The Washington Post’s editorial board has weighed in on MoCo’s competing charter amendments and recommends voting against all of them. The Post wrote that both citizens’ initiatives – Robin Ficker’s amendment on taxes and the nine council district proposal – were bad ideas. But the Post also said, “Yet neither of the council’s competing proposals is preferable to the status quo.” The Post’s verdict is to vote against all of the amendments and stick with the county’s current property tax system and council structure.
A new group formed by former County Executive Ike Leggett, former Congresswoman Connie Morella, businessman and former county executive candidate David Blair and business owner Carmen Ortiz Larsen is holding a press event on Monday to discuss their plans to oppose charter amendments by Robin Ficker and Nine Districts for MoCo. Maryland Matters discussed the group in broad terms today but did not name its leaders. The group’s news advisory (listing Leggett’s former public information officer Patrick Lacefield as contact) appears below.
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COUNTY LEADERS LEGGETT, MORELLA, BLAIR, LARSEN TO ANNOUNCE LAUNCH OF “NO ON QUESTIONS B & D COMMITTEE”
Former County Executive Isiah Leggett, former Congresswoman Connie Morella, non-profit leader David Blair, and Latina tech business owner Carmen Ortiz Larsen will speak out against November Montgomery County ballot questions B and D and urge a “NO” vote on both. Question B would put an inflexible cap on County property taxes, on top of already existing limitations on increases, severely hampering the County from responding to crises such as COVID-19 and sustaining critical services such as education and public safety. Question D would eliminate the County’s four at-large Council seats and replace it with nine individual districts. The impact would reduce the number of Councilmembers each voter can vote for from five to one.
WHEN: Monday, September 14 at 10:15 AM WHERE: Outside of the Dennis Avenue Health Center, 2000 Dennis Avenue in Silver Spring CONTACT: Patrick Lacefield
Congratulations to MoCo PTA Vice-President Laura Stewart on writing our top post of the month! Laura’s excellent analysis of school construction geography was widely seen and provoked questions about county capital project decision making. Our Talbot County post saw lots of circulation and commentary on the Eastern Shore. The two major stories of Nine Districts and private school reopenings accounted for most of the rest of our top August posts. Keep reading and we’ll keep writing!
Council Member Will Jawando, who is shown in a video by Nine Districts for MoCo in alleged support of their position, has denounced the video as intended to “mislead the public.”
The video, for which Nine Districts has taken out a Facebook ad, shows footage of Jawando speaking at a session of the county’s charter review commission in February. The video prefaces his remarks with the statement, “Why Montgomery County needs 9 Districts…” The video then shows him saying the following in an edited clip:
People should elect who represent their values, and to some points earlier, you know, there’s growing upcounty population… I do think the issue of representation is important. You know, I don’t… everyone in the county is not equally heard. Right, big surprise.
Here is what the Nine Districts group is not telling people: not only does Jawando not support their position, he actually argued against it in front of the charter review commission at that very same event. The commission posted a video showing Jawando’s full comments (along with everyone else) and he mentioned Prince George’s County, which had a nine district council for decades and added two at-large seats in 2018:
I’d also add that the Prince George’s County model that was mentioned is not insignificant because they were in that district model for a long time and, again, added two members, went to eleven, added two at-large members because they were having these parochial fights that they couldn’t get anything done and were not as collegial as they wanted to be. And I’ve spoken to a lot of them and they think it’s working pretty well with the at-large members.
And I think you don’t want to give people less representation, you want to have more. Right now, it’s true, you can decide whether you think this is good or not, but every person in the county votes for five members of the council, a majority of the council, and I just think that’s such a significant and powerful point. Now whether they come to your community or not, or they’re representing… I certainly try, you know, when anyone wants me to come, I’ll come, and I don’t know what’s been true in the past, but I think that is a powerful, powerful tool and to lose that, I think it’s not good for the voter.
The commission’s video, starting at the point when Jawando’s full remarks begin, is below.
