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A tale of two counties
an independent newspaper
EDITORIALS
taxes to eliminate an eye-popping deficit of al- most $1 billion in a $4.3 billion spending plan. Meanwhile, across the Potomac River in Fairfax County, all was sweetness and light by compari- son. With a budget roughly equal to Mont- gomery’s, Fairfax officials erased a deficit a quar- ter as large with relative ease and far less drama. The picture isn’t likely to change anytime soon.
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ver the past few months, some readers have asked why we lately have devoted attention to those unions. The diverg- ing paths of Montgomery and Fairfax provide one explanation. We respect the public employees in both counties and their dedication to public service. Clean parks, cheerful classrooms, safe streets, bustling libraries — the work of these employees helps keep these coun- ties such attractive places to live. But when 80 percent of all outlays are related to personnel, la- bor contracts that get out of whack can endanger the public welfare. Take a snapshot of one year, 2006, when times were flush. In Fairfax, the county executive, an un- elected technocrat, proposed a budget with a rela- tively robust spending increase of about 6 per- cent. In Montgomery, County Executive Douglas M. Duncan, a career politician then running in the Democratic primary for governor, pitched a gold-plated, pork-laden grab bag of political lar- gess that drove county spending up by 11 percent. Mr. Duncan’s budget that year capped a three- year spree in which county spending rose by al- most 30 percent. It reflected major multiyear in- creases in pay and benefits that he had negotiated for police, firefighters and other county workers. At the same time, Jerry D. Weast, Montgomery’s schools superintendent, negotiated a contract that promised pay increases for most teachers of 26 to 29 percent over three years — about twice the raise Fairfax teachers got — plus health ben- efits virtually unmatched in the region. Mont- gomery County Council members, most of whom were hoping for union endorsements in the fall elections, rubber-stamped Mr. Duncan’s con- tracts. The Board of Education, equally beholden to the teachers union, did the same for Mr. Weast. The primary culprits here, as this account should make clear, are not the unions, which are supposed to represent their workers energetically, but county leaders. These include an inexperi- enced and now all-Democratic County Council, whose current members’ average tenure, less than six years, is half that of the members of the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors; a politically agile schools superintendent who has rallied support by striking generous deals with the teachers union; and successive county executives who signed their own unaffordable contracts with po- lice, firefighters and other public employees unions. The results have been striking — and strikingly
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tems are comparable. Rather, the difference is compensation, which accounts for 90 percent of Montgomery’s education spending.
unaffordable — in a county where more than half of all spending goes to public schools. The average teacher salary in Montgomery today is $76,483, the highest in the region. Average pay for teachers is now almost 20 percent higher in Montgomery than in Fairfax and has increased much faster than in most local suburban school systems. Since 2000, salaries for Montgomery teachers, as for many other county employees, have nearly dou- bled, rising at almost triple the rate of inflation. Teachers are pillars of any community, and
Montgomery’s are highly rated. But their compen- sation has outstripped the marketplace. Today, Montgomery schools spend about 20 percent more per pupil than Fairfax schools; they con- sume a greater share of the public spending than in any other locality in the region. The spending gap is not about classroom quality and student achievement; in those terms the two school sys-
salaries for county government and school em- ployees with little ado. By contrast, Montgomery leaders were badly equipped to cope with reces- sion. County Executive Isiah Leggett took office proposing fat budgets and negotiating openhand- ed union deals after he succeeded Mr. Duncan. Then, as economic storm clouds gathered, he shifted gears and cut spending — while still trying to appease the unions. Notoriously, one such deal guaranteed almost $300 million in pension benefits over 40 years to thousands of employees based on salary increases they never received. The giveaway became known as “Phantom COLAs,” for the cost-of-living raises that were never paid. And even when Mont- gomery’s teachers agreed to give up cost-of-living raises last year, about two-thirds of them contin- ued to receive step increases of up to 4 percent. The cozy ties between elected officials and pub- lic employees unions in Montgomery have formed the backdrop for a drumbeat of reports about county employees’ bountiful benefits, perks and abuses. In the past few years we’ve learned about county police officers who helped themselves to hundreds of thousands of taxpayers’ dollars to se- cure cut-rate weapons for personal use. More than half the officers who retired recently from the police force left claiming “severe disabilities,” some of them dubious, entitling them to huge taxpayer-funded benefits for life. Veteran fire- fighters may retire at age 46 and continue work- ing for three years while simultaneously accruing pension payments that increase at a taxpayer- guaranteed rate of 8.25 percent annually, regard- less of market performance. Meanwhile, Mont- gomery’s teachers union has wielded such out- sized electoral clout that politicians who received the teachers’ endorsement in the most recent elections reached into their pockets and wrote checks to the union. As far as we know, this occurs nowhere else in America. Some of Montgomery’s problem is also struc-
