Basic Information
Democratic Party – incumbent running for Montgomery County Executive
Email info@marcelrich.org
Website www.marcelrich.org
Facebook @marcelrich4CE
Twitter @Marc_Elrich
Questions & Responses (All Candidates)
1 – What lessons learned do you have since the start of the pandemic?
Limiting contact is the best way to contain the virus, masking, testing and then vaccines and treatments have combined to make the virus less lethal, and we can use hospitalization rates to decide what steps are necessary to protect people. We also learned that increasing the use of non-profit partners and community groups helped us more effectively reach our diverse communities more than our normal efforts to reach out through government agencies because some people trust the groups already reaching out to them. These nonprofits and their communities were ready and able to step up and help us in a way that would have been difficult for us given the size of our staff. The underlying health issues in the community came into sharp focus with the link of comorbidities to health outcomes – a lot of people in the county do not have adequate access to health care and pre-existing conditions made them more vulnerable. We are working to put together a meeting of the hospitals, clinics, and non-profit providers to find more effective ways of coordinating with each other to extend health care services into the community. We found that we could shift to and manage a successful teleworking environment very rapidly. We are using more teleworking going forward because it’s good for morale and we can still achieve the output we need. Most importantly, going forward, we know that our strategies worked because we consistently maintained a safer community than other jurisdictions or the state as a whole.
2 – If you could go back and do one thing differently from what was done in the last two years in Montgomery County what would you change?
I’d like to get engineers and epidemiologists to design more effective tools for moving air in indoor spaces. If we could have handled indoor air better we’d have had safe indoor environments. It is frustrating that we never had strong guidance on what to require. I would mobilize community groups and health partners immediately, including pulling in more volunteers. When covid hit, no one had enough masks, sanitizer, or personal protective equipment. The masks we initially used were less effective than what we needed, but what we needed was in short supply. I would make sure that key supplies are on hand and ready to deploy. One of the lessons learned from the beginning of the pandemic, we changed our buying from short-term to long-term, so we always have stock on hand to address the needs – after an initial surge. I directed staff to buy for future waves which was the right thing to do.
3 – What do you think are the 3 biggest and most pressing issues facing our county in the next 4 years? Why?
1) Dealing with racial and social equity issues because those problems underlie the struggles that many students have in school (and that affect long-term educational outcomes and job readiness, and a person’s social-emotional well-being). We need to better prepare students for life after high school whether it’s preparation for more education or readiness to work. Every child leaving school should feel there is a path for them with possibilities for a good life rather than a future where they can’t see how they’ll be successful. This is obviously a goal for all children, but typically, children who do not see that kind of future are disproportionately skewed by a socio-economic divide. We’ve talked about achievement/opportunity gaps for four decades and they’re still staring at us. This is not just a school problem and won’t be solved without a commitment to increasing incomes and opportunities for parents and stabilizing affordable housing (instead of watching it vanish as we do today). I saw the effects of poverty on children as a teacher (for 17 years) and they’re real.
2) Economic development and housing (because they’re linked). Montgomery County is on the leading edge of scientific progress, and we have to capitalize on it. We’ve had over a decade of stagnation, a lack of jobs that suppresses demand for housing, and have too many retail jobs that don’t pay enough for the workforce to afford the cost of housing that the county is building. Nothing makes that clearer than having more than 40,000 housing units that could be built that have already gone through the regulatory
process and just need the owner to pull a building permit. And they aren’t being built.
The disconnect is that the potential housing construction is priced above the incomes of too many people.
We need to build the affordable housing that we need. Without it, we will be challenged to have the workforce we need. We are losing affordable housing faster than we build it – this is not new- and our “requirements” are insufficient to address current demand let alone the demand that we see coming here. There are 40,000 households projected to come here between 2030, of those, 30,000 will require subsidized housing and only 10,000 can afford market-rate housing. Unfortunately, we only have a required 15% rate of Moderately Priced Dwelling Units for new developments. These are the only units
being built that are affordable to a group of residents who earn modest below-market wages. This means that 15% of 10,000 market units being built will yield a whopping 1,500 of the 30,000 total units that are theoretically needed. Montgomery County is not alone in struggling to come close to meeting the needs, a recent report noted that no jurisdictions are close to meeting the goals in general and particularly for the people earning less than $50,000. We will have to change our affordable housing model, require more affordability, and create more housing. We’ve made progress on this by putting 18 empty lots, parking lots, and garages up for sale to affordable housing developers. We can make a dent, but that alone won’t solve it.
