MoCo Black Coffee Podcast
MoCo Black Coffee is a platform for intentional dialogue about the Black/African American community in Montgomery County, Maryland. Hosted by African American Community Liaison, Frederick Hawkins, we bring together visionary community and government leaders, dynamic entrepreneurs and cultural champions to build understanding, awareness and strengthen the community. Each episode is brewed strong with insight, intelligence, and intention, centering the strategies, stories and systems that sustain the Black/African American community.
MoCo Black Coffee Podcast
MoCo Black Coffee Podcast Episode 7 - Montgomery County Executive Marc Elrich
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MoCo Black Coffee is a platform for intentional dialogue about the Black/African American community in Montgomery County, Maryland. Hosted by African American Community Liaison, Frederick Hawkins, we bring together visionary community and government leaders, dynamic entrepreneurs and cultural champions to build understanding, awareness and strengthen the community. Each episode is brewed strong with insight, intelligence, and intention, centering the strategies, stories and systems that sustain the Black/African American community.
Coffee Shop Welcome And Guest Intro
SPEAKER_00Thank you, and welcome to Moco Black Coffee. My name is Frederick Hawkins, and we are honored to have County Executive Mark Elvis. Good to have you. Good to think. Thank you. It's an honor to have you here, man. So you've been you've been to County's before? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_03Of course you have, right? Since they opened. I was involved in helping them deal with this street mess they had in terms of things.
SPEAKER_00I like this spot, man. This is one of my cheer spots. Good food, good coffee. Yep. You know, good energy.
SPEAKER_03This is like one of the largest, probably coffee shop that's set up like this here. My other favorite one is down the street, a Kefa, but Kefa's small. Yeah, that's a nice spot. And then what's his name? Zeke has one on George Avenue. It's also small but nice. But this is you know a little bit bigger. You can actually do an event in here, and uh it's just got a nice vibe about it.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah, I like it. I think you know, when I was younger, I would look at coffee shops and like, why are you in there? But then as I got older, a laptop and some coffee is almost a blueprint to a good start to the day. You know, so but you know, thanks for for joining me. Absolutely. You know, you have had a great run, a strong run, uh coming down to the end, uh, but it's more coming. Right. I'm actually excited about that. But what are some lessons that you learned during your time as CE that you're gonna use moving forward?
Why Government Is Hard To See
SPEAKER_03Wow, um I guess I'm constantly reminded of how little people understand about the complexity of government. Yeah. And uh and both in terms of what it does for expectations, but also what it means in terms of understanding if you want things you have to fight for. And you know, that oftentimes I I don't see you know some of the push that you would you would think you would be getting. And I don't think there's uh the people necessarily comfortable doing that. I go out and talk to people all the time and I say, you know, political change is a context for it. If you're gonna write a letter and then go away quietly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, so there's a value in you know in being persistent about things. And so I think that's
Tax Law Mistakes And Retiree Costs
SPEAKER_03important. I think um I really realized, you know, how deeply messed up the county's financial structure is. Um, when I came into office, one of the first things we found was that for almost two decades the county had been miscalculating its tax revenue, what it should have been getting from development. Oh wow. That uh people had read the law in a way that prevented us from getting full value of new projects. And so effectively when new projects came into the tax stream, we had to lower the tax rate because we had we were limited in how much we could raise. And the whole thing was that development was supposed to drive new revenue. They had concocted a language in the law that didn't let you get the full new revenue from new development, and so as it came in, you started having to cut rates on everybody. So that was one of the first things we found. And that was more than a little bit upsetting. And we did get uh the council to make a change, yeah, but this is like you know, a couple of decades of far less revenue than we would have otherwise collected, which means far less things built that we needed that we would have been able to build with no increase in people's rates. And so that that was kind of a frustrating beginning. I think dealing now, we have we have a program that uh funds retiree health benefits. Uh taxpayers today, they out of their taxes today, they pay this year's tax benefit. I mean, health benefit to retirees. For some reason, we got talked into treating it like a pension. And so we're putting tens of millions of dollars away in a fund so that residents 15 years from now won't have to pay the current cost, that year's cost of a benefit that we're paying today, the current cost, and taxpayers are paying the future cost. We shouldn't be doing that. There's no real justification for that. And so we've tried to propose ways of uh of funding, helping fund future costs, but not trying to get it like a pension and to not force county residents to pay for future benefits. That just doesn't, that does not make sense considering we're paying those benefits out of our current revenue today. So that eats up a lot of money. That's money that's not available for other things that we do. So those those things are frustrating.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's frustrating. It's complex too. I mean, you know, growing up, I didn't know much about politics, but hearing you, it seems like it's so many layers. I can only imagine like the hundreds of challenges you have to face every day. Yeah.
From Activist Teacher To Executive
SPEAKER_00Like how did it's all these complex things, like how did being a school teacher, and I heard you were quite the activist, prepare you to deal with all the stuff you just explained to me.
