Reply to No good options for MoCo?

Forum Index » Metropolitan DC Local Politics

Reply to "No good options for MoCo?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Anyone making a decision on executive based on whether or not they will raise taxes is misguided.  The County Council sets the tax rates, not the County Executive.

Just look at what happened over the past month.  Elrich asked for a property tax increase to cover things like the school budget, but the council dismissed that, cut the ITOC instead and instituted the slightly progressive income tax with the one-tenth higher top rate, with the net effect of less revenue overall and not enough funding to cover the schools.

How effectively the non-school portion of the budget gets implemented is where an Executive comes in, but that can be undermined or assisted by other actions that the Council takes.

I think Glass would have the hardest time, there, as I see his strength (or weakness, if you don't like his positions) as more of a wonk.

Jawando could have Elrich-type difficulty in being at odds with some of the Council, though we're only talking on a few issues, since there really isn't much daylight, there.  However, I think he'd have a more organized group of people with him in appointed positions.

Friedson might have the best chance of being "effective," since he'll have that entourage ready to go, but how you see that really depends on [i]what[/i] you want him to be effective about.  He really hasn't shown he can be effective independent of the inputs of his donors, and I expect he'd continue to be effective [i]for them[/i], and anti-effective, then, if there is such a term, for much of the rest of the county, just as he has been on the Council.

I can't support that, so, Glass or Jawando.  Hard to pick a poison.[/quote]

Friedson hasn’t shown he can be effective for the county even when he does his donors’ bidding. He’s made a lot of changes to zoning and the taxes that landlords pay (or now don’t pay). We haven’t seen much housing as a result and I don’t think there’s a single project that broke ground solely because of whatever benefit Friedson gave the developer (who also happened to be his donor).

The council is dominated by group think. I would rather some tension between the executive and council. Not on an Elrich level but as a councilmember Jawando showed he was far more open to input from colleagues on bills than Elrich ever did. [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics