Nine District for MoCo, the ballot question entity responsible for gathering signatures for a 9 district charter amendment, has filed a new campaign finance report listing its contributions and expenditures through August 2. The organization’s prior report, released in January, contained data for 7/24/19 through 1/8/20.
The information here is bound to shake MoCo’s political establishment to its core.
First, the overall data on contributions and expenditures.
Charles Nulsen, Washington Property Company: $50,000 UFCW Local 1994 MCGEO: $10,000 (in-kind) Bob Buchanan, Buchanan Partners: $5,000 Fraternal Order of Police: $5,000 (in-kind) Montgomery County Career Fire Fighters Association PAC: $5,000 (in-kind) Gingery Development Group: $5,000 Arlene Hillerson (listed as being in real estate): $2,000
The Town of Laytonsville also contributed $100.
Charlie Nulsen is the founder of Empower Montgomery. Bob Buchanan is the former chair of the county’s economic development corporation. Both are long-time regional developers.
The unions’ in-kind contributions came in the form of online advertising.
The leading recipient of money from the group is Rowland Strategies of Baltimore, which was paid $50,000 on June 9. The firm is headed by Jonathon Rowland, a national level strategist who ran Hoan Dang’s campaign for county council in 2018.
Nine Districts for MoCo is now revealed as an unholy alliance of developers and unions – two groups that often don’t see eye to eye. The unions are aggrieved at the council’s rejection of their collective bargaining agreements (among MANY other things). The developers have long complained about – in their view – the difficulty of doing business in MoCo. They are also no doubt upset about the recent imposition of temporary rent stabilization.
The real estate industry and labor both have substantial influence over county politics but don’t get everything they want – especially in these troubled times. If they have indeed formed an unholy alliance on anything, much less a ballot measure that would eviscerate the county council, this is a new day for MoCo.
With due respect to the members of the MoCo Council, I believe they made a mistake when they voted to put on the ballot the issue of adding 2 District Council Members. We do not need more Council Members and the voters benefit greatly from the current structure. The item on the ballot by petition, to eliminate At Large Members and have 9 District Members, is even worse for our citizens.
The argument that we want to give voters choices is wrong. The vast majority of voters don’t care about the Council structure. They care what the Council does, not its structure.
The issue of Council structure has been studied in detail by 5 separate Charter Review Commissions and ALL recommended that there should continue to be 4 At Large and 5 District Members. That allows each county voter to vote for a majority of the Council Members and to turn to 5 different representatives when they wish.
Adding members to the Council will cost a lot of money: Council Member salaries, staff salaries, reconstruction of the Council building. What would be gained? Nothing. The 9 Council Members do all the work needed.
Eliminating At Large Members would be even worse. If a citizen lived in a district where her or his District Member didn’t care much about constituent service (it happens!) they would have no one to turn to, while now they have 4 others who represent them. Plus, having At Large Members helps to provide a possibly different view on all issues.
There is no need to tinker with the Council structure. There is no need to put any questions about this on the ballot. The current structure works well. Leave it alone.
Paul Bessel was Chair of the Charter Review Commission from 2015 thru 2018.
Moments ago, the county council voted on whether to place three charter amendments on the ballot that would change the council’s structure.
An amendment authored by Council Member Evan Glass that would add two districts to the council’s current five districts and four at-large seats PASSED on an 8-1 vote. Council Member Andrew Friedson voted against it.
An amendment authored by Council Member Hans Riemer to add an elected council president was WITHDRAWN by its sponsor. Riemer recognized he did not have the votes.
An amendment authored by Council Member Nancy Navarro to create four residency districts for the four at-large members FAILED on a 4-5 vote. Those in favor included Navarro and Council Members Andrew Friedson, Sidney Katz and Craig Rice. Those against included Council Members Gabe Albornoz, Evan Glass, Tom Hucker, Will Jawando and Hans Riemer. The split here was district vs at-large members as all the at-large members voted no and every district member except Hucker voted yes.
As for the open meetings issue I raised this morning, council attorney Bob Drummer told the council that it was legal for them to add late items to a meeting agenda. In any event, the issue is moot because both late charter amendments did not pass.
