County Council: Tell Us More About Bait Cars

At a 7/28/08 work session of the County Council’s Public Safety Committee, Chairman Phil Andrews and committee members Marc Elrich and Don Praisner asked the Montgomery County Police Department for more information on successful bait car programs. Car thieves everywhere shuddered at the news.

Regular readers will remember how I declared war against car thieves after my neighbor’s car was stolen last fall. In researching the best practices for suppressing the lurking, squealing thieves, I quickly found British Columbia’s amazing baitcar.com website. British Columbia is one of dozens of jurisdictions in the U.S. and Canada that employs large, aggressive bait car programs to capture and deter car thieves. When a thief breaks into the bait car, its cameras begin recording, its GPS device activates and an alarm is triggered at police headquarters. The police then swoop in to capture the now-pitiful criminal and the video is posted on the Internet and other media outlets. The combined effect of apprehension, deterrence and the massive media campaigns that accompany these programs have produced double-digit declines in theft in British Columbia, Minneapolis, Dallas, Stanislaus County in California and other jurisdictions. Arlington County, Virginia reports that bait cars have helped cut its car theft totals to the lowest levels since 1965. Best of all, many bait car programs are paid in whole or in part by insurance companies. We have combined all of this information and more in the heavily-demanded Bait Car Bible available here.

The Public Safety Committee interviewed Acting Assistant Police Chief Wayne Jerman. Jerman said that Montgomery County purchased two bait cars in 2004: a 1991 Toyota Corolla and a 1995 Honda. Neither proved desirable to the car thieves, who have only committed one theft and one break-in on the cars over the past four years. Unlike other jurisdictions, the county does not promote the cars. (British Columbia’s famous slogan, “Steal a Bait Car. Go to Jail,” has been the centerpiece of its award-winning “advertising campaign.”) Jerman described the bait car programs in both Prince George’s County and Fairfax County as “successful” but did not have statistics on their performance.


Council Members Don Praiser (left) and Marc Elrich.

Chairman Andrews noted that Montgomery County experiences roughly 2,500 car thefts per year, much lower than in Prince George’s County (where it is 12,000 per year) but still, in his words, “a high plateau.” Mr. Andrews stated that vehicle-related thefts were the number one category of crime in Montgomery and handed out a reported crime list from the 7/17/08 Washington Post. Of the 120 Montgomery County crimes in that report, 56 were car thefts or car break-ins. Mr. Andrews told the Assistant Chief, “It seems to me we need to do more in this area, especially in those parts of the county where it is a problem.” He asked Jerman what more could be done to have a greater impact on car thefts.

Assistant Chief Jerman admitted that the police could use more bait cars, stating, “Two is not enough.” But he described them as “labor-intensive,” saying that each needed three officers – two to drive it to the drop-off point and another to monitor it from headquarters. The auto theft unit’s nine investigators together record a 70% recovery rate of stolen cars (but not the valuables inside), which everyone agrees is a good performance. But if the thieves were deterred from stealing the cars in the first place, how much more effective could the investigators be?


Public Safety Committee Chairman Phil Andrews.

Mr. Andrews then put his finger on the key issue: why have bait car programs worked so well in other places? Noting that British Columbia has used its program to cut its auto thefts from 26,000 in fiscal 2004 to 17,000 in fiscal 2007 – a decline of 35% – he told Jerman, “What I want to get is more details on how they do it... What have they done that has been so successful?” Mr. Andrews specifically asked for information on how funding is collected from insurance companies, how much costs are paid by the police themselves and how successful jurisdictions deploy the cars. Assistant Chief Jerman agreed to find out and the Public Safety Committee will reconvene in the fall.

It’s clear that the County Council, and Phil Andrews in particular, have heard us and are responding to our blockbuster letter from last fall. We will see whether the police believe that bait cars can work in Montgomery County. But if they can achieve the same success that other jurisdictions have seen, the county’s citizens will benefit in two ways:

1. The most common type of crime in the county will be seriously reduced.
2. Over the long run, the police may then be able to redeploy their resources to more serious problems, like home burglaries and violent crime.

As for the sniveling car thieves, I have one message for you: enjoy yourselves while you can because the good times won’t last forever. As our friends in British Columbia say:

STEAL A BAIT CAR. GO TO JAIL.

Update: The Gazette's coverage, which includes statistics on car thefts and break-ins, is here.

