Politics & Government

Q&A: Questions for Marc Elrich

Leading up to the September 14th primary in Montgomery County, Patch will ask local candidates in contested races questions about their positions and their priorities. Next up: County Council At-Large Incumbent Marc Elrich. He is one of nine candidat

Patch: What are the two issues you think are most pressing in Montgomery County?

Marc Elrich: Our County faces many pressing issues, but the biggest is managing our way through the fiscal challenges which I believe requires us to rethink how we deliver government services. We need to restructure the County government and find more efficient ways of providing services. The economic outlook points to a slow recovery, so we won't see increased revenues for some time.   A more efficient government will be essential if we are to maintain the quality services we offer our residents, including top-notch schools and libraries, park and recreation programs, public safety and much-needed social services for those suffering the most in our economic downturn.  We also need to fix our regulatory processes which are difficult to navigate, take far longer than they should and often don't produce better outcomes.  I don't like the expression "green-tape" because it implies expediting and short-circuiting a process, whereas I really do believe that the system itself is fundamentally broken and needs to be fixed. I think it applies to numerous levels of the government where people and businesses interact and try to obtain permits.  Our processes are more cumbersome, seem to take longer than corresponding jurisdictions and don't result in better products at the end.  Often our own agencies tie things up because of their own disagreements.

The second thing I'd like to see is for the County to move forward on my Rapid Transit proposal that is currently being studied by County and outside transportation planners. It will have important ramifications on several fronts:  it would reduce auto useage associated with additional development, thereby lessening impacts on local communities; it could reduce work trips which both reduces road congestion and reduces CO2 emissions; and, it will provide speedier connections between where people work and where people live. To get cars off the road we need to create world class transit that enables people to leave their cars at home.  This rapid transit system is essential to meeting the region's CO2 reduction goals, improving air quality and making true smart growth possible. Putting a system in place that expedites moving people to work, in our very highly congested region, would also help the County in attracting businesses.  We have a high vacancy rate and lots of empty office and commercial space already built, and attracting new companies to these empty spaces would benefit the county in many ways. In the long term, this new transit system facilitates projects that we've planned that would need adequate transit to accommodate the level of development envisioned.

Find out what's happening in Takoma Parkwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Patch: What are your thoughts on the proposed Purple Line and its affects on Montgomery County? What are your thoughts on transportation infrastructure in general in the county?

ME: I think the Purple Line is going to make commuting between the East and West sides of the County a lot easier than the current transit system. But without connectivity to a larger transit system within the county, I'm concerned that it won't have enough impact on traffic or produce a significant enough reduction in vehicle miles traveled. We're going to have to be sensitive to upward pressure it might place on housing costs in areas adjacent to it and what that could mean for displacing people from affordable housing.  It could really facilitate back and forth movements between Silver Spring and Bethesda benefiting both employment trips and after-hours trips for dining and entertainment.

Find out what's happening in Takoma Parkwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

In general, the County is pretty much done with road building.  We're not putting another road into Silver Spring, Bethesda, White Flint, Rockville, Wheaton, or any other job center in the County.  So if we want to manage congestion and provide reasonable access to our job centers we're going to have to really change our focus to transit, which is the motivation for my Rapid Transit proposal, or face total gridlock on our roads - an outcome that is antithetical to our economic development and quality of life goals.   

Patch:What is your assessment of education in Montgomery County? What can the council do?

ME: I'll answer the last part first - the Council appropriates money but has no oversight or control over programs and policies of the school system. That authority lies with the School Board which I believe should have a larger staff, independent of the superintendent's staff.  I think we do some things really well, we are one of the better school systems, but I think there are four areas that really need more thought.  First, the school system is way too focused on tests which has narrowed the curriculum to the detriment of broader learning objectives.  I hear this all the time from parents and from many teachers, former colleagues of mine in MCPS, who feel there's too much emphasis on test prep.  Second, we need to do a better job of preparing students for the work-world, particularly those not going on to college.  I think our job training and work-skill development side is weak and that we've focused on college-bound students and not paid adequate attention to those that are not. Third, we have not sufficiently closed the achievement gap and there remain serious discrepancies in graduation rates, grades and test scores, academic eligibility and other measures that indicate that the problem persists.  Fourth, the school system needs to re-evaluate how it delivers its services, much as the County government needs to do.  But to do so, they need a break from the State Maintenance of Effort  (MOE) Law which basically requires school spending to increase every year and makes it impossible to even find legitimate savings in operations that would have no impact on the classroom whatsoever.  If the MCPS were to find savings that reduced spending below MOE requirements, the State would actually further reduce funding of county schools - yes, it's as ridiculous as it sounds.