And so if the nine district petition qualifies for the ballot, voters will decide whether to shift to an-all district system, add two district seats to the current system or vote against both and stay with the current system of five district seats and four at-large seats. Because at least one of these council structure questions will appear on the ballot along with two tax limit amendments already placed there, this November will see a hugely important election in MoCo.
This morning, MoCo residents woke up to find two brand new items on the council’s agenda that were not present late last night. Both of them are proposed charter amendments, which are among the most significant issues considered by any council. The suddenness with which they appeared, and the utter lack of opportunity for input by residents (they are being considered for action at this very writing!) raises questions about whether the council is in compliance with the state’s Open Meetings Act.
The proposed amendments both concern the council’s structure and are being considered along with the 9 districts petition and an amendment that appeared yesterday adding two seats. One amendment proposed by Council Member Hans Riemer specifies that one of the four at-large members would be elected as council president and would be regarded as a separate office for the purpose of term limits. In other words, if an incumbent council member runs for council president and wins, he or she would be entitled to three more consecutive terms. (Let’s remember that Riemer himself is term limited.) The other amendment, proposed by Council Member Nancy Navarro, would create “at-large districts” for at-large members. Each at-large member would have to reside in one of four “at-large districts” and all voters in the county would be able to vote to for all four of them. The system is not unlike school board districts, in which residency requirements are in effect but all voters vote for all school board members.
Regardless of the merits of these proposals, the timing of their sudden appearance on the agenda might conflict with notice requirements in the state’s Open Meetings Act.
In the 2016 regular session of the General Assembly, the Open Meetings Act was modified with the passage of HB217. The text of the bill provided that public bodies should publish agendas for open meetings in a timely fashion. The bill stated:
3–302.1.(A)(2) If an agenda has been determined at the time the public body gives notice of the meeting under § 3–302 of this subtitle, the public body shall make available the agenda at the same time the public body gives notice of the meeting.
3–302.1.(A)(3) If an agenda has not been determined at the time the public body gives notice of the meeting, the public body shall make available the agenda as soon as practicable after the agenda has been determined but no later than 24 hours before the meeting.
The bill allowed an exception to the above provision. It went on to state:
3–302.1.(B) If a public body is unable to comply with the provisions of subsection (A) of this section because the meeting was scheduled in response to an emergency, a natural disaster, or any other unanticipated situation, the public body shall make available on request an agenda of the meeting within a reasonable time after the meeting occurs.
None of these provisions apply to today’s meeting. There is no emergency (aside from perhaps a political one!), there is no natural disaster and the discussion of council structure was far from unanticipated. The question here is whether HB217 applies to major changes to an agenda or the mere provision of an agenda only.
Some last-minute changes to an agenda are unobjectionable. For example, if the council wanted to make a morning addition to its consent calendar recognizing National Guitar Day, no one would have a problem with it. (Hint, hint: it’s February 11.) But these charter amendments are issues of enormous consequence. The nine district amendment has been discussed in public for months. Council Member Evan Glass has talked about his idea of adding district seats for almost a year. Both appeared on the council’s agenda yesterday and are ripe for consideration in an open meeting.
Even if the Navarro and Riemer proposals are eventually found to not violate state law in litigation – and make no mistake, litigation is a definite possibility if they are passed! – they certainly violate the spirit of the law. Both are major last-minute additions to the agenda with no public vetting of any kind unlike Glass’s idea, which he discussed with the charter review commission. Opponents are sure to pounce and offer them as prime exhibits of why scheming politicians are not to be trusted and therefore deserve political decapitation. How does this help the council’s case against nine districts?
The council should have united behind a common alternative as they did with their counter to Ficker’s charter amendment on taxes. Instead, they are showing a decided lack of respect for public input by placing a hugely important item on the agenda just an hour before a vote. Folks who want to blow up the county’s governance should rejoice. Those who don’t should shake their heads at the machinations of Rockville.
In addition to placing at least one competing proposal on the ballot, the county council is about to adopt a tactic to defeat the proposed charter amendment for 9 districts that is sure to infuriate its supporters. The worst thing (or best thing, depending on your point of view) is that this tactic has a proven record of success.