I asked Jawando for a statement on the Nine Districts video. He said:
It is disappointing but perhaps not surprising that the Nine District campaign is using a partial clip of a longer statement of mine in order to mislead the public. Let me be very clear that I support Question C, which adds two additional district seats while maintaining At-Large Councilmember seats. Voters deserve more representation not less and must be able to have their voices heard by five councilmembers – four at-large and one representative for their district. The Nine District proposal to eliminate at-large seats actually disenfranchises voters by limiting their voice on the council to one elected member.
It’s clear that Jawando opposes nine districts. He argued against the proposal at the same event from which the Nine Districts group uses an edited video clip to allege that he supports them. Jawando also voted in favor of a rival proposal to keep the at-large seats and add two district seats. Nine Districts knows all of this very well. Their video is indeed misleading and should be taken down.
The Montgomery County Board of Elections has certified the Nine Districts for MoCo group’s charter amendment for the ballot. The amendment would convert the county council from its current structure of 4 at-large seats and 5 district seats to 9 district seats, which is the same council structure used by Prince George’s County from 1982 through 2018. The amendment needed 10,000 valid signatures to qualify. The group submitted 16,391 signatures and the board found 11,522 to be valid.
The board’s letter to the group is reprinted below. It contains a tally of the reasons why signatures were accepted and rejected. The home address of the group’s chair is redacted to protect her privacy.
In Part One, I explained the primary reason why the county’s Republican Party leadership supports Nine Districts, even going so far as to use the party’s official website to raise money for the group. The Republicans believe that having nine county council districts instead of five could produce one (or more) districts in which Republicans could compete. Using 2018 general election data, I built a 32-precinct district that accounts for one-ninth of the county’s registered voters and maximized Republican electoral participation while minimizing Democratic participation. (I used registered voters as an admittedly imperfect proxy for population.) Here is what my so-called Red District looks like on a precinct map.
The Red District has the strongest presence of Republicans and the weakest presence of Democrats of any contiguous district I can construct. But could it actually elect a Republican to the county council? Let’s find out.
First, let’s compare the eligible voters by party as of the 2018 general election between the county as a whole and the Red District.
In the county as a whole, Democrats had a 43-point advantage over Republicans in eligible voters. In the Red District, the Democratic advantage shrank to 13 points. Democrats still held a plurality in the Red District, but with 44% of eligible voters, they were not a majority.
Now let’s look at actual voters.
Among actual voters, Democrats had a 48-point advantage over Republicans countywide. (2018 was a year in which Democrats were highly motivated to vote by the current occupant of the White House.) But in the Red District, the Democratic advantage shrank to 16 points. Once again, Democrats were a plurality but not a majority of Red District voters.
The table below shows the performance of the two major-party gubernatorial candidates, Democrat Ben Jealous and Republican Larry Hogan, in the county as a whole and in the Red District. Only election day votes are shown because precinct data does not include other voting modes.
Jealous won the election day vote countywide by 5 points. (Counting all voting modes, Jealous won MoCo by 11 points.) But in the Red District, Hogan blew out Jealous by 33 points on election day. Clearly, the Red District is VERY different from the rest of the county in its preference for governor.
But Hogan is an unusual Republican whose popularity extends well into the Democratic voting base. Judging a propensity to favor the GOP by looking at Hogan’s vote tallies alone is problematic. And so, as a proxy for hypothetical support for a generic Republican, I calculated the combined votes for the Democratic council at-large candidates (Gabe Albornoz, Evan Glass, Will Jawando and Hans Riemer) and the Republican council at-large candidates (Robert Dyer, Chris Fiotes, Penny Musser and Shelly Skolnick) for both the county as a whole and the Red District. Those results are shown in the table below.
In the county as a whole, the Democratic council at-large candidates totally blew out the Republicans by 72-26%. That’s why the Republican leadership hates the at-large seats as much as they do – Democrats can roll up their vote totals in Silver Spring, Takoma Park, Chevy Chase, Bethesda and Kensington and Republicans can’t pick up enough votes elsewhere to win. But in the Red District, the Democratic council at-large candidates only had a 6-point edge. Compared to the rest of the county, that’s a narrow margin.
Let’s remember that 2018 saw massive Democratic turnout in reaction to the individual in the Oval Office. That makes it an unusual year. Given that fact, the above data suggests that in a more normal year, a strong Republican council candidate could defeat a weak Democrat in the Red District. That’s the dream of MoCo Republicans. And that’s why they support Nine Districts.