To make the substantial changes needed to address this issue, we need to do a few things. First, we have to capitalize on our strengths in the life sciences, hospitality and tech industries and create a county where these companies want to be. We’re seeing record construction of lab space and real growth in life sciences. The University of Maryland has signed a Memorandum of Understanding to bring graduate-level research to the County to support the life sciences. We’re working with WMATA to bring a life sciences development to White Flint/North Bethesda. Success here will help correct a perception that we’re not interested in economic growth. With more companies coming here and lab construction rapidly increasing, we’re conveying the right message and getting noticed by the industry and the media.
Second, we need a greater educational focus on giving students the tools they need to be successful. The industries we are attracting require a more skilled workforce and we can train our residents to be that workforce. College degrees are not the only passport to good jobs – skill certifications and job training can prepare students for jobs of the future. Montgomery College will be opening a campus on the East side of the county, and it is the perfect opportunity to create programs that will prepare students for the jobs that are coming here. Additionally, we need to work to reconnect students who have already left school without the education they need and are facing grim job prospects. That’s why I, along with the
Council focused on recreating our workforce development efforts through Worksource Montgomery – which is a very different organization and it’s focusing on up-skilling the people in its program so that they can get jobs that pay above the minimum wage.
At the same time, we have and continue to adapt our regulatory and procurement rules and regulations. We provide more support to small businesses, we opened procurement to more companies and with requirements that local small businesses get more contracts by giving points for being local and price preferences for local companies. We are reforming the regulatory environment in permitting so that permits are processed faster and staff works with developers when projects are initially coming forward and continue to work with them through the process with a greater emphasis on problem-solving.
3) Addressing the environmental challenges, we face. We, all of us everywhere, are facing a real climate emergency. The climate is changing faster than people projected a couple of decades ago, and the effects are having serious impacts on our lives. It plays out differently in different places, but the effects aren’t necessarily localized. For example, the drought in the West and South West will affect our food supply because we are heavily dependent on what they farm. We’re seeing stronger storms, more flooding, and thus more storm sewers that are failing, along with more heat and erratic weather patterns. Greenhouse gases continue to increase making the achievement of reduction targets more difficult to achieve with serious consequences for global warming.
This is only going to be addressed if every level of government steps up to contribute to solutions. While leading the way in some areas will not, by itself, solve climate change, local successes can help other jurisdictions see what is possible. Montgomery County can very much be a leader and an example, and our successes can lead others to imitate us – just as we look at what others are doing to see what we can implement here. We have already begun electrifying our fleets and we can see a path forward. We are refurbishing our own buildings to higher performance standards and with the council passing my Green Building Code and Building Energy Performance Standards (BEPS) legislation, we will have goals and practices that can be applied to the building sector. We will work with consumers to make the purchase of EVs less expensive and we’ll be encouraging as much solar on as many residences, commercial buildings, and parking lots as possible. I am much more optimistic about the possibilities of success than I was when we first passed the legislation. Back then, we set the goals but didn’t have a plan to meet them. We now have a plan and technological innovations have been bending in our favor. More things are possible, and the costs are going down. The big challenge is the sector we have the least control over. The State of Maryland has set 2045 as the target for clean energy production and that’s 10 years past our goal. The county doesn’t control the grid, so we must maximize what we can produce, and we will play a role in buying energy for the county and will have the ability to offer a very substantial market to clean energy suppliers. The next few years will be crucial to accelerate implementation and we’re prepared to move this forward.
4 – What specifically do you plan to do in the 3 most pressing areas from Question 3?