SPEAKER_03I mean I was an activist before I was a school teacher. I was an you know, so school teachers like a midlife change for me. I'm like 40 years old, I think, around the time I changed to be a teacher. But I've been involved in um community organizing when I moved to Tacoma Park, one of the first things I did was get involved in tenant organizing in Tacoma Park. Um I was involved in the formation of this co-op, which is uh uh it was a it's a community-owned grocery store, it's still in business. Uh they've they've done really well, but I was part of the work first worker collective, meaning that the workers ran the store. It was worker-managed but community-owned, and it's which is which I like as a model for business a lot. And uh so I was used to doing community work, I got involved with civic groups. Um then when I was looking for another job and I was trying to get a job, um I was thinking maybe I'd work at IPS or one of these think tanks and work on issues. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I was substituting to make money, and uh I wound up in a substitute job that turned into five days, then six months, then like the whole next year. And you know, I was asked if I, you know, why don't you become a teacher? Yes. And uh and I was in a really I was in a school that was like high poverty, but probably the highest poverty school of the county at the time. Yeah, yeah. And I thought about it, and you know, I had thought maybe I'd want to be a high school teacher. I didn't think elementary school, but I kind of realized in my time as a sub how much it impacts and what happens at this stage sets the stage for everything else. It's like if kids don't learn it by the time they're leaving elementary school, they ain't gonna get it later. Yeah. And so I said, okay, I'll do I'll do this. And uh I went to Hoffman's got a degree, um, and uh wound up being a teacher for 17 years. But all the time I was doing that, I was on the city council at Tacoma Park. Um I wrote, helped create the revised rent stabilization law that survived the court challenge. Thanks thanks to the judge who actually said you've got X amount of time to fix this. And we did. Um but that was really important to me because I wanted people to be able to continue to be able to live in Tacoma Park. Tacoma Park, you know, we've seen rocketing prices in single family houses, obviously puts pressure on rental. And if we hadn't had rent stabilization, we would have completely changed our population. Yeah, we would have. We would have bleached it, to put it politely. And uh and I thought, and I would tell my colleagues, it's like, why would you let, you know, you let these rent increases go at higher rates. You're taking bags of groceries off of people's tables. That is really what it is. And you and me don't know what it's like to have bags of groceries taken off our tables. In some of these families, it's a real thing. And uh we had a council that actually supported unanimously redoing and strengthening rent stabilization law in Deconom Park. I got involved in zoning stuff all around the county with different groups.
Developer Influence And Clean Campaign Money
SPEAKER_03I felt, you know, that Montgomery County has too long been run or tried to be run by the development interest. Um that you have too many politicians who are too beholden to developers. Yeah. And uh back then it was worse because we didn't have public financing and it was a very popular way to get your money. Yeah. But I'll say caveat with public financing, look to see who they're taking money from, even with public financing. Because you can be publicly financed, but you can get a $500 check from a developer that turns into $1,000. And so it's not as much as getting a $6,000 check from the developer. But look to see who people are taking money from. I've you know never I I would I used to sit up with LinkedIn and my computer and I'd put somebody's name in who wrote me a large check, and I would see who they were and what they did, and if they were involved in that industry, I stayed away from it.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Yeah, well, how you take your money, it says a lot about your character, you know, and who you're taking it from.
SPEAKER_03Look, you know, there's no matter what people say, like these are my friends, this isn't political. There's an expectation when you take money from developers, and there are things they want. And, you know, one of my former colleagues used to say, well, you know, this is so much easier because instead of going out and getting hundreds of people to give me, you know, $25 or $50, I can get these large checks or a few phone calls. So I all those things I was involved in. And so then I, you know, spent 12 years on the council, and uh, that was a learning experience. But you don't know how things run. This is you know the the thing that was really starkly true in your executive. When you're a legislator, you pass legislation. I want you to do this. You have no idea whether you have the staffing or the ability to do this. A lot of times you've written the legislation not coordinating with the department saying what will you need to set this up? So I'm in a position when I want to do things, I have to talk to people and say, I'm the executive, and this has to operate, so if I'm gonna add this in, what are the needs I have to address, not simply get the headline of this as a program, but I gotta be sure we can pay for it.
SPEAKER_00Is that where the tension comes in, kind of from being the activist? Just kind of going out there and doing what needs to be done versus being in an executive position and you gotta like.
SPEAKER_03Look, I still see myself as an activist. I mean, I still work with community groups, I'll still go out and tell them how to organize, and it frustrates some people on the council sometimes, but you know, I'm not gonna tell people, I'm not gonna not tell people how to go about, you know, organizing fear interest. Um tax. Yeah, it it it's some tension, but I mean it's also reality. I mean, if I want things done, I've got to figure out how they're gonna get done. Um and council members don't have to think about that. Yeah. So like we pass this, you guys got to do it now. And so being on this side of it made me a lot more aware of that. Also made me aware of you know opportunities to change or facilitate changes that actually had you being more effective than what you do. Yeah, so yeah, I like that.
How Resolution J Made Equity Real
SPEAKER_00You you did a lot in your legacy. Uh and I started by saying you had a strong run, you know, went through kind of a list of your accomplishments, things you had your hand in um last night, but one I don't think you get enough credit for is Res J. Like we know why Res J is needed. We know why. But like how? How did you, how were you able to pull that off in that climate? It was kind of cool.
