Monthly Archives: October 2022

Casey Anderson, Montgomery County Council, Montgomery County Planning Board

Knives Out at Planning

It’s hard to keep up. Since I last wrote, a lot has happened.

Planning Board Chair Casey Anderson was removed from the Kojo in Our Community segment on WAMU on Thrive. (Disclosure: WAMU is owned by American University, my employer.)

Planning Board Vice Chair Partap Verma has gone on medical leave from the Planning Board.

Parks Department Deputy Director Miti Figueredo filed a complaint against Partap Verma. Fired Planning Director Gwen Wright says that the complaint is accurate. Though employed in the capacity of professional staff, both are staunch allies of Anderson. Figueredo, highly personable and well-regarded, previously worked as Anderson’s senior advisor. Extremely effective and well-connected, she also worked for two current members of the Montgomery County Council and the Chevy Chase Land Company.

Does anyone at Planning know anything about harassment law? Figueredo’s complaint against Verma could well be seen as illegal retaliation for his original complaint, especially since it was made public. Even if every word is true, and I don’t know the veracity of any of the complaints flying around, the information in Figueredo’s complaint related to the Verma’s complaint should have been given to appropriate person investigating these issues.

As with Wright’s comments before she was fired, there should be procedures in place–enforced by the Board and Staff leaders–to handle this correctly. Figueredo complained about the firing of Wright as retaliation for speaking out in defense of Anderson but nobody should be commenting publicly, let alone dismissing, harassment complaints whatever one thinks of Verma’s complaint or Wright’s dismissal.

Both Verma’s and Figueredo’s complaints appear like timely power plays. Verma had hoped to have Anderson’s support to become Chair. But Anderson hurt Verma’s reputation with his office booze offs and is rumored to support Councilmember Hans Riemer, another ally who has run up against term limits and came in third in the exec primary.

Now, Anderson’s supporters—Wright and Figueredo—are striking back even though both are supposed to be professional staff and not involved in Planning Board disputes. (One also wonders which staffers, if any, drank with Anderson in his office.)

The County Council seems to be unable to get a grip on this. While expressing grave concern about Wright’s dismissal, Council President Gabe Albornoz has not expressed concern, at least to my knowledge, about the massively inappropriate handling of these issues by virtually everyone concerned.

The debate among Planning Board members isn’t about Thrive 2050, as they all support it. But it does reflect on the process. These scandals indicate both political and staff leadership being willing to take extreme measures to achieve their goals.

Albornoz’s statement regarding the great community consultation during the creation of Thrive is naïve and uninformed at best. Most of the consultation consisted of Planning staff telling people positive spin about it rather than seeking input. Only input from firm supporters has been truly considered by either the Planning Board or the Council. Anderson’s approach is a big part of the problems at Planning.

Much about Thrive 2050 makes sense. We should have more density in urban nodes, which has been a consistent part of Master Plan revisions. But this document is visionary only in the sense that it looks backward. It takes no account of the massive rise in telecommuting and its impact on either transportation or housing patterns. Fewer people are riding public transit or riding in cars because of systemic changes. People working form home are likely to want more interior space and privacy as well as easy access to a little green. Thrive 2050 would have been a great plan to adopt in 1990.

Thrive 2050 represented an opportunity to bring the community together around a land use vision for the future. This was far from impossible. It occurred around the Bethesda Master Plan, which pleased many of the constituencies at odds here. But both the Planning Board and the County Council have failed in this endeavor and assured intense acrimony into the future. The current pile up of scandals shows why.

Rather than saving the next Council from these issues, the current one is simply storing up trouble. Adam and I disagree about lots of issues around Thrive but we agree that the Council needs to fix this.

Share
Montgomery County Planning Board

Scandal, Drama Enveloping the Planning Board

On October 6, WJLA reported that Planning Board Vice Chair Partap Verma sent an email accusing Planning Board Chair Casey Anderson of creating a “toxic misogynistic and hostile workplace.” The Montgomery County Council appoints and oversees the Planning Board, which is part of M-NCPPC and an independent agency.

