Summary of 1/12 MoCo House Delegation Meeting Looking at Upcoming Maryland Bills, Transportation Briefing

January 14th, 2024.

This article summary is based on this X/Twitter thread by Esther Wells (used with permission).

Full video: 1/12 Montgomery County House Delegation Meeting (youtube.com)

Starting Now: 1/12 Montgomery County House Delegation Meeting. Weekly cadence of Fridays at 9am to keep up with what’s going on. CE Elrich & Council President Friedson are guests today. youtube.com/live/1CXnfmi_b…

CE Elrich: How to pay for MCPS Budgets that vastly exceed bonding authority. How to pay for MD Blueprint for Education? Accountability in budgeting & spending, you shouldn’t create a budget until County knows what revenues will be. Great points, see video clip, too much to type. 

How to fund transportation. Very concerned about housing. If your goal is for the black community to own & build equity, you must have projects for that. Our Nonprofit developers produce almost no ownership. 

Transportation is a MACo priority this year. MACo wants to raise local income tax on high earners, progressive taxes. Kirwan/Blueprint implications can’t always require property tax increase. Most ppl not increased/slightly reduced. Need more budget flexibility. 

Council President Friedson: Concerned about Transportation cuts of $17.4M to RideOn. Avg Rideon Bus user’s income is 1/3 MoCo. avg income. Housing is important, ex. $100M housing production fund. We need State support to build on mixed income housing. Priorities: BRT/MARC critical r

Plug: NOVA, 9% dedicated tax credit fund for NOVA region only. MoCo should have Baltimore area & Capital area 9% tax credit deals can be achieved, unmatched, LITECH opportunity. Education collaboration, reasonable ways to better understand budget CE/CC and State. OLO to review. 

…to inform significant budget decisions. Transportation: MCDOT Director Conklin put together a plan and 2nd, local revenue authority to fund transportation & Blueprint at local level, State does not pass/shift responsibility to local/Co budgets. [No unfunded mandates]. 

Work and Voting Session by House Bills 

MC 19-24 Montgomery County–Speed Monitoring Systems – Publication of Notice Requested by Delegate Charkoudian. Bill to delete notification of location requirement in newspaper. Currently, before activating a speeding camera, MoCo must publish notice of location on website & newspaper. 

Sub-Committee voted “yes” unanimously to take publication requirement out b/c only WaPo newspaper & extremely expensive for small value. Del. Foley “abstain”. The more we do this the more we kill newspaper around the State. Ex. Olney newspaper. Accelerate demise of local media. 

Del. Shetty made a pt of clarification that a vote is binary as “Yes” or “No”. Only way to “abstain” is if there’s Ethics violation. Charkoudian clarification is that County-wide newspaper available is only WaPo. Local/towns/city newspapers never qualified for this notification. 

Del. Spiegel reminded everyone that physical signage that you’re entering a speed camera zone remains in place. Del. Vogel: concern that revenue streams for local newspapers, they are struggling. Harmful effects on smallest newspapers. Ex. Olney newspaper, w/o public notices, 

..they’re done. Vogel plans to introduce legislation to evaluate if we remove requirement for public notification, where can we find revenue for local newspapers. Voted “No” b/c concerned about direction of public notices. [side note, purpose of notification was for the General Public… 

.. the fact that Foley & Vogel are turning this into a revenue for local media is secondary. If the cost benefit for posting in WaPo is no longer there, do not require taxpayer dollars to do it. website posting will continue & physical speed camera signs will continue. 

Official Vote: 19 v. 7. Bill Recommendation passes

Yes: Charkoudian, Crutchfield, Pulison(?), Fraser-Hidalgo, Kaufman, Korman, Lopez, Love, Moon, Qi, Shetty, Spiegel, Solomon, Stewart, Wilkins, Wims, Wolek, Zieler, Palakovich Carr

No: Acevaro, Foley, Kaiser, Mireku-North, Queen, Vogel, Wu 

MC 01-24: MoCo – Voting Methods Requested by Del. Kaufman, Charkoudian, Foley, Fraser-Hidalgo, Korman, Lopez, Palakovich Carr, Qi, Shetty, Solomon, Stewart, Wu, & Ziegler. Authorizes MoCo Council Rank choice voting method for CE, CC, Judges, SA, Register of Wills, Sheriff & BOE. 

Educational campaign explaining voting is required. Del Queen: what’s the County’s position? A: Kaufman, CE/CC letter of support sent. School Board did not weigh-in. Unanimous vote Yes, Bill Recommendation passes. @ModeratelyMoco, this is progress! 

Briefing

MoCo. BRT Implementation, Chris Conklin, Director MCDOT. moCo RideOn provides 80% of bus service v. Metrobus operates 20%. MD gives significantly greater subsidy to Metro over RideOn, even though RideOn does majority of the work/ridership.

Our RideOn Bus riders are county residents that are the lower end of income. 44% of RideOn passengers only have public transit available to get around.

Impact of MD transportation cuts of $17.4M to RideOn. Ex. fare to go up from $1 to $2. Request MoCo’s RideOn Subsidy be increased while holding Metro’s proposed subsidy the same. CMDOT has not developed an action plan, some combination of measures, not all need to be done.

Municipalities will feel the impact more than the County level. About $800K impact to City of Rockville & Gaithersburg due to cuts.

Qi Q: What criteria used to determine which routes to reduce? A: Conklin, 1st cut is services that have lowest utilization. Programing a service reduction plan would include what other services are available, ridership, taken into account for service reductions.

Wu Q: Is there flexibility in future to have smaller buses, be more efficient since Metro buses ride around half empty often. A: Conklin, 4 different types of transit vehicles. Maintenance of vehicles outweigh efficiency of running vehicles. Much of costs is the driver of vehicle

Wu Q: Utilization table by month or year? A: Conklin, yes, continuous counting on all vehicles, ridership on all routes on monthly basis. County budgeting cuts, this info is provided to consider which routes may be cut. Solomon Q: Highway user revenue (HUR)? A: allocation of HUR for pedestrian safety upgrades, transportation trust fund sources (sales tax, fuel tax, titling fees). Formula based that goes into the General Fund, not to specific transportation fund. Municipalities, trans. budget is small & $1M cut to their budget is significant. Impact quality of life, pedestrian safety, etc.

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