SPEAKER_03Um, it was the end of my last term. I'm running for executive, and I wanted to do it. Nancy Navarro raised the issue also, we decided we'd work together. And um, we realized politically nobody could vote against us. Yeah, you know, because everybody is too aware to pretend like we don't know this is real. And so we got a bill in and it didn't apply to the last months of that administration, but we knew that whoever came in would be stuck with the bill and would have to do it. And so, you know, we worked and the council passed it, and I was really happy about that because it, you know, doing it at that moment when it became effective with the next administration, they had to put it together. Now I was happy I was the next administration because I really wanted to do this. And I think you know, we've set up a strong department. It was probably underfunded initially, they didn't get enough staff. They were given an enormous workload, like review every department's budget request, but not enough people to review every department's budget request. But you know, its staffing has improved and they're able to do more work. Um people in departments say they can see the shift in policies. You know, like capital projects are perfect examples because capital projects used to go to a certain part of the county disproportionately. And uh people now have to look at where all these projects go. And I credit Ike with the shift in thinking on this because when he walked in as executive, one of the first things he said is we're fixing all these black rec centers in the county that have been allowed to rot while we build these beautiful, beautiful rec centers in parts of the county. But the historic black community rec centers were fallen apart, literally fallen apart. And he said, My budget's gonna build these centers, we're gonna get these fixed, and he did it. And it was a shock to some people. Not every conversation quietly was happy with this, yeah, because it meant other projects would get delayed. But it was the right thing to do, because those projects have been delayed forever. Yeah. And uh so I think, you know, we I kind of took what I did and said, this is the way we do things in general. It's like it's time to make sure that we try to spread this stuff out around the county. Um we look at our social programs, make sure they're effective. And I think they've become more effective. I think our our health program, there's a huge increase in spending in my in my time. Um the council gets credit for it, whether they like it or not, because sometimes they'll complain about the size of the budget. I remind them you voted for everything that was in the budget. Everything in this budget was passed on unanimous votes of the council. So I always find that funny. It's not funny when they get those conversations, but I will say it is it is honest that these people understood once the issue is raised, that there's something they need to do. So the way the way you avoid doing things is avoiding raising issues. I don't talk about it, I don't have to do it. When you start talking about it, it becomes hard to say I'm not doing that. And so the council has gone along with us. Now they'll, you know, at the end of the budget cycle, it's their budget and they want credit for it. But during the creation of the budget, when they worry about what it costs, it's like it's the county executive's budget. It's like everything in my budget this year is something you put in before, and then there are some enhancements for things we've put in that need more money. Yeah. But it's uh it's an interesting process. It's way different than sitting around the other side of the street.
SPEAKER_00It is, it is. I'm I'm seeing, like, and it's such a rich history, like black history here in the county. What are some things like you put that bill in because you knew it was needed, you knew it would have to be addressed. The world told us it has to be. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Before George Floyd. Yeah. We also started reforming the police department before George Floyd. See, one of the first things we did, we had a big community meeting. We said, come and talk to us about the police. We started making changes, you know, in the department and training. We created a group to look at the training and to, you know, help us. And I think maybe the reason we were able to transition that as peacefully as we did, or you know, with as less disruption as we did particularly with the police department was the fact it wasn't done under a sense of urgency and everything is evil and bad. It was like we need to do this and we're gonna do it.
SPEAKER_00So what so are there any bills? I know the tax raises, we need revenue, we need revenue to to move, but are there any other bills or ideas that you think would you like to see done to like preserve black history, uh uh lift marginalized communities, etc., um uh, you know, on your way out that you will be supporting and having us support, you know, moving forward?
Education First Then Jobs And Nonprofits
SPEAKER_03So look at after all this time, it everything comes down to money. There is no idea that doesn't have a price tag attached to it. There is no program that you would do in the community that doesn't have a price tag attached. And I think by and large, the things that have price tags are things we really ought to be doing. There's not stuff you can afford to walk away from. I think about schools. Um I've you know harped on early childhood education. I actually believe it ought you know ought to be two to four before these kids and you know get before they hit elementary school. You cannot have kids entering elementary school at the level of a three-year-old. Yeah. It doesn't work. And all the statistics say you don't make up for it. And that means these people never become as skilled as they could be, they're not as employable as they could be, and they're gonna continue to struggle. So this, you know, it's kind of like we create a lifetime problem that we will wind up paying for it for the life of all these families, because we didn't deal with it in the early stages when we could. So that to me is like one of the things that I think is the most important thing for us to do. And the state was gonna, you know, more made a big deal, he was gonna put a big focus on it when their money evaporated. Um and it evaporated really quickly. It wasn't like he spent it out. There's just the money just apparently wasn't all there. And uh that's been a problem. And it so they're not able to fill the gap, like I think. He hoped he was gonna be able to fill the gap. Um but for me it's the most important thing, and it's what you see when you're in elementary school. I mean you know, when you're teaching fifth grade, and you got kids in your class who are working at the second grade level, third and fourth grade level, and the fifth grade level, yeah. Um, that makes it harder to teach. And just in practice, I tell people um when I when I started teaching, and when most teachers were teaching like 20 years ago, you taught one lesson to the class. And everybody was roughly in about the same place. Yeah. When everybody's in a different place, the l when I at the end of my teaching in 2006, you were expected to do three lessons during a 90-minute block of math. That 90-minute block of math in English used to be for everybody. Now it's like you need a lesson for the kids who are down here, you need a lesson for the kids here, and the lesson for kids here. So all of a sudden, 90 minutes of instruction has become 30 minutes of instruction and 60 minutes of work independently while I work with this other group over here. I think that was a huge mistake. Yeah. I think you know, we the school system blew the curriculum on math, so the kids stopped learning math the way they should have learned math. They took things like phonics and spelling out of the curriculum, so they let you leave these kids who can't decode words and read. I mean, and it wasn't just Montgomery County, it was a national trend. Um people used to talk about dumbing down the curriculum. The other flip side of dumbing down the curriculum was basically to say you close the achievement gap. If you can give credit to things that aren't right, then you close the gap. I scored the famous state test, the MISPAP tests, which were the high-stakes tests to state at. And I sat in a room where we instructed to give credit for wrong answers.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_03And I'm like, this is crazy. Yeah. And it was all aimed at giving credit to kids so their scores would come up, so you could say, point to your scores and say, we've done better. And in reality, those kids are no better able to handle the problems after they took that class than before they took that class. So you see all that stuff, you get a sense of urgency about the importance, which is why I still want to deal with these issues. So education, early childhood, at the top of the list. Job training, you know, we've I'd say Anthony Featherstone, who took over work source Montgomery, has turned it into a real engine of training before he came in. When I took office, that was one of the first things I got rid of was work to get rid of the way that department was being run, because it was not doing this kind of work. Yeah. And it is really, it's like one of the things I'm really proud of is what he's done with that organization.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Yeah, and everybody there looks, you know, like locked in on the mission. Yeah. You know, every time you meet any of the staff, and I feel that energy from them, you know, I come from that background, you know. And uh yeah, that's something we look for when you're an educator or an activist or something, you look for a certain energy when you look at somebody's eyes. Uh so yeah, no, I really like what they do over there. And it's interesting when times get hard, they want to do less to close the gap instead of do more. And I think we're in a time where, you know, whether it's extreme volunteerism or you know, everybody has to commit to some 10 hour days, 12 hour days for the near future, you know, we got a big hurdle in front of us.
