Citizens League of Montgomery County

Can’t We All Just Get Along?

May 10, 2011

What's making Montgomery County's leaders so cranky the last few months?

Not to sound like Donald Trump, but that's easy: The budget.

But, again, like Donald Trump, that's too simple. The budget looms over everyone and everything. Always has. Always will. That's true in the best of times, as the County's population boomed, buildings rose, new technology glistened, and tax revenues flowed. Even as the County spent and spent and spent, there was always the realization that the good times would someday peter out.

Exhibit One: Robin Ficker and the voter-enacted limit on new taxes. Does anyone think the voters will rescind the limits?

But the budget's shadow isn't really any bigger in the lean times, as unemployment jumped, property values plummeted, and MoCo citizens watched their earnings and savings shrink like sponges left in the sun. It's still there, now with the Ficker limit as frosting.

It's just that people notice it more when it pinches.

But there's a whole new dimension to the snarkiness right now. Snarling and spitting. Letters from the County to the State: no, we won't pay for the schools to do whatever they want. They have to tighten up like the rest of us. NO, fire back the school czars, we won't and you can't make us. We are the most important thing in the world and the law says you can't cut us.

That just isn't the MoCo way.

Did you see the police demonstration in front of County Executive Ike Leggett's house? Calm. Orderly. One guy told the Washington Post that he came out because he heard they were going to egg the house, but everyone knew he was joking. That's the way it's supposed to be in an activist-dominated, well-informed place like this. OK, make your point, you will be heard, we'll consider it and move on.

Is the budget really that pinched? Is there no money left?

Some people think that the popular phrase “all the low-hanging fruit has already been picked” is actually true this year. Have all the redundancies and inefficiencies and waste been squeezed out of the budget already? Is that why the decisions are so hard?

Apparently not, if you read the County's own study. That study is the January 31 report of the Montgomery County Organizational Reform Commission – commonly known as the Organizational Reform Commission. http://www.montgomerycountymd.gov/content/rsc/upcnty/pdfdocs/mcorc.pdf.

It was a great idea. Get the politicos out of it. Let some objective people look at the underlying structural questions in the County. Once the shouting dies away, maybe we'll see if there is low-hanging fruit left.

The ORC study was conducted by a diverse group of County leaders, most of whom are well-versed in the County's byzantine guts, but none of whom are tied to money-slurping special interests. It was, in the best sense of the phrase, a citizens' review commission. Dan Hoffman, the head of the Citizens League of Montgomery County, was one of the Council-appointed members of the ORC.

The ORC only lasted six months, a mere eyeblink in MoCo time. But in its brief life, the ORC held 16 full meetings, and more than 30 working group meetings. Much of the work was done hand-in-hand with County experts and agency representatives. Some of the presentations were bizarre, like the County employee unions' suggestion that the County's budget woes could be solved if we just didn't put such expensive toilet paper in the jail. Most were much more substantive. As a result, the ORC, even given the usual MoCo restrictions on budget-cutting sentiment, produced some good work.

The ORC's recommendations were extensive, ranging from avoiding duplication by centralizing real estate and other functions the way other governments do to reorganizing many of the advisory boards that sprout like weeds in the local red clay. The savings from most of its 28 recommendations were listed as “unable to quantify” but the overall savings would have been in the millions of dollars. Perhaps $30 million could be saved by simply following some straightforward suggestions for information technology across the County. That's 10% of the overall budget deficit in one suggestion alone.

So the “low-hanging fruit” isn't already gone. Some of it is still there. There are still millions to be saved.

What is making people grumpy, though, is not that they can't see where to get the savings, but that each decision now angers a particular group. That in itself isn't new. But what is new is that the groups whose oxen are being gored are not absorbing the news with the equanimity we expect in this County.

Led by firebrand Gino Renne, County employee unions are treating each potential cut as a mortal wound, running to court when they couldn't get what they wanted. Montgomery County Public Schools ran crying to court, suing the County for daring to give it less than it got last year, even as revenues dropped.

When did we decide that the best way to decide on the County budget was to ask a judge? Isn't that the antithesis of the Montgomery County way?

We all know that the budget cuts are hard. The money's there, but we need the political will to make those cuts. Judges are the answer to a lot of questions, but not political will. Asking a judge to make one of these decisions is the exact opposite of political will; judges are supposed to be above politics.

The root of the problem, however, is something else. What may be driving this whole problem is a concern that a cut today won't be salved tomorrow. That has been the historic basis for MoCo compromise: I'll take a hit today, but I'll be made whole later, and everybody will be better off.

That part of the social contract seems to have broken down. Even in a County where one political party, and really one philosophy, dominates public thinking, we can't get along enough because of fear.

And no one is talking about that.

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