Patch: What are your thoughts on addressing the budget crisis in Montgomery County?

ME: As I address in the first question, we need to begin by examining the entire County operations from the top down and the bottom up.  We must ask what our core missions are and how we can best meet them.  We must ask the question, "When a piece of paper or a person enters our government, where do they go and does every step in the process add value?"  After we are able to deliver a more efficiently run government, then I think the various stakeholders - residents, business owners, employees and government leaders, will be more trusting of the next steps needed to address the budget crisis.  We may have to make difficult decisions (as we had to do this year), but we must do so in the context of ensuring that all County operations are running as efficiently as possible.

Patch: As an At Large candidate, how do plan on balancing priorities that affect different parts of the county?

ME: Fortunately, the big issues play out county-wide.  I look at budgets and try to make sure that there's some sense of equality in making decisions on where we invest in projects and programming.  I try to work closely with District Council members and to support assembling a set of priorities that address the needs expressed around the County.  We have encountered some long-term inequities. Until this Council, for example, recreation centers in historically African-American communities were back-burnered (a nice way of saying ignored) in favor of other projects, but we took that on and put these projects on track.  It's not always possible to distribute funds equally in any year because a big-ticket project or two can skew the appearance of how projects are distributed, but budget limits make it impossible to do every project we'd like to do, when we'd like to do it.  Another example is that after a couple of years of focusing on Master Plan decisions in the I-270 and 355 corridor, we made a decision this year to turn attention to the East county and place those plans ahead of others in the area where we'd previously focused.

Patch: How would you assess the job done by current At Large Councilmembers?

ME: I think that we've developed a far better working relationship than we started with four years ago in the aftermath of the election.  Some critics attribute it to the politics of the election, but, in truth, the change came earlier.  Over the last year and a half, in the face of ever worsening revenue projections, the disagreements over some development issues became secondary to working with each other to deal with the budget challenges.  In doing that, we found a lot of commonality that sometime got obscured when people saw the intense discussions over development.  It's truly sobering to have to try to protect services and maintain a safety net in a time of declining revenues and it helps put things in perspective.  Budgets are often great things to grandstand on, affording politicians moments to come off as true champions of things that all of us know we can't fund, and to everyone's credit, no one went there. I think that was really important.  It enabled us to really put our stamp on a budget that protected more services than might have seemed possible early on. 

And even on some of the bigger "battles", we actually arrived at decisions in which much of what many of us wanted were balanced in the final product.  We managed to craft compromises that we could all live with, and I know that people did not expect that to happen.  It's funny but in a perverse way, some observers were happy when our disagreements were more overt and heated, and then disappointed as we came to find ways to get past the hard-feelings of the last two elections and to work productively with each other.

Patch: Any parting words to voters in Montgomery County?

ME: Montgomery County is a great place to live, work and raise a family.  We have a strong school system, beautiful parks, a model Agriculture Reserve, we have access to public transportation, outstanding communities and lots of active residents. However, there's more we must do, much of which I've discussed above - we need to use this budget crisis as an opportunity to re-examine the County workings, including the school system.  We need to implement quickly my proposed rapid transit system to give people a real alternative to cars and a meaningful solution to pollution.   Additionally, much work remains to help the environment.  My first act on the Council was to protect the C&O Canal from development; I have advocated for protection of our delicate watersheds in Ten-Mile Creek and Upper Paint Branch; and I am currently working with Councilmember Roger Berliner to strengthen the Forest Conservation law to preserve our existing tree canopy, the single easiest and most affordable way to reduce CO2. I continue to fight for the protection of our Agricultural Reserve, a treasure which has kept our scenic farmland intact, promoted local agriculture, and kept our side of the Potomac from looking like Tyson's Corner.

Our budget resources are constrained but our imagination and creativity are not; we have much work left to do and I will work hard to accomplish our goals.  The endorsements I have received from the Sierra Club and Green Democrats, as well as the Washington Post, MCEA (the teacher's union), the Gazette, NOW, NARAL, Progressive Maryland and countless others show that I have been recognized as a fair, effective leader in the county, and, if re-elected, I will continue to work hard and ask the tough questions to help make Montgomery County an even better place to live.


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