Update 2: Here's an article from the Washington Post detailing the successful use of a bait car by D.C. police in March.

In Praise of Phil Andrews

Margarita-drinking penguins surf off the sandy beaches of Antarctica. Osama bin Laden sips matzo ball soup in Tel Aviv. George W. Bush admits the Iraq War is a mistake. But in an even more unlikely event, I am praising Montgomery County Council Member Phil Andrews for winning a spending increase in this year’s budget. These are strange times indeed.

Regular readers know that I am a career trade unionist. During the last county budget round, I vigorously disagreed with Mr. Andrews’ recommendation to cut two percentage points from the public employees’ cost of living increase. I went out of my way to demonstrate how the unions’ contracts were affordable on this blog. And still Mr. Andrews faced down three hundred chanting, stomping union members and told them, “Employees need to do their part… It would be unfair to expect taxpayers to pay a tax increase to fully fund employee contracts that would be 8% next year.”

But Mr. Andrews is no mere budget cleaver. While he was pursuing labor savings, he was also trying to restore another part of the budget that was of utmost importance to the county. In his original budget plan, County Executive Ike Leggett proposed doing away with the police department’s community service officers (CSOs). The CSOs maintain regular contact with community leaders and citizens inside their districts and train them to implement Neighborhood Watch programs. My neighborhood had just started a watch program and feared seeing them abandoned just as we were creating one. Moreover, many African American, Latino and immigrant leaders protested losing an important communication channel to the police. The total savings from the elimination of the liaison officers was only projected to be $623,000 (out of a $297 million deficit).

Mr. Andrews, Chairman of the council’s Public Safety Committee, would have none of it. He declared:

The officers in these positions provide a crucial link between the department and the public and often are the main link between community members, HOAs and other groups... A relationship has developed between the CSOs and folks in the respective district that very much needs to continue.

Mr. Andrews promptly formed an alliance with Police Chief Tom Manger and guided the restoration of the CSOs through every step of the budget process. Other spending hikes and cuts would come and go, but the CSOs survived. Yes, Mr. Andrews wanted to limit spending in some areas, but he fought hard to fund a program he believed made sense. And as the summer crime season begins, the CSOs are working with my neighborhood and many others to greet the criminals with wary eyes in every house.

But that is not all. Last year, a group of nine civic associations in Silver Spring, Wheaton and Kensington representing 4,440 households wrote to the county asking for implementation of a bait car program. As we detailed in January, bait cars are decoys rigged with cameras and GPS devices by the police to catch car thieves. We asked Mr. Andrews to consider the idea, but that was before the budget crisis dominated Rockville. However, he never forgot about us and has scheduled a Public Safety work session on the issue on July 28. Perhaps he will agree with us that bait cars are a cost-effective way to fight vehicle crime and perhaps he will not. But the fact is that none of our associations are located inside his district and he had no direct self-interest in helping us. He listened to us anyway.

One of Rockville’s most brilliant lobbyists once told me, “I communicate with everyone. Someone might disagree with me nine times in a row, but they could be with me the tenth time.” And so it is with Phil Andrews. Even his detractors admit that he will tell you exactly what he thinks without hesitation and will stick to his word. Crime-weary neighborhoods are lucky to have him in Rockville; the criminals are not.

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.

Labor Between the Hammer and the Anvil

As Montgomery County's budget battle draws to a clamorous climax, a new bomb has been dropped.

Yesterday, Council Member Trachtenberg sent the following letter calling for a 2 percent cost of living reduction to each of the county's public sector unions:



The unions countered in two ways.

1. In a letter to Ms. Trachtenberg sent today, MCEA, SEIU Local 500 and the school supervisors listed $67 million in new revenues available to the council next year. Those revenues include:

$14 Million
Adjustments in OPEB [contributions to future retiree healthcare liabilities]; would allow for 8 year payout, but does not assume the same level of increase; $11 million in savings from MCPS and $3 million from other agencies.

$9 Million
Net gain from increases in energy tax [as proposed by Council Member Floreen].

$10 Million
Could be taken from PAYGO.

$19 Million
Reduction of .5% into the reserve [maintained by the county to protect its AAA credit rating].

$15 Million
Potential carry-over carry over funds that were set aside in the FY 08 budget for emergencies, such as snow removal that were not needed.