Now, would something like the Red District actually be created in a nine district system? That’s hard to know. Redistricting is nominally within the purview of a commission appointed by the council every ten years, but the council can substitute its own map if they wish. That means if Nine Districts passes, council Democrats will effectively design the districts directly or indirectly. They could scatter rural Republicans around two or three districts (perhaps one based in Potomac, another based in Clarksburg and maybe a third based in Damascus). Doing that would create two or three competitive general elections. Or they could do what state-level Democrats did in designing the current congressional districts, which was to pack Republicans in one district (Congressman Andy Harris’s District 1). If they elected to go that route, they would design something very close to my Red District.
One thing is for sure: the Republican Party would be jumping up and down to get a chance to compete. They don’t have that in the current system. But they might have it if voters approve nine districts.
Multiple sources confirm that Kevin Karpinski, counsel to the Montgomery County Board of Elections, told the board yesterday that the charter amendment petition to convert the Montgomery County Council to a nine district configuration has received enough valid signatures to qualify for the ballot. The threshold is 10,000 signatures or 20% of the registered voters of the county. Nine Districts for MoCo submitted 16,448 signatures on August 3.
Margaret Jurgensen, the county’s election director, told me, “Mr. Karpinski did confirm that it appears that the Petition has succeeded garnering the number of valid petitions.”
The board still needs to complete its verification process and release a formal determination, which should occur later in the week. Once it does so, the county attorney must draft language for the ballot. At that point, only one thing could stop the question from appearing on the ballot: litigation, which has happened before. In 2016, a group opposing Robin Ficker’s term limits petition tried to get it thrown out in court over signature issues but was unsuccessful. I have heard of no such entity willing to challenge Nine Districts’ signatures.
That means Nine Districts could be officially headed to the ballot within days.
In a prior column, I noted the participation of many county Republican Party leaders in the Nine Districts group. These leaders even went so far as to use the party’s official website to raise money for the Nine Districts campaign fund. Why is the GOP’s local leadership so interested in eliminating at-large county council seats and replacing them with nine districts?
The answer is simple: nine districts might be the only way they can get a Republican elected to the county council.
It’s important to remember that the council has not always been unanimously Democratic. District 1 (Bethesda-Chevy Chase-Potomac) elected two Republican council members: Betty Ann Krahnke (1990-2000) and Howard Denis (2000-2006). District 2 (Upcounty) was represented by Republican Nancy Dacek from 1990 through 2002. Those were the days when Republican Congresswoman Connie Morella represented most of MoCo – a much less partisan time. District 2, which represents much of Upcounty, is the most Republican-heavy council district in the county. Its current seat holder, Council Member Craig Rice, has won his last three general elections with 59% of the vote in 2010, 60% of the vote in 2014 and 71% of the vote in 2018. The shift of the GOP from being the party of Morella to the party of Donald Trump has brought hard times to local Republicans.
Nine districts could resuscitate the party. That’s because a change from five districts to nine districts could allow enough Republicans and independents to congregate into one district to make it competitive in a general election. That is clearly what the county’s Republican leadership is hoping for. But could it actually happen? Could dark blue MoCo – even the reddest one-ninth of it – ever elect a Republican again?
To test that hypothesis, I pulled precinct-level data from the 2018 general election. I used the following criteria to select precincts that would form the most Republican-intensive district possible in the county:
Lowest percentage of registered Democrats Highest percentage of registered Republicans Lowest percentage of actual voting Democrats Highest percentage of actual voting Republicans Lowest percentage of votes going to Democratic council at-large candidates Highest percentage of votes going to Republican council at-large candidates
There were two additional requirements. First, the precincts had to be geographically contiguous. (No random splatters of territory like Maryland’s Third Congressional District!) And second, the precincts had to contain one-ninth of the county’s registered voters, which I used as a proxy for population.
In practice, this turned out to be pretty easy since 23 precincts met all six of the above criteria. Two more met five criteria, three more met four criteria and two more met two criteria. Two precincts met none of the criteria but they had to be included to make the district contiguous. A few others did well on qualifying criteria too but were either non-contiguous or created difficulty in keeping the district at the appropriate size. All of this reinforces a central fact: in MoCo, partisanship is heavily geographic.
