REVOLT!

In a moment that defined their political careers, Montgomery County Council Members Duchy Trachtenberg, Phil Andrews and Valerie Ervin put the fate of the public employees’ cost of living adjustments on the table last Friday. Present to greet them were over 300 chanting, stomping, clapping and occasionally yelling union members.


Council Members Trachtenberg, Andrews and Ervin are members of the council’s Management and Fiscal Policy (MFP) Committee. The committee’s charge on Friday was to discuss the extent to which savings on the county’s labor costs should be applied to fix its $297 million budget deficit. “Labor savings” ultimately means funding less for personnel costs than is called for in the county’s collective bargaining agreements: a practice derisively labeled by the unions as “contract busting.”

A word about the union members in the pictures. Assembled by pugnacious MCGEO President Gino Renne in the nearby County Executive Office Building, they were in no mood for “contract busting” and marched across a rain-soaked street to confront their council overseers. Their radioactive yellow battle color is not intended to please the eye and it certainly does not. It is designed to attract attention. They certainly received plenty of it on Friday.

Council Member Trachtenberg, chairwoman of the MFP Committee, opened the meeting with new transfer and recordation tax receipt numbers for April. Transfer and recordation taxes depend on property sales and they have been devastated by the recent collapse in the county’s real estate and construction market. According to Ms. Trachtenberg, the county received $13 million in transfer and recordation taxes in April 2008, down from $18 million in April 2007. For the year to date, transfer and recordation taxes totaled $138 million, down from $180 million the year prior. “Taxpayers are reaching a breaking point,” declared Ms. Trachtenberg and that justified a 2% reduction in the unions’ negotiated COLAs.


Council Member Andrews agreed. Citing the fact that personnel costs accounted for 80% of the county’s budget, he told the ornery union members, “What’s fair is to ask everyone to help.” As he has for months, he criticized the unions’ agreements as “unaffordable” and stated flatly, “I would not have negotiated the contracts that came over to us.” Supporting Ms. Trachtenberg, he said, “I believe that the 2% COLA reduction is a fair way to go.”

Pictures cannot do justice to the unholy din created by the roaring public employees. Hundreds of police officers, bus drivers, librarians, deputy sheriffs, correctional officers and park and planning workers rose to their feet to challenge Council Members Trachtenberg and Andrews. “What are you giving back?” one cried. “We are the taxpayers!” another yelled. “You’re hitting us twice!” pointed out one employee who was also a county resident. Worker after worker decried simultaneous increases in fuel and food costs, cuts in county services and proposed cuts in COLAs as a squeeze on their standard of living from multiple sides.

And then Ms. Ervin took the mike. She is a 25-year veteran organizer and trainer in the labor movement and everyone knew what she would say. “I was a proud member of the UFCW union,” she announced to the crowd. “We do not have to balance this budget on the backs of working people.” She recounted a bookful of statistics on poverty and income inequality to the groans of the audience (some of which we will examine on this blog) and concluded with, “Montgomery County is affluent for only some people.” “I believe that cutting salaries will hurt our local economy,” she said, “and I will not support a 2% COLA reduction.” We present the crowd’s reaction below.


In the end, the MFP Committee did not recommend a 2% COLA reduction. Instead, Ms. Trachtenberg introduced a motion calling for $40 million in “labor savings” with the exact mechanism to be decided later by the rest of the County Council. Mr. Andrews concurred and Ms. Ervin ferociously dissented. Neither the council members nor the staff justified this particular number against a lesser or greater amount. No mention was made by anyone of the unions’ identification of $67 million in additional revenues and savings as reported on this blog. The Post and the Gazette also omitted that fact from their coverage.

So what will become of the committee’s proposal for “labor savings,” a euphemism for underfunding the contracts? There do not appear to be any other votes on the council for the MFP Committee’s proposal, especially considering the fact that the union contracts are affordable in the next fiscal year. Instead, a rough consensus is forming in favor of a slightly lower property tax increase than that proposed by the County Executive along with a carbon tax proposed by Council Member Nancy Floreen.


But even that plan involves breaking the county’s charter limit on property tax increases, which generally holds tax receipt gains to a level equaling the increase in the consumer price index. Seven of the eight County Council Members must vote to exceed that limit. Both Council Members Trachtenberg and Andrews oppose breaking the charter limit, enough to kill any property tax hike. Will either of them budge on that position, thus enabling the union contracts to be preserved? That is the big question. We will have an answer by Thursday.

Nancy Floreen Calls for Across-the-Board Spending Cuts

Montgomery County Council Member Nancy Floreen challenged all county agencies to present a plan to cut their budgets by 2% below the County Executive's proposal on her blog today.

Floreen contends that a 2% across-the-board cut would enable the council to chop the County Executive's property tax increase in half. However, because she would still break the charter limit, her proposal would require seven votes to pass. Floreen argues:

As far as I am concerned, the proposed tax burden is untenable, particularly for the average homeowner facing increased fuel, food and health care costs. I am afraid that this budget is way out of line. In today’s economy, it is unaffordable... I know my colleagues have put their hearts into trying to limit spending. But I don’t believe we have gone far enough. Our neighbors in Fairfax County, the District of Columbia, and Prince George’s County are looking at budget increases of no more than 1.3%. We in Montgomery County need to join the rest of the region in looking toward a more sustainable budget.