Specifically, it relates to the exact language on 9 districts that will be placed on the ballot.
Maryland Election Law § 7-103 lays out the role of local governments in preparing ballot language. This morning, the county council will be considering this language for the ballot on the 9 districts amendment (providing that it has 10,000 valid signatures and actually qualifies).
Question D
Charter amendment by petition
County Council – Alter Council Composition to 9 Districts
Amend Sections 102 and 103 of the County Charter to: — divide the County into 9, rather than the current 5, Council districts; — elect all Councilmembers by district, rather than the current 5 by district and 4 at large; and — reduce from 5 to 1 the number of Councilmembers each voter can vote for
FOR
AGAINST
Consider this. Every voter who looks at the ballot will be told that this charter amendment would reduce the number of council seats he or she may vote for from 5 to 1.
This is the exact same language that appeared on the ballot when a 9 district amendment was submitted to voters in 2004. That amendment was defeated on a 61-39% vote. Like 2020, 2004 was a presidential election year in which many – probably most – voters were interested in national politics and knew relatively little about the county.
I was one of those voters. I moved to the county in 2003 and 2004 was my first election here. At that point, I knew two things about MoCo. 1. It had a county executive named Doug Duncan who had appeared on TV during the hunt for the D.C. sniper. 2. There was a fight being waged over a big highway called the Intercounty Connector. (I checked to make sure its alignment was nowhere near my new house.) That was about it. So here I was in the voting booth trying to figure out what this 9 district question was. And I saw that it would reduce the number of council members I could vote for from 5 to 1. I thought that was a terrible idea. I like voting for elected officials so I voted NO. So did 61% of the electorate.
Supporters of 9 districts are going to cry foul but they have to acknowledge two things. 1. The language is indisputably accurate. 2. It has appeared on the ballot before so the council is following precedent.
Poison pills are hard to swallow. This pill could very well poison the electoral prospects of 9 districts.
Nine Districts for MoCo, a group that seeks to replace the current county council structure of 5 districts seats and 4 at-large seats with 9 district seats, has submitted 16,448 signatures in support of their 9 district charter amendment. The county board of elections will now begin verifying signatures. The group needs 10,000 valid signatures to get its charter amendment on the ballot.
The group’s raw signature count is not that different from the raw counts submitted by Robin Ficker for his 2016 term limits amendment (more than 18,000) and his current anti-tax amendment (more than 16,000). Both of those amendments qualified for the ballot and the term limits amendment passed. Maryland’s petition signature requirements are tough and some petitions that might appear to qualify at first glance have been thrown out. (For example, Ficker’s term limits petition was blocked in 2010.)
Nine Districts’ petition cover sheet is reprinted below. The phone number and address of the group’s chair have been redacted to protect her privacy.
A majority of the county council is content with the current council structure of five district seats and four at-large seats. They believe that a mix of district representation and countywide perspective serves residents best. It also does not escape them that a new structure of nine districts could complicate their plans for the next election. Of the six members who are not term limited, who would run for which seats in a nine district configuration?
Leaving a potential nine district charter amendment as the only council structure on the ballot would be a crapshoot. What if all the voters wanting change voted for it because it was the only change option on the ballot? So council members discussed placing an alternative charter amendment on the ballot that would be more palatable. What would it be? In devising their preferences, each council member had to consider three factors: what was best for the county (at least in their opinion), what could gather enough voter support to compete with nine districts and what was best for (or at least not injurious to) their own political futures. These being nine very different people at different points in their political careers, this was a very complicated conversation.
Two ideas rose to the top of discussion over the weekend.
Adding two council seats
Last year, At-Large Council Member Evan Glass told the county’s charter review commission (which studies charter amendments and makes recommendations to the council) that “more districts may be warranted.” Indeed, MoCo’s council districts have more than twice as many residents in them as the regional average. One topic of conversation centered on adding district seats with two being the most mentioned number. Another variant was adding one district seat and another at-large seat. Regardless of the nature of additions, this line of thought addressed the need for more seats (and districts) without disturbing the configuration of the existing council and its currently serving members.