SPEAKER_03You know, we're fortunate we have so many um nonprofit organizations in this county that do work. You know, it's it is not not a it's not a secret that you know the reliance on on the nonprofit. Is basically reliance on organizations with either lots of volunteers or with people who are mission-driven will work this job, not because of the money, but they work the job because it makes them feel like they're doing something important and valuable for the community. And so, you know, I've been a big supporter of nonprofits and trying to make sure that they get steady funding, that they get increases for their employees, which didn't always happen. So because of the work they do, if the government had to do that work, it would cost twice as much. And uh we wouldn't be doing it.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. What's interesting about nonprofits is they get paid less, but they do so much. But if you take a nonprofit person and pay them a lot, you know, they would move a mountain, you know. So it sometimes it's like comfort, you know. It's like, uh, you know, so yeah, that's good.
SPEAKER_03I mean, I appreciate people's commitment, and we really benefit from the commitment. Yeah, yeah.
Saving Black History Through Public Projects
SPEAKER_03You know, the other stuff we're trying to do is, you know, this Lincoln High School project is a big deal. I mean, it was this building that was kind of left to rot, and uh there was the old Lincoln High School, historic black high school here, and we're the only one in the county. We're bringing it back. And uh it's gonna be used as a community, you know, by the community. You know, we structured it in a way that it's not run by us, it's run by the descendants of people in that community who and in the county, because Lincoln High School served more than Lincoln Park. It served a much bigger part of the county. And so I'm really happy about that. And now we're we're looking at the possibility of creating actually a black history museum in Montgomery County. We've got a number of smaller museums, we've got an opportunity potentially to build a bigger museum and not actually build it, but use one of our buildings that we're not really using right now. And if we can get the money, um there are donors that are interested in this project that make that building, get we make it possible to renovate that building, and we will have an actual African history museum here. And I think it's important to tell the story. I mean, most Montgomery County residents would not know that most of this place was covered by plantations 160 years ago. Yeah. That's right. And uh, or that, you know, up until 1967, most property in the county, if you were black or Jewish, you couldn't buy or rent property here. And so they're, you know, kind of limited to certain enclaves, most of them rural. A couple a little bit more urban, like Littonsville, where the developer who got a hold of the land did not segregate his housing, but most housing was segregated for a very long period of time, till six till '67. And then they passed uh a law that said you can't enforce the covenants. Most property had a covenant on it that said you can't buy or sell to a black or Jew, you can't rent to a black or Jew. And then often they threw in other ethnic groups, you couldn't, you know, some people wanted Greek, not Greeks get anything. Anybody who was southern European and swarthy, they were also not allowed to live here. There were actually, people don't realize there was actually a hierarchy of whiteness. And it was a hierarchy recognized by the federal government. The only people who were ever welcome to immigrate here were white Protestants from England. If you were a Catholic from Ireland, you weren't welcome. If you were from particularly Southern Europe and Eastern Europe, those immigrants were not welcome when they came here. Most immigrants, and this is the sad thing to me about the penalty of not understanding your
Segregation Covenants And The Memory Gap
SPEAKER_03history. When you hear people talking about, you know, Hispanics coming here, or people from Haiti coming here, it's like your relatives came here. Yeah. Only two generations. I'm second generation American. My grandparents came here in 1903. I bet you there's a whole bunch of us who are only second generation Americans. And when they got here, they were in ghettos, they didn't have access to all the jobs, they got demenial stuff. I mean, they were disparaged by people who didn't like these kind of people coming to the country. And I guess because they're too far removed from their grandparents, particularly in the younger generation. They got no one to tell them the stories of what they endured in this society when they came here. And I keep telling people we've absorbed every other group that's come here. We still struggle with the black people who are the first people who came here, and he didn't ask to come here. The one group that is here involuntarily are the people we struggled to integrate into society. And now we've got people vexed about immigrants from Central America. Not only does it ignore the similarities, but it ignores the fact the United States waged a decades-long war supporting dictatorships in Central America that kept these people virtually as slaves. And so they live, they come from countries that are terribly underdeveloped and were only meant to be agricultural export companies, which is the worst place you can be in the economic chain. And we played a role in creating that mess, and now we don't want to play any role in fixing the mess.
SPEAKER_00And it's only going to keep going because we never addressed it. You know, that original sin. The ego to acknowledgeing that. You know, the that's why we're dropping bombs in places where we need to be dropping bombs today.
SPEAKER_03People have a hard time. There's a line between understanding what happened and being guilty. And I don't expect anybody today to feel guilty about something you didn't do. If you're an immigrant family that came here in the early 1900s or the end of the 1800s, you didn't invent this system. You walked into it and you needed a job and you got a job. And, you know, unfortunately, your first exposure to a black worker might have been you worked at a steel mill, the unionized, tried to unionize, and the owners brought in black workers from the South who took those jobs, not knowing they were taking other people's jobs. I mean, they got played, and the white workers got played. And I'll say white working class has been played for a very long time in this country. It's like in the South it was always you're better than them. And it was always giving somebody somebody they could kick around so they could feel good about themselves, like, yeah, I can do this. So they don't focus on the fact that they're basically being taken advantage of by the white ruling class in this country, and they were being used. And uh people people don't they don't see that.