2. In their letter to Ms. Trachtenberg, the unions state, "An additional source of revenue is to take into account any revenues in excess of projections in the current budget. We have no knowledge of what that figure is since it has not been shared by the County Executive’s office." Indeed, rumors are flying that the county's income tax receipts may be higher than first thought. The unions have sent a Freedom of Information (FOIA) request to the County Executive's office seeking a monthly tabulation of new income tax revenues received from the state. They hope to discover evidence that income tax receipts are higher than projected, thus relieving the pressure on their contracts.

One of the sad aspects of this showdown is that it may not be necessary. A week ago, we demonstrated to our readers that the County Executive's budget projects $301 million in new revenues for FY09 against $154 million in added union labor costs. At least for next year, labor's cost of living adjustment is easily affordable. Nevertheless, the hammer is falling.

In the private sector, an employer could not do what the county is considering. If a private company attempted to unilaterally change a labor agreement, the union could strike, file unfair labor practice charges, get enforcement orders from the National Labor Relations Board and the courts and file suit to collect benefit contributions. Only employers under bankruptcy protection could unilaterally alter wage levels. Montgomery County may be in a recession, but it is not under the supervision of a bankruptcy judge!

The fate of the unions' COLAs is far from certain. Council Members Trachtenberg and Phil Andrews can block the County Executive's proposed property tax increase, which requires seven of the eight sitting council members to pass. But altering the union contracts would require five votes. It may be difficult for Ms. Trachtenberg and Mr. Andrews to find three more council members willing to cut the COLAs when there are less electorally-threatening alternatives available.

And if the council simultaneously rejects the property tax hike and rejects COLA reductions, what then? No one knows. But the choice must be made in less than a 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?

How to Calculate Your Property Tax Increase (Updated)

Much is being made of County Executive Ike Leggett’s proposal for a property tax increase. Here’s how to calculate what it means for you.

Leggett’s property tax proposal has two components. First, he is increasing the property tax rate. Second, he is also increasing the property tax credit that homeowners receive for their primary residences from $613 to $1,014. The combination of the rate increase and the tax credit increase skews the resulting tax hike towards homes that are worth more money.

So here’s how to determine how much more taxes you would pay under his proposal. First, look up the gross assessed value of your property on the county’s property tax account website. (This will be the assessment listed on the county property tax line at the top of the bill.) Second, if your home is your personal residence and you have lived in it for more than a year, you will likely have a county homestead credit. This credit is designed to prevent your net, or taxable assessment from increasing by more than 10% per year. Find your county homestead credit, which will appear in the middle of your bill if you have one, and subtract it from your gross assessment. This is your net assessment. Third, multiply the net assessment by 10% to estimate its value as of 7/1/08. (This assumes that your net assessment is still “catching up” to where it would be without the restraint of the homestead credit. The homestead credit, after all, restrains but does not eliminate taxable assessment increases.) Fourth, multiply your 2008 net assessment by 0.008208 and then subtract $613. This would be your county property tax levy without Leggett’s proposal. (It does not include state taxes, solid waste or water charges.) Fifth, repeat the above exercise by multiplying your 2008 net assessed value by 0.009779 and subtracting $1,014. This would be your county property tax levy under Leggett’s proposal. The difference is your county property tax increase if Leggett’s proposal was passed by the County Council.

The County Executive states that the median assessment for a Montgomery County home is currently $343,200. Under the math above, that home’s county property tax would rise from $2,204 to $2,342, or 6.3%. That's an increase of 38 cents per day. A home assessed at $220,000 would see a tax bill cut from $1,193 to $1,137, or 4.7%. A million-dollar house would see a tax bill increase from $7,595 to $8,765, or 15.4%. (That’s a good size hit on top of the recently-passed state millionaire tax.) The break-even point is $255,331 in net assessed value (after any homestead credit). Homes worth more than this would see a tax hike while homes worth less would see a tax cut.

I performed this math on my own house in Silver Spring. If I had no homestead credit, my home’s assessed value on 7/1/08 would be $463,953. If Leggett’s proposal were passed, my county property tax bill would rise from $3,195 to $3,523 – an increase of $328. That works out to 90 cents per day. But with a homestead credit, my home’s assessed value on 7/1/08 will be $328,544. So my county property tax bill would rise from $2,084 to $2,199 – an increase of $115. Now that’s 32 cents per day.