It is impossible to overstate the turmoil going on in Rockville right now over the budget. Two council members - Duchy Trachtenberg and Phil Andrews - oppose a property tax increase, enough votes to kill it. Council Member Trachtenberg is eyeing the county's labor contracts for savings. The County Council's Education Committee voted to restore $26 million for public schools and $9.1 million for Montgomery College last week. How can resistance to the property tax hike, increases for education, adherence to union contracts and Floreen's call for across-the-board cuts be reconciled?

We'll find out soon enough. Zero hour for the budget is next week.

More Wobbling on the Property Tax

While the great debate between David Lublin and myself over the property tax is now over, the great tumult over the issue on the County Council is just getting started.

The Gazette reveals that Council President Mike Knapp is now uncertain about his vote on the County Executive's property tax proposal. This follows votes against the tax in the Management and Fiscal Policy Committee by Council Members Duchy Trachtenberg and Phil Andrews and an abstention by Valerie Ervin. Council Member Nancy Floreen has also expressed doubts about the tax.

Because the District 4 council seat will not be filled until after the budget is decided, seven of the remaining eight Council Members must vote to break the charter limit to pass the property tax hike. So far, we count two votes against, two votes not committed and four votes with no expressed position. That's a bad sign for passage of the tax hike.

Do any of our readers know if it's possible for the County Council to turn down the property tax hike and not re-open the public employee contracts?

MoCo Property Tax Increase in Doubt

Last Friday, Montgomery County Council Member Duchy Trachtenberg flatly told the Gazette, "I do not support going over the charter limit." This is a serious blow against passage of a county property tax increase.

Article 3, Section 305 of Montgomery County's charter restricts property tax increases to the change in the Consumer Price Index with exceptions for "(1) newly constructed property, (2) newly rezoned property, (3) property that, because of a change in state law, is assessed differently than it was assessed in the previous tax year, (4) property that has undergone a change in use, and (5) any development district tax used to fund capital improvement projects." Seven out of the nine County Council Members must vote to override this limit and raise the property tax by a higher amount.

To close a $297 million county budget deficit, County Executive Ike Leggett offered a budget that combined spending cuts with a $128 million property tax increase. Leggett's property tax proposal combines a 7.5% rate increase with a hike in the property tax credit for homeowners from $613 to $1,014, thereby making the tax over-weighted towards commercial properties and higher-value homes.

Council Member Trachtenberg was the first member of the council to openly oppose the property tax increase. Instead, she favors scrutinizing the county's labor costs. According to the Gazette:

Montgomery County needs a "good black and white description" of how much employee salaries, health benefits and pay raises are going to cost the county as it faces a budget crisis, the chairwoman of the Management and Fiscal Policy committee said Thursday.

"It’s very important that we have the bottom line and we have a sense of how we’re going to pay for the wages and the cost of living increases over the next few years," said Councilwoman Duchy Trachtenberg (D-At large) of North Bethesda. "The problems we’re going to face are not for one year only."

Trachtenberg said the contracts with county employees should be honored.

"But I’m suggesting we need to identify what we’re going to pay in these contracts and how we’re going to pay for them," she said.

Council Member Nancy Floreen has also been skeptical of the tax hike, telling the Gazette, "My basic reaction is that I have to be persuaded that we need to expand the property tax rate as much as [Leggett] is proposing... Those are big dollars they are counting on to pull them through and I’m just not there yet." Last Friday, Floreen said on her blog, "Given that these [property tax] increases would be in addition to the State’s bump in income taxes and the sales tax, I’m not convinced the community can bear them. On the other hand, the alternative would be significant cuts in service, which I’m not sure folks are willing to do either."

If Council Members Trachtenberg and Floreen both oppose the property tax increase, it will fail. Because the winner of the District 4 vacancy will not be certified until May 23, after the budget has been passed, there will be only six other sitting members on the County Council when the tax's fate is decided. Seven votes are needed to break the charter limit.

Nancy Floreen Joins the Blogosphere

The blogosphere has a new member: Montgomery County Council Member Nancy Floreen. Welcome to our world, Nancy! You will soon learn the joys of staying up until two in the morning to overcome writer’s block, trying to figure out html script errors and wondering who is using those anonymous screen names to make the snarky comments you’re tempted to delete.

Other politicians have tried to run blogs before. They have usually succumbed for two reasons: lack of regular postings and boring content. Now I am not worried about regular postings with Ms. Floreen. She is a very hardworking council member who labors on many issues every day and knows them all inside-out. I am sure she will feed her blog well. But on content, well...

You see, we really like Nancy Floreen. She is extremely charming, has a playful sense of humor and is very engaging in person. But we the voters give our politicians every incentive to be boring. I mean, when they say anything halfway interesting, we punish them for it. Just look at Robin Ficker. OK, bad example… How about George English? OK, another bad example, but you get my point. Only a few politicians regularly flout this rule (including our friend Dana Beyer, who is always good for an occasional blog post). So as one of Ms. Floreen's supportive constituents, I would like to start her off to blogging fame and fortune by suggesting she answer a few questions of mine. If she did, it would surely draw lots of eyes to her blog! Here goes:

1. Is it true that it once took four MCPD officers to force Marc Elrich to wear a tie for a council hearing?

2. Forget transgendered people. Can we pass a law that keeps the shower nuts out of the bathrooms?

3. True or false: George Leventhal once beat Mike Knapp in a game of one-on-one basketball.

4. Why do council staffers escort visitors out of the council offices? Don't you trust us not to steal the staplers? Or is this policy only used for me?

5. MoCo is not getting enough transportation money from the state. What if the county council members formed a human chain across the Beltway as a show of resolve?