Democracy is not a spectator sport!
December 2006

The County Council campaign victories of Marc Elrich, Duchy Trachtenberg and Valerie Ervin offer us some real hope for dynamic change in the next 4 years. Add county exec Ike Leggett to the equation and we could see some exciting possibilities in local governance.

A lot of firsts have just happened. The first Black woman on the County Council. The first Black county executive. Instead of mostly lawyers, we now have a teacher, a social worker, and a union organizer to provide a broader representation of county residents.

So what can they do?

Well, two other Council members, Phil Andrews and Marilyn Praisner share the social justice, transportation and environmental concerns of the newly elected. George Leventhal has been strong on health and the environment. We don’t have a whole lot of hard knowledge about Robert Berliner but we can be hopeful, since he presents himself as a strong liberal. Mike Knapp seems open to some change, even though he represents a conservative, up-county population. Only former “End Gridlocker” Nancy Floreen seems stuck in the old regime.

So, there’s an opportunity for a majority vote in favor of a progressive agenda.

The first issue is development and fast growth. The previous County Council allowed growth without enough restrictions on developers. Taxpayers were left to pick up much of the tab for education, roads, sewage, and general infrastructure. At least two incumbents and the three newly elected council members are pledged, along with Leggett, to slower growth policies.

On the previous council, only one member, Phil Andrews, refused to take any special interest and developer money. To me, if council members receive significant contributions from developers, they should recuse themselves from voting in cases that affect the financial well-being of those same developers. Otherwise, there is the appearance of a conflict of interest.

Elrich and Trachtenberg refused to take developer money. So, perhaps we can look to creative campaign finance reform measures soon and an end to developer and special interest contributions to Council members and more of an emphasis on contributions from constituents.

Almost one half of the county budget (49 percent) is spent on education. Valerie Ervin had served on the Board of Education and Marc Elrich is a teacher. The teachers’ union (MCEA) backed almost all of the elected candidates as well as the winning Board of Ed candidates. We can expect to see a lot of emphasis in the next four years on reducing class size, more pre-school ed, after school programming and closing the achievement gap in the next 4 years.

Council member George Leventhal, much to his credit, used the final days of the old Council to push through a statute which requires that all new buildings larger than 10,000 square feet meet national green building standards. Developers have criticized the legislation as have reps from the logging industry. The new council might focus on other environmental issues including protecting the up county agricultural reserve as well as our streams and parklands.

The issues of condo conversion, affordable housing, the Purple Line, alternative sources of transportation and Metro expansion, were all raised during the election debates. Hopefully, we’ll see some results in future council meetings.

However, these last issues will require some outside-the-box thinking. There’s no magic answer since they all require a serious commitment of financial resources. There’s always the hope for state and federal monies but all will take some very creative programming.

One strong positive note. Sometime ridiculed and humored Takoma Park and southern Silver Spring, in the past relegated to the fringes of power, provided a great deal of the leadership in the county and state elections – Peter Franchot, Jamie Raskin, Tom Hucker, Mark Elrich, Valerie Ervin, George Leventhal, Heather Mizeur and Tom Perez (had he been allowed to run) – all came out of our corner of the County. We should be proud.

Another positive note from the primary and general election: It seemed to me that a lot more people played active grassroots roles than in the past. The group (Progressive Neighbors) that I was involved in, for example, found a lot of support among progressives, many of whom had previously shied away from local politics. Maybe it was a reaction to six years of Bush and Republican rule, but many of the aforementioned candidates benefited from the strong, active role of progressives in this past election.

All of us need to stay involved and support the good candidates we have just helped to elect and hold them accountable as well, if we want to see positive results from their victories. They can’t do it alone, given the pressure from developers, special interest, and others with a vested interest in the status quo. As someone once said, “Democracy is not a spectator sport.”

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