Try the above formula for your own home. We all have different economic circumstances. Some of you will conclude that your potential property tax increase is unaffordable for your personal budget. If that’s your opinion, you should certainly contact the County Council. But I am ready to pay 32 cents per day - or even 90 cents per day - if it means maintaining quality public services in the county.

Update: In a work session of the County Council's Management and Fiscal Policy Committee yesterday, Chairwoman Duchy Trachtenberg and Council Member Phil Andrews voted against the property tax increase. Because of the District 4 vacancy, two opposing votes are sufficient to kill the property tax hike. If both council members stick to their votes, the County Council will have to locate $128 million in cuts to replace the tax.

Update 2:
In a comment on this post, District 18 Delegate Al Carr points out that the County Council is considering increasing fuel and energy taxes. In the staff memo he linked, Senior Legislative Attorney Mike Faden writes, "A resolution to increase fuel/energy tax rates, sponsored by the Council President, is scheduled to be introduced on April 15, 2008. This resolution would increase the rates currently in effect to produce $11.1 million more revenue. This resolution is introduced as a placeholder to allow the Council, if necessary, to adjust the rates of the fuel/energy tax."

This is big news and we are grateful to Delegate Carr for supplying it. Few household costs have been increasing more noticeably than electricity and natural gas. And a straight tax hike on fuel will ensnare many households at the bottom end of the income distribution that would escape the County Executive's property tax proposal. There may be at least as much resistance to increasing fuel taxes as there is to increasing property taxes. And if the property tax hike fails, then fuel taxes may be increased more as a result. Fuel tax increases are not subject to the charter limit and may be passed by a straight majority vote of the County Council. This is a very meaningful development and I hope the Gazette and Washington Post reporters who read this blog will follow up.

Thanks to Louis Wilen and Al Carr for correcting my earlier failure to account for the homestead credit. When readers correct and improve my content, I will credit them publicly.

Are MoCo Public Employees Overpaid?

Yesterday, the Post reported on growing disagreements between Montgomery County leaders over compensation paid to county employees. Labor costs account for 80% of the county’s $4.3 billion budget and the county is facing a $297 million deficit. As a result, some county officials are scrutinizing employee contracts.

Council Member Phil Andrews told the Post that the county’s collective bargaining agreements were “unsustainable, unnecessary and unrelated to real-world economic conditions,” and said they should be rejected. Council Member Duchy Trachtenberg wants to know exactly what the county’s future obligations are under the contracts so the council can figure out how to pay for them. And the Post reported this tense exchange between Council President Mike Knapp and County Executive Ike Leggett:

Council President Michael Knapp (D-Upcounty) said Leggett's approval of the contracts appears to run counter to his message about the need to slow down spending.

“One would have thought that a more conservative approach would have been taken,” Knapp said. “It looks like we're trying to play both sides. Do we have bad economic times, or do we need to have generous increases in our contracts?”

In a prepared statement, Leggett called the contracts “consistent with agreements throughout the region” and said Knapp does not fully understand collective bargaining. Leggett said he has limited flexibility because of past decisions by the council and the school system and because of the possibility of binding arbitration in the event of an impasse. He cited the council's approval in 2006 of a $13 million enhancement to pensions for school system employees.

“I believe the Council President voted in favor of additional pension enhancements and every collective bargaining agreement that has ever been placed before him, thereby establishing less than favorable conditions in which future executives must negotiate,” he said in the statement.

So are Montgomery County’s public employees overpaid? Let’s examine a range of issues connected to their compensation.

Wages
The Post points out that many wage increases in the county’s contracts are actually intended to catch up to higher pay levels in other jurisdictions. As an example, the Post looks at fire fighters:

John Sparks, president of the Montgomery County Career Fire Fighters Association, said the county is playing catch-up for its 1,050 firefighters and paramedics. Rookie firefighters are paid $39,997, compared with $44,301 in the District, $40,784 in Prince George's County and $47,472 in Fairfax County. Among jurisdictions such as Montgomery with more than 500,000 people, the average salary nationally is $44,275 for starting firefighters.

Consider the county’s teachers. The Washington Area Boards of Education (WABE) estimates the total compensation cost of a teacher paid $60,000 in salary in nine of the metro area’s jurisdictions. Montgomery compensates such a teacher $81,792, above only Prince George’s County ($78,720). Montgomery trails Arlington County, the leader, by 7.1%.