SPEAKER_00It's freedom without memory, you know.
SPEAKER_03Not having a memory is not a good thing.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it is not. And that's why, you know, every week we get a uh major headline that back in the day it would be another year before we got another major headline, you know what I'm saying? But we're getting five or six of them a day. You compound that. Yep, you forget what you're fighting for, you forget your history, you forget who's your neighbor and who's not. Yep. You know, you get to thinking your brother is your enemy, and your enemy is your brother. That's what we are today.
SPEAKER_03I had relatives in New York, lived in Brooklyn, and they were in an apartment complex, it was a co-op, and it was probably heavily Jewish, I don't know how heavily Jewish, but there were neighborhoods I couldn't walk to. Like to get a pizza, you wouldn't walk to get a pizza. You would be driven over there, and then somebody would run out of the car, go into the pizza shop and come out. Um people just assumed, it was not just white people who assume this, the the divisions between people, you know, are cross-culture, and they just get they get into locked into this, you know, I need to protect myself or you know, this community, and everybody's against this, and you kind of develop this mentality. And if everybody develops the mentality, then everybody you see who's not you is sort of the enemy in one way or another.
SPEAKER_00Fred Hampton said uh solidarity is the only way to defeat racism and hatred, you know. And I agree. You know, uh one of my phrases is uh a small axe chop down big tree. You know, my roster homeboy used to tell me that all the time. And that's kind of how I live, you know. It's like I know I got a small axe, but I know I'll get that tree down. You know, but if we do like a collective swing, that has like the impact of dynamite, you know. Then I think that's what we have to, that's what we are as a community, um, as a country.
SPEAKER_03You know, that's why I push the stuff I push is to try to, you know, get us to the point that we all realize we're doing something good, that we're lifting people up, people can see the benefit of doing this. And it's like it's all of our interest that everybody lift gets lifted up. Having people at the bottom is never gonna work for us because as soon as you create a bottom, you create people who aren't gonna be happy with you being on top. Right.
SPEAKER_00And then you have to decide who goes down to the bottom. You're gonna get in the put in that position at some point if you created a bottom, you know.
Solidarity Housing And Complete Communities
SPEAKER_03So it's like I think you know, this county does a lot of really good work. And uh and I'd stand this up pretty much against anybody when it looks to look at our social services, you look at, you know, the willingness to invest money in housing. You know, we've put a ton of money into affordable housing. Yeah. Um I wish it was, I wish we could get more. I wish that, you know, our regulations, for example, when you're zoning a place, parking planning still doesn't zone for a complete community. So, you know, you've got you've got a statistic telling you that 75% of the people coming here are gonna have incomes below $80,000. You only require affordable housing for 15% of the units being built, and that's only for people making around $80,000, not for people making $50,000 and $40,000.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_03And then you're shocked that people live in overcrowded housing and you know, are not widely disp dispersed across the county. It's like you've you've gotta, and I keep saying, you've got to build complete communities. You can't zone for only one group of people. And we've got the opportunity is when we when we are building these new communities to increase the percentages so that more people have opportunities to live there. And it's not, you know, it's not an intractable problem, and it's not, you know, beyond our means. It's just a matter of our will.
SPEAKER_00You've got a lot of heart, man. Why do you don't, and I'm speaking off script, but like why like courage? I don't see the courage needed from all people in like high positions. Is it because they're protected position for greater play, or is it just I want to keep my retirement, or I'm actually scared to do the right thing? Like, why why is does it seem like courage is missing from so many of our like electeds or even executives? I don't know.
SPEAKER_03See, look, I don't even think of what I do as being courageous. It's the right thing. It's like this is what you're supposed to do. Um I learned at a really early age um this notion that if you know something you can't not know it. Yeah. And so I accepted the fact when I learned stuff that I had to act as if I knew it. I couldn't simply go about whether it's trying to make a policy or you know, get in a discussion with people and pretend like I actually don't know. I actually do know what's behind this. And knowing isn't a tool to make people feel guilty, but it's to make people feel aware. And I think, you know, there are people who don't want to don't want to take that chance. There are money dinterists who really don't want us to do that. I mean, I can tell you the developers I've sat in rooms with who complain about the money, the amount of money we spend on social programs, don't mind having these people run their shops, right, work on their construction sites. They're all good for that. But yeah, you spend much too much money trying to take care of these people. And it's just like it's so wrong. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Um so much money to go around, it shouldn't even be an issue, you know? Yep. Like how much money you need to make. Yes, that's a you know, you're living good. Your refrigerator's full.
SPEAKER_03The rate of return, some of these guys are looking at, they're looking at the double-digit rates of return on investment. Um you and I, you're lucky if you get 2% from the bank. So and the money they borrow from the bank is the money we put into the bank, and then they're borrowing it and paying the bank massive amounts of interest. I mean, banks pay us very little interest compared to the amount of money they collect in interest. I mean, this whole system is rigged to protect the wealthy.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_03And uh there's just not there's not enough equity in the system. And it's uh so for me, I mean, I was never I was never afraid to speak out.
SPEAKER_00To put equity in the system, does it require just breaking some rules like our current,
Rigged Systems And The Courage Question
SPEAKER_00you know, madman is doing, or do we just need somebody in the seat to just rip the rule book up or rewrite some things? Who do you think?