I think I included all that in my answer above.
5 – Would you consider supporting changes to electoral process such as open primaries or non-partisan elections in Montgomery County to allow 155,000+ registered Unaffiliated/Independents in Montgomery County to vote locally when it counts?
No, I don’t support open primaries. The whole point of parties is to reflect the views of the people who’ve decided to affiliate with a party and to elect candidates that fit those views. Join a party that most closely reflects your beliefs or form a party that does – I have no objection to having more than two parties.
Questions & Responses (County Executive)
1 – What is your plan to attract and KEEP businesses in Montgomery County? How can we get more businesses across the county and especially where its lacking in the Up County and East County and compete with Northern Virginia?
We’re emphasizing life sciences, hospitality, and tech, so we’ve been active in working with prospective companies that want to come here. We’ve, and I personally, have been directly involved in these retention and attraction efforts. We’ve been working to address speed to market issues and streamlining processes in permitting, we’ve been responsive to an industry where new problems have been presented by using buildings in some different ways than has been done before and we’re making sure we can find creative and safe ways of accommodating their needs. We’ve applied the same to smaller companies and as I said earlier, we’ve modified our procurement policies to support local businesses. As a result, our small business spending has been growing, we’ve increased competition for contracts and eliminated language where it unnecessarily barred new entrants. I do believe that a big success in the county, such as a life sciences center with an academic institution in White Flint/North Bethesda, will be the kind of project, like
Amazon, that sends a signal that we’re open for business. Up County is not zoned for large-scale development north of Shady Grove Life Sciences and sites in Germantown. We lost a good opportunity when the hospital planned for Clarksburg went to Germantown as it was anticipated that the hospital would be a hub for attracting medical related businesses (and for the record, I did not support moving the hospital from Clarksburg). But we will continue to attract life sciences into Shady Grove and Germantown and the University of Maryland has reaffirmed its commitment to supporting USG and its role in helping to build a life sciences presence. East County is heavily dependent on what happens at VIVA White Oak. There has been zero activity and not a single project landed on the main parcel there. The county still has $40 million in the budget for the infrastructure once the project starts moving forward, as planned. On a brighter note, the Burtonsville Shopping Center will be getting a grocery store and the long-awaited development should go forward. We have a developer who is interested in building housing on the county property adjacent to that shopping center, so I’m very optimistic. Projects at White Oak Town Center (on Route 29) and White Oak Gateway on New Hampshire Ave and the Beltway are no longer stuck and are moving forward. I have been personally involved In all of these projects myself to insure that we could work out any problems that had been blocking progress and supported the developers when they brought their projects to the Planning Board.
And the biggest news is that we’ll be opening an East County campus of Montgomery College somewhere in the Rt. 29 corridor and we will work with the college to bring programming to target areas where we know labor supply is limited. The college will continue the work they’re doing on other campuses to provide students with degrees and certifications that will qualify them for higher-paying jobs in the county and in key industries. It will also enable high school students to take classes and get their degrees and certifications quickly as they are doing at other campuses.
I will end by saying the value of partnering with the University of Maryland cannot be underestimated. We are working with them to play a bigger role in economic development. When the county didn’t get Amazon, it wasn’t because the State got outbid, but because our financial package was bigger. What the State missed, and Virginia didn’t is that Amazon wanted the kind of education/technical support that Maryland didn’t have. The University of Virginia and George Mason University expanded their presence
so they could assure Amazon that they could create the future talent pipeline that Amazon needed. This time we want to make sure that we can partner with the University System to create the talent pipelines that job growth here will require.
2 – How will you hold developers accountable for past, present, and future infrastructure commitments (schools, transit, roads, etc.)?