And so here it is: 32 precincts containing 73,269 eligible voters as of the 2018 general election, almost exactly one-ninth of the total registered voters in the county. (Again, I’m using registered voters as an admittedly imperfect proxy for population.)
Let’s call this the Red District. Here is what it looks like on a map.
The Red District has the shape of a jagged “C” and hugs the western Potomac River, the Frederick County border and the Howard County border. Its largest communities are Clarksburg, Damascus, Poolesville and part of Potomac. It is not geographically compact, but it does have a community of interest because it includes the least dense, and most rural, parts of the county. Its shape was inevitable. These are the areas where Republicans are strongest and Democrats are weakest.
How would the Red District have voted in the 2018 general election? We will find out in Part Two.
In prior posts, I have noted support of the Nine Districts charter amendment by Republicans, developers and unions. But a lot more people beyond those groups would like to have nine council districts and I recently asked them why. Here are a few comments from supporters I received with names removed to protect their identities. I am not saying that they are necessarily right, but in order to understand Nine Districts, you have to understand sentiments like these.
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Potomac resident: I support 9 Districts because I don’t feel like my area has adequate representation. I want my representative to live in my area and know the ins and outs of what we need and want. Community leaders should live in their community.
Germantown resident: Taxation without representation. Just like the British thought they were kind and benevolent rulers, the Takoma Park-heavy leadership is similarly clueless about what goes on far away in upcounty. You’ve written about how hard it is to beat incumbents in elections, and I don’t think we will get folks familiar with upcounty without a major structural change like Nine Districts. We can’t get a call back from the at-large members up here, let alone get them to truly understand our issues.
Boyds resident: I have been involved for several years in advocating for upcounty issues and we get lip service (usually no response), but when it comes to voting, at large members just vote with the down county members. So practically speaking down county has eight votes and upcounty has only one, Craig Rice. That’s why one to one is better – total and clear responsibility.
Bethesda resident: We live in a very diverse county. The current structure has ended up concentrating political power down county which results in issues of import to upcounty communities getting short shrift. The current structure has also resulted in a uniformity of political views among our leaders. Even if I tend to agree with the stances of the current leaders on most issues, a more diverse set of viewpoints will be better for our community.
Clarksburg resident: I support 9 districts because Clarksburg constantly gets abused due to lack of political representation. The planning board wants to create a loophole to eliminate home building moratoria so they can keep issuing building permits in Clarksburg regardless of how crowded the schools get.
Montgomery Village resident: I listened to council members that live in Silver Spring and Takoma Park say how much they understand upper county because they came up to rallies or for some other “visit.” I’ve lived in downtown Bethesda (the real one not North) for five years and now in Montgomery Village for four. Two different worlds. Even the produce section of the grocery stores are different. I’m tired of politicians that talk about diversity as their key issue but don’t actually talk about how they can improve opportunities through jobs and new business growth. We’re actively looking to leave the county after this week’s display at the council meeting and BOE.
Olney resident: My experience is that at-large council members are not accountable to anyone. In theory they are accountable to the voters but in practice they are controlled by those who contribute the most to their campaign funds.
North Potomac resident: I have written my at-large “representatives” on several occasions in recent months (along with other council members as well) and the at-large members don’t even bother to send me an acknowledgement of my email. I know some members do send acknowledgements because some have acknowledged emails. There is nothing so frustrating as not only having my concerns ignored, but so flagrantly ignored as not to even acknowledge an email. It’s incredibly arrogant. They clearly don’t represent me and don’t want to. And as a life-long registered Democrat they can’t claim I am not a “constituent.” And even my district Council member doesn’t respond substantively as I assume he has too many constituents to be able to engage with individual constituents.
Gaithersburg resident: I think I support the Nine Districts because it seems to be an improvement – although imperfect – over the present system of “representation.” As a resident of our precious Ag Reserve, I have seen this Council make incursions into the Reserve without (in my opinion) fully researching and considering the effects of their actions on the preservation of farmland and open spaces. Hopefully, the Nine District system of representation would provide a better system for us to make our concerns known. The “At Large” members owe their elections to the highly populated areas, and as such, they can easily discount our concerns. That said, it does depend on the conscientiousness of the particular At Large member. One At Large member did reach out to the upcounty, and met with us at the Damascus Library. I am open to being persuaded to retain the present system but presently am leaning to voting for the Nine District option.
