By Adam Pagnucco. The title of this post is what you will soon be calling Delegate Ariana Kelly (D-16), who has announced that she is seeking the State Senate seat…
By Adam Pagnucco. Few people other than central committee members like the current process of appointments for state legislative vacancies. Most folks who contact me about this prefer special elections,…
MoCo Restaurants in the Pandemic, Part Two
By Adam Pagnucco. Some in Montgomery County’s restaurant industry have claimed that the county’s COVID restrictions were unnecessarily harsh and inflicted more economic damage than restrictions in other parts of…
MoCo Restaurants in the Pandemic, Part One
By Adam Pagnucco. MoCo’s restaurant community has long had an up-and-down relationship with the county government. On the one hand, restaurant owners and managers frequently complain about issues like parking,…
Is This Public Funding of Advocacy?
By Adam Pagnucco. In 2019, the county council passed legislation to establish the Policing Advisory Commission (PAC), which is charged with advising the council on policing issues. The commission is…
Do We Want More Housing or Not?
By Adam Pagnucco. Recently, former Council Member Hans Riemer published a guest column in Maryland Matters claiming that the county council had made “historic progress on housing.” There is no…
Ranked Choice Voting, Part Four
By Adam Pagnucco. Compared to traditional elections, ranked choice voting (RCV) produces different outcomes only two percent of the time. That’s because most elections in which RCV is an option…
Guest column by Link Hoewing, Jim Brown and Tom Kettler. Last week on December 29th, hundreds of citizens from Poolesville and the surrounding Ag Reserve in Western Montgomery County gathered…
Are We Afraid of Political Diversity?
By Adam Pagnucco. We hear it all the time: Montgomery County is a diverse place. And it’s true. We are diverse in terms of race, religion, culture, language, national origin,…
Ranked Choice Voting, Part Three
By Adam Pagnucco. Part One gave an example of how ranked choice voting (RCV) works and Part Two described our dataset of more than 1,000 RCV-eligible elections from across the…