Lots of questions remain to be answered beyond the veracity of the allegations directed at Anderson. For starters, when did Verma learn about these problems. Is Verma a required reporter who must report allegations like these immediately and cannot keep them confidential? Did he report them to Human Resources or other appropriate personnel in a timely manner?

Commissioner Partap Verma sent his letter only to Carol Rubin and Marlene Michaelson, so who leaked the allegations to the press? These matters should be kept confidential to protect everyone involved, including Casey Anderson.

Planning Director Gwen Wright issued a statement defending Anderson: “There may be people who have concerns with Casey, but they are not my employees.” Except that there is no way for her to know the experience of every staff person at Planning. Wright’s definitive statement could discourage other employees who might want to come forward with similar experiences.

It’s a sign of how gone wrong matters are at the Planning Board that Wright also thinks it’s appropriate for staff to lobby the Council in support of Thrive, rather than providing information when requested. It gives credence to views that staff joined Anderson in skewing this process to a pre-determined outcome. In any case, Thrive is now supposed to be with Council staff.

In a shocker, the Planning Board voted 4-0 to dismiss Wright on October 7. Casey Anderson recused himself from the vote. Wright is an at will employee, so the Board did not have to give a reason for her dismissal. It’s also a personnel matter, so they may be constrained in discussing it. But it’s still stunning to see a longtime, highly experienced senior staff person fired just a few months before her retirement.

The commissioners voting to remove Wright included Carol Rubin, who worked 16 years at M-NCPPC as an attorney and special projects manager, prior to her appointment to the Board and thus knew Wright from both the perspective of a staff member and planning commissioner. Like Verma, Rubin was caught in the undertow of Anderson’s office bar scandal. The County Council reprimanded and docked one day’s pay from both Rubin and Verma.

On Facebook, Wright said that she suspects that she was “fired because I showed support for Casey and attempted to protect my staff from being dragged into the Board’s conflicts.” But the Planning Director should not be taking sides in Board decisions or intervening in investigation of these and other serious allegations beyond relaying what she knows to the appropriate people and ensuring that proper processes are followed.

Meanwhile, at least some defenders of Anderson are already parading “locker room talk” excuses for his alleged inappropriate statements. Here are several tweets from former Council Candidate John Zittrauer:

And now the County Council has scheduled a meeting for later today to discuss a personnel matter:

Share
Montgomery County Planning Board

Less Oversight Proposed for M-NCPPC and WSSC

Even as problem after problem continues to envelop the M-NCPPC and the Montgomery County Planning Board, three county councilmembers have put forward a bill that would reduce oversight of M-NCPPC (Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission) and WSSC (Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission ).

Councilmembers Nancy Navarro, Andrew Friedson and Sidney Katz have proposed legislation (also embedded below) that would remove both agencies from oversight by the county Inspector General. The stated grounds for this change is that each agency now has its own Inspector General under state law.

Normally, I’d support ending duplication of this sort. But the ongoing mess at M-NCPPC mitigates against reducing oversight. Over the past year, the following has occurred:

All of these failures lead me to wonder that anyone is doing oversight, not that there is too much of it. Until the situation is brought under control, this portion of the bill needs to be binned.

UPDATE: Sonya Healy, the Legislative Information Officer for the County Council, writes that the county Inspector General already lacks authority over M-NCPPC and WSSC in the wake of the county’s successful advocacy for “dedicated oversight” at the state level. Whether this was a good idea remains an open question given the serious problems and seeming lack of oversight that continue to plague the Planning Board.

Share
Casey Anderson, Montgomery County Planning Board

Verma Accuses Anderson

The rumored internal turmoil at the Montgomery County Planning Board has burst into the open. Last night, WJLA reported that a confidential informant—revealed to be Planning Board Vice Chair Partap Verma—sent an email accusing Chair Casey Anderson of creating a “toxic misogynistic and hostile workplace.”