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tural. It has relied for more than a quarter of its revenue on a local income tax, an option available to localities in Maryland but not in Virginia. The income tax is volatile: In good times it yielded windfalls for Montgomery — and no-holds-barred spending sprees — but in the current downturn it
irginia law denies public employees col- lective bargaining rights; that’s helped Fairfax resist budget-busting wage and benefit demands. As revenue dipped two years ago, Fairfax officials froze all
has meant a cruel collapse in revenue. Over the past two years, Montgomery’s take from the income tax has plummeted by $400 million — by itself the equivalent of 10 percent of all county revenue. The recession has had a bracing effect on Mont-
gomery’s elected officials, some of whom now ex- press contrition about their spendthrift ways and deference to unions. This year council members, along with Mr. Leggett, by necessity turned into cost-cutters. A year ago, just one council member, Phil Andrews (D-Gaithersburg-Rockville), voted against the phantom COLAs; this month Mr. An- drews was able to muster a unanimous vote on the council to overturn them. Even Mr. Leggett, who negotiated the phantom COLAs, endorsed the council’s action to scrap them — a rare in- stance of government repealing an entitlement.
gal or practical limit. Montgomery’s higher taxes already put it at a competitive disadvantage with Fairfax, which has a wide lead in attracting busi- ness and creating high-wage jobs; now Mont- gomery risks a downward spiral. To avoid that, a cultural shift must take place. Some helpful meas- ures would include: Candidates for council and school board in Montgomery should foreswear all donations to or from public employees unions. This is a minimum necessary step to sever the cozy ties that have indebted officeholders to the employees they are supposed to oversee and whose compensation forms a critical aspect of the county’s fiscal integrity. Candidates for public office, who are routinely asked to fill out questionnaires from public em- ployees unions and other special interests in elec- tion years, should refuse to answer any question that would commit them to undefined future spending. The county should beef up its rainy-day reserve funds as a means to protect against future down- turns, provide an incentive to fiscal restraint and safeguard the county’s shaky AAA bond rating. Nancy Floreen (D-At Large), president of the
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County Council, has asked the county staff to pre- pare options for shrinking future deficits. County officials will encounter inevitable pushback from unions and other interests warning that more cost-cutting will have dire consequences. They may find that their best counter-arguments are close at hand, just across the river.
ontrition is fine as long as it’s accompa- nied by concrete steps to reform. The county has just about run out of revenue-raising options, having boosted nearly its entire menu of taxes to the le-
Montgomery, having already pruned the low-, me- dium- and some high-hanging budgetary fruit, is facing annual deficits in the hundreds of millions of dollars as far as the eye can see. Fairfax, though facing tough choices and further cuts in an econo- my clouded by recession, has a brighter future. The region’s two largest jurisdictions — demo-
graphic cousins with populations around 1 mil- lion, school systems among the nation’s biggest and best, and public spending equal to that of small countries — have parted ways. To put it bluntly, Montgomery is lurching under the weight of irresponsible governance, unsustainable com- mitments and political spinelessness — partic- ularly in the face of politically powerful public employees unions.
ONTGOMERY COUNTY has just completed a nightmarish budget year. Stressed, squabbling and be- sieged elected officials savaged ser- vices and programs and jacked up
Fairfax and Montgomery used to be about even. What happened?
TOM TOLES
SUNDAY,MAY 30, 2010
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
dletters@washpost.com
Tyrannies that top the burqa
While France may insist on its cultural individuality when it comes to sexual freedom, as Michael Gerson recounted in his May 26 op-ed column on burqa re- strictions, “Europe’s veiled rage,” I have to wonder what this means, given that Western women are in- creasingly slaves to fashion and the cosmetic industry. Consider how the entertainment industry has cre-
ated an absurdly narrow definition of beauty. Women spend hours on their hair and makeup and consider the time and expense mandatory; the “Today” show creates a certain amount of titillation by Kathie Lee Gifford and Hoda Kotb showing themselves sans makeup on TV; botox and cosmetic surgery are billion-dollar industries; beauty falls just this side of anorexia; and stiletto heels are just this side of foot binding in terms of impeding mobility. And it strikes me once again as patriarchal when women become the primary issue in cultural dis- putations. I often wish, as a woman, that I could grow a beard to cover my facial imperfections. Why not pro- hibit full beards along with the burqa? The only differ- ence would be a visible nose, but perhaps this would at least expose how trivial the burqa controversy real- ly is. Come on, people, we are not talking about burn- ing widows here. We are talking about a “fashion statement” with a religious subplot.