To be blunt, we need Council Members willing to vote to ensure that the infrastructure we need gets built and that the developments that need it will contribute adequately to provide it. Unfortunately, some council members have worked to lessen the requirements of the Adequate Public Facilities Ordinance and reduce the fees associated with capital projects. Montgomery County developers pay far less here than they do in Northern Virginia and the District, but in those jurisdictions, the fees go to provide the necessary infrastructure that makes their projects more attractive and that doesn’t happen with the way we tax development. I’ll be introducing legislation that mimics the system they have in Fairfax which is beneficial to both developers and the county governments. Almost two years ago the Council reduced/eliminated certain taxes on developments at Metro stations, promising to replace it with new taxes that would make up the lost revenue. Two years have passed, and no new taxing legislation has been proposed let alone passed. This year, as in other years, the amount of bond funding the council proposed is once again inadequate to fully fund the school system’s capital request. I proposed increasing the bond funding to better address the needs and it was also rejected. This is a people problem, and you need to elect council members who understand the importance of having Adequate Public Facilities. I will do everything I can to educate the council on alternatives to how we currently tax developments, and I’ll continue to support requirements to build the necessary infrastructure without shifting all the costs on the backs of county residents – which is what the tax legislation they promised would have had to do to make up for what the developers wouldn’t pay.
3 – What do you plan to do about the increase in incidents of carjackings and homicides in the county and decline of applicants and morale in the police force?
In Silver Spring we acted quickly, increased our presence, and used some new strategies that led to a decline in both categories, and we’re prepared to intensify activities in areas where we see increases. Our police have closed 13 of 14 murder cases, and some successes on car jackings. These trends are regional and national and it’s clear that two years of covid have taken a mental toll on more people. Homicides are generally the result of interpersonal conflict between people who know each other or are involved in transactions that go bad. These are crimes that are difficult to police since a person with premeditated intent can wait to find an opportunity to target someone. On the other hand, because the parties are often known to each other, phones and social media facilitate investigations.
Morale is a problem as police have been the intense focus of public attention and any incident that happens anywhere is often used to blame the police in general. We have certainly had incidents that should never have happened, we have a real need for more and better training. Things that many of us are uncomfortable with are things that officers have been trained to do, undoing that training and the accompanying expectations are a problem. We need an approach that focuses on policing as the work of a guardian, not a warrior. And I’ve heard from officers who say that they are often insulted with no
apparent cause to trigger it. These things are a challenge for any government to deal with.
On top of that our police were about the lowest-paid force, particularly at the lower ranks, of any police force in the region and that certainly contributes to low morale. Knowing that I negotiated a pay increase to close that gap 2 years ago and the council rejected it. This year, during an election year, I once again negotiated and sent a pay package to the council and it was approved – this should address the pay issue and includes an improvement in the health benefit back to what it was over 10 years ago when it was
reduced in the recession because of fiscal issues but, until now, the promise to restore it was never kept. We are stepping up recruitment locally and are also recruiting from neighboring jurisdictions. Our recruit classes are small, but with the new wages set to go into effect, we’re hoping that we can be more successful in growing the classes and growing them locally.
4 – What do you see as your biggest advantage or positive that you bring to the table over your competitors?
I think I’ve demonstrated over the last 2 years that I can manage the county in the face of an unprecedented disaster and keep people safe in a way unmatched in most of the rest of the country and maintain the county’s fiscal health at the same time. Despite our challenges the county met its reserve requirements for the first time, our pensions are over 100% funded, and we maintained our AAA bond rating. And successfully pivoted to telework on a massive scale.
We continued with our economic initiatives – worked with WMATA to create a solicitation to develop the White Flint Metro with life sciences, got a Memorandum of Understanding with the University of Maryland system to have them bring Life Sciences graduate-level education to the county and support development of the talent pipeline, have facilitated companies to build record new lab space in a market that was moribund when I was elected and addressed unique permitting issues to ensure they could build in a timely manner. Our budget funds major increases in the School system to address statewide mandated Blueprint requirements and the challenges of learning loss that are affecting our students. We continue to increase funding for early childhood education, we have BRT funding that will let us submit projects for federal funding, and we’ve initiated the equity reviews of both programmatic and capital budgets. I feel I kept the county moving forward with a focus on what we’d need to do after covid waned while dealing with the daily crises that covid brought.