Clarksburg resident: As others are saying – responsiveness and representation. The At-Large system without any balance of geographic residential location leaves hundreds of thousands under- or un-represented. The lone one or two council member(s) who needs multiple at-large members to make change happen is too often left alone on issues. In theory at-large means you have all four of them representing you; in reality, at least in upcounty, we often have none. Zero. And this lack of responsiveness and responsibility can be summarized in one word, which is broad enough for those familiar with recent county history: Clarksburg.
On Tuesday, I wrote a post asking whether the county council had violated the state’s Open Meetings Act by posting two charter amendments on its agenda the morning of their vote. County council attorney Bob Drummer wrote me the email below explaining why the council did not violate the law.
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Adam,
I’m reaching out to you about your Aug. 4 post in Seventh State asking if the Montgomery County Council is in compliance with the Maryland Open Meetings Act because of two potential ballot proposal that were added to the Council agenda and posted on the Council’s web page on the morning of Aug. 4.
Your post misses the point of the Open Meetings Act. The Act requires the Council to provide reasonable notice before conducting an open meeting. The Act goes on to require the Council to post an agenda for the meeting for public viewing if it has been determined at the same time as the notice of the meeting. If an agenda is not determined at the time of the notice, it should be posted at least 24 hours in advance (Md. Code Ann., General Provisions Article, Sec. 3-302.1(a)). Sec. 3-302.1(b) provides an exception for an emergency meeting. It appears that you only read these sections and made some incorrect assumptions from this selective reading.
Let me explain. Notice of the August 4 meeting was posted more than 24 hours before the meeting. The notice included an agenda. The agenda included a discussion and action on 2 possible Charter Amendments concerning the composition of the Council – one by petition and one by Councilmember Glass. In your blog, you complained about the late addition of 2 alternative Charter Amendments proposed by Councilmembers Riemer and Navarro concerning the composition of the Council. First, the public had ample advance notice that the Council was going to discuss possible Charter Amendments concerning the composition of the Council. More importantly, the final provision of the Section you mistakenly relied on, Sec. 3-302.1(e) states:
(e) Alteration of agenda. — Nothing in this section may be construed to prevent a public body from altering the agenda of a meeting after the agenda has been made available to the public.
This section expressly authorizes a public body to alter the agenda of a meeting after the agenda has been posted. The two proposals that you question were just that – alterations of the agenda after it was posted. If your reading of the statute was correct, a public body would never be able to change the agenda at the last minute, and a Councilmember would never be permitted to move to amend a resolution or bill before it at the meeting if notice of the proposed amendment was not provided to the public at least 24 hours in advance. Such a reading would make the Open Meetings Act unworkable. The main purpose of the Open Meetings Act is to ensure that almost all (except for permitted closed meetings) legislative decisions by a public body are made in public. The purpose of the notice and agenda requirement is to ensure that the public has the opportunity to watch (or at least hear) the meeting. The notice and agenda requirement is not designed to hamstring a public body into strictly following a posted agenda without any flexibility to modify it.
The two proposals you question in your post are referenced in the Council’s media advisory that was distributed and posted to the Council’s web page on the evening of Aug. 3. The advisory generally describes the proposals and notes that the Council staff reports will be available on Aug. 4. You can view the advisory here: https://www2.montgomerycountymd.gov/mcgportalapps/Press_Detail.aspx?Item_ID=25673&Dept=1. Moreover, as you reported in your subsequent Aug. 4 post in the Seventh State, the Council did not approve either of the ballot proposals.
I also want to take this opportunity to remind you and your readers that all Council and committee meetings are televised on County Cable Montgomery and are streamed on Facebook and YouTube. In addition, individuals without internet or cable access can listen to Council and committee meetings on the call in line.
As always, we appreciate you following Council deliberations and getting the word out about important public policy issues that impact Montgomery County residents.
Robert H. Drummer Senior Legislative Attorney Montgomery County Council