SPEAKER_03The the madman, it you know. We could have done some of the stuff he's he did, for example, he's done this thing on on medicines. You know? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've looked at the site. It's not as cheap as it should be. Some of the stuff is more expensive than you can buy it from outside, but it's also not list price. But that could have been done by any president. You know, Joe Biden started, so he had a small list of drugs he was protecting, but that's because they're worried about the drug companies. They could have made that list bigger, made sure those things were affordable. Uh on housing, this the federal government and the states could have played a bigger role in ensuring that you had affordable housing policies or that you had funding for affordable housing. You know, our state, like many states, has a very large pension fund. Some states part of their pension fund because the um it supports mortgages for affordable housing. They get paid back, they get the rate of interest back that's compatible with what they need to make for the pension funds, but the funding is directed. We neither the county nor the state in Maryland is using pension funds to do this. There are things that we could have done, that we could do that we just have to wrap our heads around doing this and recognize it's a this is a positive thing to do. You're not going to destroy the universe if you do it, and everybody's gonna be fine. And I think you know, developers they would have survived if there had been more requirements on it. Um in the long run, you know what I would argue is county government would cost a lot less if our social programs had the effect they're supposed to have. Everything we're paying for, we're trying to address deficits that exist in people's lives because of the circumic circumstances, the lack of education, things like that. To the extent you erase those things, you erase the need to deal with them as people get older. It's like with early childhood. If I get these kids at grade level leaving kindergarten, I am not going to spend the amount of money we spend on services to them as they get older, and most of those services fail. If you're not where you need to be by the time you're in kindergarten, almost nobody gets there by the time they finish school. So there is a path where the decision to spend money now saves money later.
SPEAKER_00Do you think people who see it that way, is it because their foundation was more like activism, teaching, more people-focused work, and the people who think, you know, let's just give money to like developers, whatever, why are you spending money on social programming? Did they come up like a you know, silver spoon, Wall Street kind of energy? Well, I think, or is it just what people choose to see?
SPEAKER_03I think some people just come to this with a particularly racist attitude or classist attitude. They don't think people are capable of doing things. Yeah. You know, it's the fact that, you know, you have a president of the United States who doesn't want to be seen next to a woman or a black person, like who can actually say if you're you see a black person or a woman or other minority in a position of power, or a position, not so much power, but say expertise, that they're only there because they're DEI. And there are plenty of regular Americans who think that crap too.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Um power of leadership though, right? It's like the when he says something, it just pollutes the air.
SPEAKER_03It pollutes it and it reinforces, you know, the insecurity of white people. White people are insecure because, and I would be too. Because if you're in an economic system where you're you never got to the middle or the top, but you were above somebody else, and all of a sudden justice, whatever we think of it as, starts to threaten being above anybody else, then you wonder where you're gonna wind up. Because if you've seen that there's a limited amount of pie and you know that somebody gets less pie than you do, and you think, how am I gonna spread this? If they get more pie, I'm not gonna have more pie. They look at the damn bottom instead of looking at the top. And those people got plenty of pie. They got plenty of pie, yeah. And they could spread it, and they could still have plenty of pie left over. I mean, none of us are talking about um reapportioning wealth and you know, turning, you know, the wealthy into paupers or, you know, God forbid, reduce them to middle class status. None of nobody's talking about doing stuff like that, but freeing up enough resources to deal with the educational and health needs that people have that would have long-term effects on their ability, and they would have a better workforce. Yeah, absolutely. Um there are a lot of benefits that come from this, but I think a lot of it is people who just kind of have a disdain. I mean, I felt that when, like I said, I've had these conversations with developers in a room, and when they go off on the social programs the county has, you can just feel the contempt they have for people. It's like, what do you think is gonna happen to these people if we don't do this? Right.
SPEAKER_00And what does it mean for you? Because where are they gonna they're gonna be right in front of your building or whatever, you know, but it is it's unfortunate. That's right. Hopefully they are forced to see it.
SPEAKER_03And they want them gone. That's it. They'll tell you in the meeting, these people need to be gone, they shouldn't be here. Okay, where am I gonna put them?
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_03You're gonna give me enough money to build, you know, shelters? You're gonna give me enough money to provide mental health facilities.
SPEAKER_00And their grandmother started out the same way. It's just now they're second, third generation, you know, middle class, wealthy. So they forgot.
SPEAKER_03And you look at, you know, like our jail population, probably a third of it has mental health issues. If you ask the judges, they shouldn't be sentencing people to jail. They have no place else to put them. We need more mental health facilities. Um and it would change, it would change the nature of many things in society. Um, but instead we don't do it. And we just, you know, I don't I don't understand why people can't make that connection between fixing the problem now and not having to pay it for later. It's like if it was my car, right, right, yeah, yeah. And and my fuel injectors are are misfiring, I can fix it now, and then they will continue to fire. I can wait till it breaks down, and then I don't have a car, then I'm not going to work, and then all these other bad things happen. So being willing to take the long view. I like that. A lot of people can't do that.
SPEAKER_00Well, I feel like ordering another coffee and talking some more, but we both gotta work. Uh don't tempt me with a good time because the food is real good. But um what do you anything you want to leave with the audience, future leaders, people who are activists or teachers that want to kind of get into some good trouble, maybe considering elected office or adjacent.