Adding an elected council president
The Montgomery County Council does not have a four-year president elected to that position by voters. The District of Columbia, Baltimore City, and Fairfax, Loudoun and Prince William Counties have presidents or chairs who are elected at-large. In Anne Arundel, Arlington, Baltimore, Frederick, Howard and Prince George’s Counties, the council or board selects its own officers, which is the system MoCo currently uses.
With this option, two corollary questions were generated. First, would an at-large council president replace one of the current at-large seats or would it be a brand new additional seat? Second, would the term limit clock “reset” for council president? In other words, if a term-limited council member were to run for council president and win, would that person be entitled to a new set of three consecutive terms? In 2016, when Prince George’s County (which has council term limits of two terms) created two at-large seats to go with its existing nine district seats, the county’s charter language explicitly allowed district incumbents to serve two more consecutive terms if they won at-large seats. The question of how term limits would apply is not an academic one for the three term-limited council members currently in office – Nancy Navarro, Craig Rice and Hans Riemer.
The problem with the council president proposal is not so much on its merits but rather that it is unresponsive to the public discussion, which has focused on two questions: should there be more district seats and should the at-large seats be eliminated? To my knowledge, no mass constituency has come forward and said, “You know, our problems would be solved if we had a permanent council president.” How does this dissuade anyone from voting for nine districts?
As of this writing, it seems the most likely proposal from the council will be to add two more district seats with no elected council president. But the council will not make a decision until Tuesday and there could be more twists and turns on this than on a country road in a blizzard.
Finally, there is one more bizarre possibility: what if the Nine Districts proposal does not make it onto the ballot? The group claims to have 15,000 signatures but the county board of elections has until August 14 to certify them. The group needs to have 10,000 valid signatures for certification; otherwise, regardless of the group’s claims, their amendment will not qualify for the ballot. The county council, however, must decide what question(s) it will put on the ballot this week. And so it’s possible that a council proposal could make it onto the ballot while the Nine Districts proposal fails to qualify.
Regardless of how it all turns out, it seems there is a strong likelihood that change is coming to Rockville.
Nine Districts for MoCo, the group seeking to replace the current county council structure of 5 district seats and 4 at-large seats with 9 district seats, claimed earlier today that it has obtained 15,000 signatures for its proposed charter amendment. Under the state’s constitution, a charter amendment proposed by voters must receive valid signatures from not less than 20% of registered voters or at least 10,000 voters. The group’s Facebook post appears below.
The original deadline for receipt of petition signatures was Monday, July 27. However, the State Board of Elections extended the deadline by one week due to the COVID-19 crisis, meaning that the group may submit its signatures to the county on Monday, August 3. The county board of elections must then verify the signatures to ensure that the 9 district charter amendment qualifies for the ballot.
The group’s declaration was shared on Facebook by the Parents’ Coalition of Montgomery County, the Montgomery County Republican Club, the Republican District 16 Team, the Conservative Club of Maryland and former Montgomery County Republican Party Chairman Mark Uncapher.
When the county council met yesterday to consider the case of admitted ethics violator and Chief Administrative Officer (CAO) Andrew Kleine, one word alone can describe what happened: Eruption. Rockville was covered by a black cloud of ash and lava sprayed through the streets as the council held very little back. Montgomery County Government has never seen anything quite like it.
The basics are simple: last year, executive branch county employees (all of whom work under Kleine) complained to the ethics commission about his book marketing and his relationship with contractors with whom he had done private business and then had gone on to help obtain county contracts. After an investigation by the county’s inspector general, Kleine proposed a “cure” which involved the payment of $5,000 and his abstention from outside employment. The ethics commission accepted the cure and the county executive has allowed Kleine to remain as CAO. Seventh State has previously published columns on the issue on July 2, July 7, July 9 and July 27.
Kleine was not present at the council’s meeting, leaving ethics commission chair Rahul Goel and ethics commission staff director Robert Cobb to brief the council on Kleine’s ethics case. Before elaborating on the situation with Kleine, Goel and Cobb suggested a need for mandatory ethics training for all county employees, including elected officials. No one disagreed with that. But the council did not buy that ethics training alone would have prevented Kleine’s actions. What followed was a remarkable and unprecedented display by the council members in which some walked right up to the line of calling for the CAO’s resignation without actually crossing it. Consider these quotes from the briefing.
