s immense structural deficit (estimated in May at $293 million).
County executive-elect Will Jawando would like to tax high earners, commercial property and data centers to balance the budget, but he needs enabling authority from the General Assembly to do a lot of that. Whatever the General Assembly does, it is unlikely to act before Jawando must send his recommended operating budget to the council on March 15. Absent action from Annapolis, Jawando’s policy menu is constrained. His choices are 1. Reduce spending growth, especially growth in compensation, 2. Raise income taxes on people making less than $150,000, 3. Raise property tax rates and 4. Raise energy taxes. There are no other choices that can add up to the hundreds of millions of dollars the county needs to tackle its nine-digit structural deficit.
On to November.