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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]The biggest I have with Elrich's "one play playbook" of always and only raising taxes, is he makes no effort to improve the services those taxes provide.

Does anyone in Moco feel like schools are great?  Roads?  Policing?

It is just a relentless assault on affordability, with nothing to show for it.   He never demands good government, or improved metrics to actually measure the services provided, or holds any kind of tough conversations with the unions.  It's just "more, more, more" with nothing to show for it. [/quote]

1. Schools aren’t the responsibility of the county executive. If you have complaints about the schools — and you definitely should — school board is the race for you.

2. All three candidates have opposed fixing the roads. That’s one place the council and Elrich have been in broad agreement. Friedson takes it a step further by pretending the private sector can develop more with no impact on infrastructure.

3. Crime is way down, so what’s the complaint exactly?

Accountability in the county government is dead. The employee unions won. But Elrich didn’t hand them that victory on his own. In fact, Friedson and Stewart just handed the unions a big victory by sponsoring a bill giving them full control over the pension fund with no accountability.

I don’t like higher taxes either but we need the revenue. Friedson made it a lot easier for taxes to be raised by leading the charter amendment a few years ago to allow revenue to automatically increase as fast as property values went up instead of having the default rates tied to growth and broad inflation. His next step was sponsoring bills to exempt his donors from paying taxes entirely.

If one of these candidates gets specific about what they’ll cut and what impact their cuts will have on tax rates, I’d happily vote for that candidate. I’m not holding my breath for that to happen because they’ve all voted for all the spending. Jawando and to a lesser extent Glass have so far been the only ones who are realistic about the budget. [/quote]

My broader point was as the executive calls for (another) tax increase- do you think any of the above have improved?  Is Moco better or worse?

As for schools- the executive controls the power of the purse, so he/she absolutely has a lot of the responsibility for the success for failure of MCPS. [/quote]

[b]The executive proposes a budget, which is then changed by the council. The council almost always passes the budget burger with a veto-proof majority and therefore has more control over the budget than the executive. Notably, every member of the council has supported the MCPS increases. 
[/b]
This race is really about rent stabilization. If Friedson wins, the landlords only need six votes to repeal this t. Meanwhile, Friedson is also delaying a committee hearing on the anti-price fixing bill, so if Friedson wins there’s a good chance tenants will have no protections a year from now. [/quote]

How is it about rent stabilization? Most people in the county don't rent.

it's very hard to change the CE's recommended budget in any substantive way. When he builds a budget on a tax increase, the entire budget has to be dismantled in a matter of weeks and rebuilt. CE had 9 months to put it together and the council has 2 months to fix and approve something. Again, this is why he should have at least tried to be collaborative and get some buy-in from Council before crafting the epic disaster he sent across the street.

And Friedson is not delaying Bill 8-26. ?? Jawando waited until February to introduce it. And then they have to wait at least 2 weeks (and usually 3) for a mandatory public hearing. Public hearing was scheduled for March 10, four weeks later. Perhaps a slight delay. I think there was a reess in there somewhere though.  But Friedson has no control over that.

But that was right before budget. They all know that (with this year's exeption for immigration legislation) no bills get committee review until after budget. It has been like that for years. Again, not something Friedson has any control over. The council president maybe.

If they had some backbone, they'd disapprove all the union contract provisions that cost money, like compensation increases.

They'd make maintenance of effort a ceiling and not a floor.

[/quote]

Friedson has voted for all the compensation increases. That’s the structural deficit right there. He also supported using reserves to cover operating expenses. His record and rhetoric don’t match. [/quote]

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