*****
Council Member Nancy Navarro
Training is important but how would that have avoided this situation? And it’s one thing for an employee to have done something like this but when it’s the Chief Administrative Officer, that raises for me some concerns because the employees, the county government employees obviously are under the Chief Administrative Officer and it is very difficult with a straight face to say to our employees “you’re going to have to go to mandatory training” when the Chief Administrative Officer himself didn’t seem to understand the basics of ethics and conflicts of interest…
I personally still have some concerns regarding the ability of Mr. Kleine to be the Chief Administrative Officer of our county government when there was such a lapse in judgment regarding something like this.
Council Member Gabe Albornoz
I’m troubled that Mr. Kleine was not put on administrative leave during the course of the investigation and continued in his role as the head of procurement for our entire county through this investigation. I’m concerned that the county executive has not reached out to my colleagues and I to express how his administration has taken this matter extraordinarily seriously, how there has been, I believe, a statement from the county executive but not much more than that in terms of his comments on this particular matter.
Because the ripple effect of a situation like this is profound. What do we say to department heads who are also found guilty of similar violations? That you get one strike? You get a pass the first time around and yes, there is a cure, but the cure for the payment of $5,000 and the retainment of employment is significant in light of what we have seen. And I appreciate those recommendations and I also appreciate the recommendation of additional training.
But the broader question here is trust. And I worked in an executive branch for twelve years and know how important that trust is among colleagues. And I don’t believe enough has been done beyond this cure to repair the damage from the messaging that this sends to all the county government, that this sends to people that deal in their business with county government. And I don’t think quite frankly that this matter has been taken seriously enough by this administration. And that’s a concern.
Council Member Hans Riemer
This whole incident reinforces a concern that I have had about – and I think many people in the county government have had about the chief administrator’s work. The county executive has allowed him to really apply his personal business theory, his personal business practice, “turn the curve,” to his management of the county government. The county executive has required all of our departments to participate in something that really often feels like a demonstration project for a consulting practice. And it often feels like it substitutes jargon for real management initiatives. And that has been weighing on me for a lot of time. And I think that this report just raises some real questions about the continuing of the consulting business and really whether the intended – whether the chief administrator’s success is the county’s success. And I think that that is weighing on a lot of people and department heads and managers. And I think we do have an issue. We need to restore the confidence of this county government in the leadership of the executive branch.
Council Member Craig Rice
At the end of the day, this falls on the county executive. The county executive wants to continue to have the number two person in charge be a person who has committed serious ethics violations, that’s a choice he’s going to have to justify, that’s a choice that he’s going to have to stand up and say this is why he feels as though it’s comfortable to have this person still in charge in a leadership position.
Council Member Andrew Friedson
Public trust is the only currency that we have in public life. It’s all we have in terms of our ability to govern, and to me, this speaks directly to public trust. And it’s why I share many of the comments of colleagues of how disturbed and disappointed I am by the contents of the ethics report because that’s what this speaks to. And it’s not a member of the county government, it is not some county employee, it is the top county employee, the person who is in charge of running the government. And I speak similarly to comments that were made about – the comments about training. This is not a training issue. Let’s not obscure what happened here. This is specifically a clear violation of ethics and of public trust. That’s what it is. It is a massive, massive failure of judgment in the highest position in county government…
When we talk about this as being a cure, it’s kind of a euphemism. What this really is effectively is a plea agreement.
*****
Volcanic eruptions can be hard to survive due to their pollution of the atmosphere, the danger of lava flows and the potential for subsequent discharges. In this case, the repeat discharge potential is real with multiple council members asking whether Kleine received special treatment (a subject for another time!) and requesting more information. Lava, like water, can drip drip drip.
With the council’s eruption threatening to bury the executive branch in a blanket of burning ash, the big question now is: why has the county executive allowed Kleine to stay? And will that continue?