Organize And Hold Leaders To Answers
SPEAKER_00Any any wisdom from your experience?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I mean, I meet with a lot of citizen groups, and I just tell people to organize. Organize. And it's it's like, you know, you you can't just come to my office and say, you know, I want this because whatever you want requires resources, resources. I don't get to distribute solely by myself, so you've got to get other people understanding because resources are important. You've got to get other people to understand, and that's our collective, I think, responsibility. And I think why I've been able to do some of the stuff I've done is because I've been able to at least make a case that we need to do the things we need to do. You know, council members may not be happy with the price tag, but they also knew that these are things that need to be done. And I think it's I think people have to be willing to make their case and talk. And they need to be able, they need to ask politicians seriously, you know, where are you on this issue? And let them know that you're, you know, if you whatever answer you give me is the answer I'm gonna say publicly. Yeah. So you don't get to give an answer in this room and a different answer in another room. I was talking about this last night with a group of citizens. I said, you know, you're an election coming up, you're gonna ask people these questions, let them know that whatever you answer is what I'm putting out there. So don't tell me you're gonna do something for me and then go tell the developers you're not gonna do this.
SPEAKER_00It's like people listen very close during those, you know, during those forums. You know, very close. What you're saying, what you're not saying. I'm I'm learning. Uh yeah.
Split Rate Taxes To Build Infrastructure
SPEAKER_03It's but I'll say, you know, the biggest thing though, you know, I'm trying to unlock resources, and I can say that the biggest problem the county has is that we're stuck with a taxing system that goes back to when we were a bedroom community. So, you know, if you know Montgomery County, we get a large influx of population after DC integrates with schools. And yeah, my I'm my family's an example. We lived in DC till about 1960. And I lived by Coolidge High School. And we were the next to last black family to leave our neighborhood. Next to the last white family to leave our neighborhood. And um we came over to to, you know, housing that was affordable. In Montgomery County. My father had been making about $4,000 as a postal clerk. He sat in what they called the cage at Union Station and sorted letters into these boxes. My mother was a waitress, probably waitressed in every restaurant in Silver Spring. And they were able to afford a $21,000 house, which was a normal house. Which no one would build anymore today. You couldn't buy a fraction of the lot for $21,000, let alone a house for $21,000. And so my family was like a lot of other government workers who moved out to the suburbs. And then they started talking about the um well the subway system. There was no reason to build the subway system in suburban Montgomery County until the workers who used to work in the federal government moved to Montgomery County. And we my friends and I derogatorily referred to it as the white flight line. Made it possible for white workers to move to the suburbs and go back to their jobs in DC underground without seeing black people. Some of us were cynical at an early age. Yeah, yeah. And so you so you see what happens here, and so Montgomery County has no industry. We're mostly agricultural. You're not the home of any big business. There's no massive headquarters or groups of headquarters here. Silver Spring was the extent of developed Montgomery County. Bethesda was smaller than Silver Spring at that point, had didn't have the shops, didn't have the Heck Company and a pennies and all the activity. It had more smaller shops. Wheaton Plaza didn't exist. It wasn't built until after I moved into Montgomery County. Georgia Avenue did not have all the lanes it has on it, you know, till later. There was none of the stuff outside of Rockville, it's the next big town in Montgomery County, which is like, look at Rockville, Rockville is like in the scheme of cities or towns. It's not much of a city, or town has no known major industry or businesses there originally. So the county grows up as a sleepy bedroom community and it relies on taxes from residents to pay for the limited things we need. Then we start to grow. And then the cost of growing is higher gets higher. You need the subway system if you're going to move these many people, otherwise they're going to be on George Avenue driving into DC. It's going to be a total disaster. You know, Wisconsin Avenue, same thing. So now you're building, you're building the subway on the two major corridors of Montgomery County, Wisconsin Avenue and Georgia Avenue, which get into the heart of the District of Columbia. Then you start growing a little bit more and the cost of infrastructure goes up, new schools and all that. So our tax system was originally set up where the taxes on residential and commercial are the same. It was done that way deliberately because it paralyzes politicians from raising taxes, because it means you've got to raise taxes on residential property if you're raising taxes on commercial property. So even if you want to raise more money from the commercial sector, you have to hit the residents first. Two out of every three dollars we raise on that property tax is residential, not commercial. So you're kind of bound. Like I've put in the tax increase. I wish I was doing this the way Virginia does it. And I'll close with these thoughts for your people who are thinking about this stuff. In our rate in Montgomery County right now is $1.03. My budget would take it to $1.9. I'm sure it'll end up somewhere in between $1.03 and $1.9. If you were in Washington, DC, your property taxes are $85. But here's the kicker. In Washington, D.C., the commercial property tax, if your property is worth $10 million, is $1.89. If your property is worth $5 to $10 million, it's $1.77. If it's a $2 million to $5 million, it's $1.66.
SPEAKER_00It goes down.
