Will "term limit on MoCo Council members" help MoCo schools?

[Anonymous]

Heard this "term limit" is on ballot now.

Will this benefit schools?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Heard this "term limit" is on ballot now.

Will this benefits schools?

sorry for my fat finger

[Anonymous]

Indirectly probably yes, but hard to say. The Council has a cozy relationship with the teacher's union and school board.. we need to shake things up.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Indirectly probably yes, but hard to say. The Council has a cozy relationship with the teacher's union and school board.. we need to shake things up.

??? They hate each other since the recession and the council's refusal to approve the maintenance of effort requirements. This is the first year in a long time they approved higher funding, and that was to reduce class size. They took a partial raise away from the union do it.

OP, a lot of the funding structure for schools is tied up by state law. Like the maintenance of effort law. Like the fact the state used to pay teacher pensions and then dumped it all in the county. Like the fact Hogan is withholding education funds in a fight with the General Assembly. Like the fact Hogan won't spend the cash in the Aging Schools program. But they (State) are spending $5 million on scholarships to private schools. Go figure.

Local government, across the state, approves funding for the local public schools, but they don't have much say on how it's actually spent. And they have much less say on state dollars. State money is almost 30% of the school budget.

Now if you are talking about slowing development, that's a different issue. Vote them off. It's faster.

[Anonymous]

They are also tied funding to closing achievement gap. This is partly the reason why MCPS is inventing all these methods to cover up achievement gap. I say vote them off too.

[Anonymous]

In general, 12 years is more than enough for a MoCo Council member to hold office. I actually think 8 years would have been sufficient, but I guess we're lucky to even have this ballot initiative given that the current council members challenged the petition signatures to add this to the ballot.

If the question is added to the ballot and term limits are approved by a majority of voters, council members Roger Berliner, Marc Elrich, Nancy Floreen and George Leventhal would be forced out of office in 2018. I don't know enough about their specific attitudes towards public schools.

http://www.bethesdamagazine.com/Bethesda-Beat/Web-2016/County-Council-Prepares-for-Possibility-of-Term-Limit-Question-on-November-Ballot/

[Anonymous]

I oppose term limits in general because they are limits on voter power, not office holder power. You can vote them out any time. And actually voters in this county are more educated and more involved than most, and you "do" vote people out pretty quickly.

But term limits don't let you keep the good ones. Term limits in particular limit knowledge and experience in office. And especially at the local level, that matters. It shifts power to career employees, who you can't fire by voting out of office. In some jurisdictions, it shifts power to lobbyists. Again because they've been around and have the knowledge of how things run. Lobbyists really aren't a problem here. But they are at the state level. Newbie elected officials rely heavily on those advisers who have the institutional knowledge, because they don't have it themselves. That could be good, or it could be bad. But you the voter don't have control over it.

The 12 year limit is better than an 8 year limit in this regard. Not as harmful.

And FWIW, most of those Councilmembers who'd be affected in 2018 are likely running for Executive. So term limits won't matter for them. They'd all be precluded from running for their council seat again.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Heard this "term limit" is on ballot now.

Will this benefit schools?

Anything Ficker is bad

[Anonymous]

The best thing is to show up to the meetings they are having and to invite your rep to a community meeting. Let them know you're PISSED. Floreen & her cronies are ruining MoCo and it's all because of their greed for developer contributions. Absolutely sickening.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:In general, 12 years is more than enough for a MoCo Council member to hold office. I actually think 8 years would have been sufficient, but I guess we're lucky to even have this ballot initiative given that the current council members challenged the petition signatures to add this to the ballot.

If the question is added to the ballot and term limits are approved by a majority of voters, council members Roger Berliner, Marc Elrich, Nancy Floreen and George Leventhal would be forced out of office in 2018. I don't know enough about their specific attitudes towards public schools.

http://www.bethesdamagazine.com/Bethesda-Beat/Web-2016/County-Council-Prepares-for-Possibility-of-Term-Limit-Question-on-November-Ballot/

None of them care about term limits. They're all gunning for County Executive. And the only one who actually HELPS constituents is Elrich. Berliner may have learned something from the uproar about Westbard, but the other two are just so disappointing.

[Anonymous]

What I've heard is that the existing council members are in the pockets of developers so I am voting yes on B. 12 years is enough for elected officials.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What I've heard is that the existing council members are in the pockets of developers so I am voting yes on B. 12 years is enough for elected officials.

I am sick of Floreen too but I think term limits is a dumb way to get rid of them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I oppose term limits in general because they are limits on voter power, not office holder power. You can vote them out any time. And actually voters in this county are more educated and more involved than most, and you "do" vote people out pretty quickly.

But term limits don't let you keep the good ones. Term limits in particular limit knowledge and experience in office. And especially at the local level, that matters. It shifts power to career employees, who you can't fire by voting out of office. In some jurisdictions, it shifts power to lobbyists. Again because they've been around and have the knowledge of how things run. Lobbyists really aren't a problem here. But they are at the state level. Newbie elected officials rely heavily on those advisers who have the institutional knowledge, because they don't have it themselves. That could be good, or it could be bad. But you the voter don't have control over it.

The 12 year limit is better than an 8 year limit in this regard. Not as harmful.

And FWIW, most of those Councilmembers who'd be affected in 2018 are likely running for Executive. So term limits won't matter for them. They'd all be precluded from running for their council seat again.

ALL of them are running. There's only one decent one in the mix.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What I've heard is that the existing council members are in the pockets of developers so I am voting yes on B. 12 years is enough for elected officials.

X1000000

[Anonymous]

I also feel that it's time to get some new people and new ideas on both the county council and the school board. I'm also happy to see that the county executive won't run again.