Under Prince George’s County’s original charter in 1970, its county council had eleven members, all elected at-large. Five of them had to reside in one each of five districts while the other six could live anywhere in the county. The structure was quickly dominated by Democratic Party leaders who ran slates for state and county offices, but it began to disintegrate when non-slate members won races in 1978. In 1980, the county passed Question K, which replaced the old structure with 9 district-based council members who would be elected solely by voters in their districts. At the time, the Washington Post wrote:
With the council reduced from 11 to 9 members and its members elected from separate districts, there will be decidedly fewer countywide offices with which to form a slate. That was one goal that the amendment’s initiators — Republicans and Democrats who ran against the party slate in 1978 — intended. The supporters of K also said they designed the amendment to make the council more responsive to the electorate. Its opponents charged that the amendment will cause parochialism and an emphasis on district issues at the expense of the county.
Sound familiar?
The new structure was first used in 1982, which saw the defeat of numerous incumbents and power brokers. The system remained in place until 2016, when residents approved Question D to add 2 at-large members by a 67-33% vote. In 2018, a retiring district council member and a non-incumbent won the 2 new at-large seats, defeating seven other candidates including another retiring district council member and a former state delegate.
Another factor in Prince George’s elections are term limits, passed by voters in 1992. The county executive and county council members are limited to two consecutive four-year terms, though they can return after being out of office. Additionally, council members can serve two terms in district seats and then immediately run for two more terms in the at-large seats created in 2018. Prince George’s voters have rejected multipleattempts to repeal or extend term limits.
How well has the nine-district system promoted political competition in Prince George’s County?
The table below shows the distribution of the 60 county council elections held in Prince George’s from 1998 through 2018. Of those 60 elections, 32 were district races with an incumbent on the ballot, 22 were for open district seats, 5 were special elections for open district seats and one was an at-large election in 2018.
The first thing one notices is that the average number of primary candidates is much lower in races with incumbents (1.9) than in open seat district races (4.8) and special elections (6.6). The 2018 at-large race had 9 candidates.
Now let’s look at how incumbents fare in Prince George’s district races.
Fully half of the elections featuring an incumbent (16 of 32) had no opposition. Only 3 elections had an incumbent winning by less than 10 points. Ninety-one percent of the elections had an incumbent winning by 20 points or more or not having an opponent at all.
The combined record of incumbents running for reelection over the last two decades is 32-0.
Granted, elections work differently in Prince George’s and MoCo. Prince George’s politicians employ mixed slates of incumbent and non-incumbent state and county candidates who distribute sample ballots listing all of them. This gives incumbents, especially non-term limited state legislators, enormous influence in selecting and grooming new members of their political organizations. But the end result is not much different than in MoCo’s district council races since 1998, in which Democratic incumbents have an 18-1 record and regularly win blowouts.
The lesson from Prince George’s County is clear: in the context of all district seats, true competition usually only occurs when an incumbent does not run. Because Prince George’s limits incumbents to two consecutive four-year terms, that means true competition happens once every eight years for district seats (unless a vacancy occurs and a special election is held). In Montgomery County, which limits council members to three consecutive four-year terms, true competition would occur once every twelve years. That is a mammoth setback from MoCo’s at-large elections, which have at least some degree of competition in every primary and have sent three incumbents home.
The effect of electing nine candidates and then allowing them to face creampuff (or no) opposition for twelve years would be to create nine kings and queens. That is comparable to what happened in Prince George’s County except our monarchs would rule 50% longer. The NIMBYism and parochialism of the Prince George’s nine-district system even acquired a name – “council courtesy,” under which the other eight members nearly always accepted a member’s position on development in his or her district. With neither the county executive nor the planning board trumping the council on land use powers, the council members were unchallenged overlords inside their domains. Then-special election candidate (and future Council Member) Derrick Leon Davis explained how this works on Kojo Nnamdi’s show in 2011.
In politics, there are few things more dangerous than elected officials who face little or no competition. The risk of being hurled from office by pitchfork-wielding voters is one of the few safeguards protecting the people from politicians afflicted by greed, ego, malice, sloth or sheer incompetence. Nine-district advocates have legitimate grievances and the county could use more district council seats. But competition is a far better solution to our problems than the crowning of kings and queens.