SPEAKER_03Commercial property here is $1.3. So people are building in D.C. to pay $0.56 more to over a dollar more on property tax than they pay here. It's crazy. They go to Fairfax County, and in Fairfax County, commercial property taxes are about $1.27 compared to $1.3 here. So people say, all these businesses are going to Virginia, you know, and you hear these developers like, look, Montgomery County is a high-tax jurisdiction. Montgomery County is not a high-tax jurisdiction. They're going to Virginia where they're going to pay more taxes. And if they're going to Tyson's Corner, they're paying $1.50. And that's where their development's happening. Tyson's in Reston, where it's also $1.50. So they're going to places where the taxes are higher than us because they can build infrastructure. We have failed to build any transportation infrastructure of any value on our own. And the purple line is not going to drive economic development to Montgomery County. It doesn't go where it would need to do to do that. But it's there. It is a problem to not be able to raise money. And Virginia created the split system of taxation around 2010-2012. They've come up with the Tyson's plan, they know what they wanted Tysons to be. They had no idea how they were going to build the infrastructure. And they got the developers who also liked the Tyson's plan, but knew it depended on transportation infrastructure and knew Virginia had no money to build it. They went down to the legislature and asked to get taxed. The counties in Northern Virginia to have a separate tax, a higher tax on commercial property than they do on residential property. So their taxes start 12.5 cents higher on commercial than residential. If I had 12.5 cents here, that would yield about another $90 million a year that we could be putting into infrastructure. If I had the full 50 cents more, you're talking about a lot of money that we'd be putting into infrastructure and we wouldn't be taxing the general public to build it. And we could finance it with bonds over a long period of time and we would be able to attract more businesses to come here. We're stuck with a system, which, you know, if you're getting the DC to work, it's a great system. If you're trying to move around Montgomery County, it doesn't do you any good. If you're on the east side of the county wanting to go west or west wanting to go east, you get it. It's not there. So we've put ourselves in this box. So I've been pushing, with no luck with the council, to get them to adopt Virginia's tax system. And they would have the money to build the projects everybody says we need. The bus rapid transit's in a master plan. We have no money to build it. So we're building it very, very, very slowly at a pace that Virginia would never tolerate. And we're struggling to get this stuff done, while Northern Virginia doesn't struggle to get it done. And that's one of the things that, you know, that I think we have to absolutely change. Changing that tax structure, let's just build infrastructure. Infrastructure is what brings jobs. That's what, this is why Tyson's Corner exploded. The Republican governor Godwin, after they passed the bill giving them the taxing authority, predicted what was going to happen in Tyson's Corner. He writes this letter to the editor saying we've done this and this is what's going to happen to Tyson's Corner. It happened exactly the way they said it was going to happen. And we're sitting here, and everybody's like, oh, they're going to Virginia, people are going to Virginia. I say, look at why they're going to Virginia. Stop with this Virginia crap. They did specific things that we are unwilling to do. So don't be surprised that you don't have what they have because you're not willing to do what they did. And all you're doing is protecting the same developers who build in Virginia. They build over here. So when they tell you, oh no, don't raise our taxes more than $1.3, but they take their business to Tyson's Corner and pay a buck fifty. What does that say about, you know, how cute you are as a political person if you don't see where they're going and what they're paying and somehow buy the line that you can't dare tax them anymore because they'll go to Virginia? They've already made that decision. You need, we need to make the case that we're going to invest in the infrastructure to let you build the economic base of this county. And, you know, coming from me, I know people think this is strange, but it's absolutely true. I mean that the taxes in Virginia can only be spent on transportation, can't be used for social programs. I would take that bargain on these extra taxes because that transportation drives economic development and the new businesses provide the taxes and let you fund social programs. So if I had more businesses and more successful, you know, a tax system that actually took advantage of it, we'd be in a much better place than we are now. So we continue to look at the taillights of Virginia, and there's not a nobody wants to talk about it. The most, you know, the most pro-business people on the council absolutely refuse to have this conversation. We had legislation in the legislature that would have given us the authority, only the authority. It didn't even say what the rate would have. It just sort of said, Montgomery County, you can adopt this if you want to. The council refused to support the legislation. So I can't get it, we can't get it out of the House because the county won't say it supports the legislation. It doesn't commit them to do anything but think about it. And this is why they don't want to think about it. The moment residents realize you've got the ability to have a different tax rate on commercial and residential, and that everybody around you is doing that, they're going to say, why aren't we doing that? And that's a question the politicians don't want to answer. That's the problem. And in terms of everybody else in Maryland, our tax is $1.3, Frederick is $1.11. So if you say they're going to go to Frederick if you raise taxes, well, they'll pay more if they go to Frederick. Howard County is $1.34. 30 cents higher than where you are today. I don't see Howard County folding up tents and saying we're not going to do anything. And the businesses are paying $1.34. They're not saying I'm not going to go to Harvard County, I'm going to come to Montgomery County.
SPEAKER_00You want to be in Montgomery County. Regardless.
SPEAKER_03So we've got to get out of our magical thinking. We've got to get a little bit more detached from the developers. I mean, all in favor of making sure you're in an environment that you can build in. Park and planning is a problem. We've done a lot of work in our permitting. We've tried to address those problems. But at the end of the day, if you can't build the infrastructure, you're not getting the people you want. Open the eyes, folks.
SPEAKER_00100 problems a day. 100 problems a day, but you carry it well, man. Yeah, yeah. You know, I'm looking forward to more good trouble that you get into and how we can support, man. But uh been a great example of, you know, a county executive, my first county executive, you know what I'm saying?
SPEAKER_03So good trouble is a good thing. It is. I mean, I grew I grew up with that movement.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah, it it is. I think it's the only kind of trouble we need right now. So thank you for making some time.
SPEAKER_03Thank you.
SPEAKER_00Always a pleasure.
Closing Banter And A Healing Finger
SPEAKER_00Is that a basketball injury on your finger? Oh no, this is a uh Valentine Valentine's Day accident injury. Okay. Yeah. But we'll save that for another episode. Okay. Black coffee after dark.
SPEAKER_03I had one of those when uh I was playing basketball and my dribbling and my finger was down like that. And the ball came up and hit the wrong thing and snapped that ligament or whatever. That's what happened right here. And my finger, my tip of my finger was dropped down. It was just hanging. And I'm like, uh I went to the doctor and he says, Well, the only thing you can do is you can hope it can grow back, but we're not sure it will. They put it in a split, and then he put it in, and then I bent it back even further. I just said I bent it back as far as I could tolerate it. Yeah, yeah. So that I wanted to make sure the two parts of the ligament were as close to each other as they possibly can be so they would grow back.
SPEAKER_00And they did. Yeah, every day. My light still got a little droop, but it's uh got two more weeks, and then this thing's coming off. It is weird looking here, but that's one thing's done. It lets you know how fragile you are, right? And it and it flops. You can't make it go straight. It's like a constant reminder you had a wow February fourteenth. Thank you.