You can read the details of the accusations on WJLA’s website but we’ll keep them out of this family publication. The email doesn’t portray Anderson as someone open to hearing, let alone incorporating, ideas at odds with his own. Planning Director Gwen Wright defended Anderson.

Anderson and Verma had previously been very tight. Verma has been a staunch supporter of Anderson and clearly hoped to succeed him as Chair. But that alliance had fallen apart by September 22nd, when Verma purged Anderson from a Facebook photo of him and the governor:

Originally posted on August 18th
By September 22nd

All of this drama could have been avoided if either the other members of the Planning Board or the County Council had exercised proper oversight and taken action much earlier on the other numerous issues over at M-NCPPC.

Share
Hans Riemer, Thrive 2050

He Blinded Hans with Science

Tuesday’s Thrive Worksession

Councilmember Hans Riemer became strangely animated at Tuesday’s Thrive 2050 worksession over urban heat islands. Or rather that they shouldn’t be called “urban” heat islands as the above clip reveals. Once again, Riemer showed his ideological fervor while simultaneously making clear he doesn’t know his brief.

Riemer referred to Tom DiLiberto, the claimed source for his ideas, as the head of climate.gov. Except he’s not.

Then Riemer went on at great length about how heat islands aren’t really “urban” heat islands because tall buildings provide a lot of shade and shield people from the sun. If there is more heat, it shows we need taller buildings.

That’d be news to NY1, which reported earlier this year that New York—the city with by far the greatest concentration of tall buildings in the country—is the country’s third hottest urban heat island with temperatures 8 degrees above the surrounding area.

Riemer lays much of the blame on roads, which along with buildings trap and then radiate heat. But it’s hard to have a city without roads even in a place with as much public transit as NYC. Riemer likes and doesn’t mention sidewalks and bike lanes but they trap and radiate heat too.

After sharing his empirically false views, Riemer then asked to remove “urban” from urban heat islands. This nomenclature fetish is mainly about protecting urbanism, Riemer’s ideological church, from the slightest negative taint. This is the sort of zealotry that can’t acknowledge issues are complicated. That, for example, NYC is hotter and more polluted than most places yet also has far less environmental impact. Instead, density solves all problems.

This waste of time and the rest of the Council’s bored acquiescence with this balderdash perhaps wouldn’t be so bad if the Council were meaningfully engaged with either the issues or the community. After poring over the privileged submissions of two lobbyists, far less attention is being given to the 1500 pages of input from community members with less access.

One issue, for example, that merits more scrutiny is telecommuting. This supposedly forward thinking visionary plan the next 30 years gives no thought to how already skyrocketing telecommuting rates will reshape living, working or transportation patterns. Presumably, it will also influence where people want to live and in what housing types.

The Council instead chooses to focus its limited attention on Riemer’s dotty notion to rename urban heat islands. Meanwhile, Planning Board Chair Casey Anderson and pals continue to hold court and dictate the plan despite the ever growing laundry list of troublesome behavior by this highly paid public official: flouting rules for community consultation, routine violations of the Open Meetings Act, failure to register lobbyists, and an open office bar.

Urban heat islands. It’s exam time for the Council. Time to engage more deeply with the community and the issues. But it feels like they’d rather punt than study. If Thrive is to have any scrap of legitimacy, this needs to change.

Share
Casey Anderson, Montgomery County Planning Board

No Need for Casey Anderson to Drown His Sorrows

In a blow to Montgomery County’s increasingly debatable reputation for clean government, the County Council gave Planning Board Chair Casey Anderson a slap on the wrist earlier today for his open bar in his M-NCPPC office. Planning Board Vice Chair Partap Verma and Commissioner Carol Rubin were also reprimanded. Apparently, Anderson didn’t feel badly about it as he was all smiles and business as usual around the Council building yesterday. How this compares to punishments for others one can only wonder. The Council statement is below.

Share