WABE also reports the starting salary of a step 1 teacher with a bachelors degree in Montgomery as $44,200. The average sale price of an existing townhouse in the county was $364,000 a year ago. A simple analysis with a mortgage calculator and a spreadsheet generates some interesting revelations. If this starting teacher put down 10% of the townhouse’s value, took out a 30-year mortgage at a 6% fixed rate and paid $2,500 per year in property taxes, he or she would owe 59% of pre-tax salary per month to make the payments. A step 9 teacher with a masters degree makes $64,498 and would owe 40% of his or her pretax monthly salary for the mortgage and property tax payments on the same townhouse.

How can this be considered excessive pay?

You can view a breakdown of county salary schedules here.

Pensions
Government jobs used to be known for having modest salaries but great retirement benefits. This is not the case in Montgomery County. Since 1994, the county’s Employees’ Retirement System, its defined benefit plan, has been closed to new employees other than public safety workers. Currently only 5,294 of the county’s workers have county-funded defined benefit pensions. The county’s 11,486 teachers are covered by Maryland’s State Retirement and Pension System. This means that half of the county’s total workforce of 38,000 must rely only on a defined contribution pension plan for retirement. Most of Montgomery’s neighbors continue to grant their employees defined benefits.

Health Care
The county is projecting payments of $80.7 million for group health insurance premiums for its workforce next year (and that does not include school employees). It also projects $2.6 billion in future liabilities for retiree health benefits and is phasing in annual contributions towards those liabilities which will rise to $259 million after the next five years. Montgomery is not the only county facing a large liability for retiree health care: Howard reports a $477 million liability, Anne Arundel reports a $1.3 billion liability and Prince George’s reports a $2.7 billion liability. None of them approach Los Angeles County, California, which will have to deal with a $20 billion liability. This is clearly a lot of money so why not cut health coverage for county employees?

There are two problems with that. First, county employees already pay 20% of their health costs. Raising that percentage would be effectively a wage cut. Second, cutting health benefits will not decrease illness among public employees. They will continue to seek care in local hospitals. And in Maryland, state law provides that hospitals are reimbursed for their cost of uncompensated care (which totaled $734 million in 2006). Where does this money come from? About 90% is covered by allowing hospitals to charge higher rates that are determined partially by their uncompensated care experience. The remaining 10% comes from an assessment imposed on hospitals equaling 0.75% of their net patient revenues. Virtually all of this money comes back to taxpayers because government entities (like Medicare and Medicaid), premium-charging insurance companies and patients wind up ultimately paying the higher rates charged by the hospitals. In the end, if county employees get less health coverage, we will all pay for their health costs anyway. The only difference is that, with less coverage, county employees would be less likely to seek preventative care and more likely to use emergency rooms, thus driving up health care costs for everyone.

Recruitment and Retention
Consider the view of a talented prospective job applicant pondering whether to accept employment with the Montgomery County government. Unless that applicant is seeking a public safety or teacher job, he or she will not get a defined benefit pension. Unless the person is qualified for a top management job, he or she will be unlikely to afford a home in the county without assistance. He or she will be able to make more money in the District, Arlington County, Fairfax County or perhaps even Prince George’s County. For this applicant to commit to Montgomery, he or she will have to believe that Montgomery will one day pay at least as much as its neighbors and the applicant will someday be able to afford in-county housing. Otherwise, it makes little financial sense to work for Montgomery County and the best applicants will go elsewhere.

Competitiveness
Finally, an important part of the economic bedrock of Montgomery County is its superior level of government services – especially its public schools. When the county invests in its schools, it provides a powerful reason for businesses and residents to want to live here and create jobs here. Without top-grade public services, we will increasingly be seen as merely a high-cost jurisdiction in the metropolitan Washington area – and what happens to our economic competitiveness then?

It’s in the best interest of county taxpayers to attract and retain the best public employees to work for them. We do have to figure out how to pay for them. But spreading the mythology that county employees are overpaid will not get us there.

New Committee Assignments on MoCo Council

Mrs. Praisner's passing has left vacancies on the Planning, Housing & Economic Development (PHED) Committee, which she chaired, and the Management & Fiscal Policy (MFP) Committee, which she chaired for many years. Those vacancies have now been filled by Mike Knapp (PHED) and Phil Andrews (MFP). Marc Elrich is the new PHED Chair. But these committee assignments are temporary pending the special election for Mrs. Praisner's seat in District 4. After that election, all of this (and more) could change.

You can view the new committee structure here.