ROBYN JOHNSON-ROSS,Washington
Who needs to take Econ 101?
I was puzzled by Dana Milbank’s criticism of the economics speech by Larry Summers, President Obama’s chief economics adviser, at the Johns Hop- kins School of Advanced International Studies, which Mr. Milbank said would “only baffle Amer- icans worried about finding or keeping a job” [Washington Sketch, May 25]. While that may be true, it seems obvious that that is why Mr. Summers did not give it barnstorming around Ohio. As a grad- uate of SAIS, I can assure Mr. Milbank that Mr. Sum- mers did not baffle the students in the audience, who are notorious for discussing such subjects as “liquidity traps” and “tail risks” in their spare time. While I agree with Mr. Milbank that the Obama administration needs to do a better job of explaining its economic policy to Americans, newspapers are not passive actors. Surely The Post has journalists with economic expertise who could have translated Summers’s “econo-speak” into digestible English for readers worried about their jobs. This would have been more useful than simply mocking the speech as out of touch, a hollow criticism considering the venue. Perhaps Mr. Milbank is the one who needs to take “Explaining Econ 101.”
DAVID BEFFERT, Washington
It’s democracy, not ‘duplicity’
Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) accused President Oba-
ma of “duplicity” [“At Obama’s ‘testy’ meeting with Republicans, little is accomplished,” news story, May 26] for again asking Republicans to work in a bipartisan fashion after passing health-care reform over lockstep Republican opposition and then get- ting financial reform through the Senate with a handful of Republican votes. What exactly is duplic- itous? Democrats in the Senate used the large ma- jority they earned at the polls to pass legislation they campaigned on, complying with the arcane rules of the Senate every step of the way, in the face of bra- zen Republican efforts to delay and obstruct. That’s not duplicity; it’s democracy. The Senate’s rules may be idiotic, but they’re still the rules, and Republicans are in no position to accuse Democrats of manipulating them. Mr. Corker’s real objection is that he didn’t get
what he wanted. But he lost on the merits in the face of superior numbers. It’s that simple. Too bad for him, but he’s not entitled to call the president of the United States a liar for no better reason that that.
MATTHEW FREEMAN, Rockville
Lamestream analysis of Sarah Palin
Regarding Ruth Marcus’s May 26 column, “Sarah
Palin’s lamestream thinking”: I heard Ms. Palin’s comments about President Oba- ma and “Big Oil” and drew an entirely different con- clusion. I do not think Ms. Palin meant to imply that Obama is in the pocket of Big Oil; I think she meant to imply that the mainstream (lamestream) media have been incredibly reluctant to investigate the re- mote possibility that Obama may have been influ- enced by his energy industry contributions. By con- trast, she implied that if George W. Bush were still president, the equally remote possibility that he may have been influenced by oil company contributions would have been trumpeted in high-profile investiga- tive reports and opinion pieces for weeks or months. What the lamestream media continually fail to un- derstand is that Ms. Palin is a talented ironist with a biting wit and a deftness in skewering opponents by drawing simple, stark contrasts. Like all good iro- nists, the contrasts she draws are rarely what oppo- nents perceive them to be. She is not stupid or sloppy; she is sharp and pointed — if you are sympathetic to her point of view.
MALCOLMBLISS, Arlington
A woman’s pain, misdiagnosed
LOCAL OPINIONS
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Whose ‘politics of personal destruction’?
Iwonder if other Post readers caught the irony in a story about Virginia Gov. Robert F. McDon- nell’s choice of former Nixon aide Fred Malek to chair a government reform commission [“McDonnell says he didn’t know of Malek dis- putes,” Metro, May 26]. When working in President Richard Nixon’s Labor Department, Mr. Malek undertook a minor inquisition against Jewish workers in the Bureau of Labor Statistics, compiling a list of employees with Jewish-sounding names and singling them out for demotion, which, according to Slate maga- zine, was “the last recorded act of official anti- Semitism by the United States government.” Now one of Mr. McDonnell’s defenders, Bobbie
It was Fred Malek’s, for a minor inquisition against Jews in the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Kilberg, claims that those who criticize the gover- nor for his selection of Mr. Malek are practicing “the politics of personal destruction.” So let’s get this straight: In the world ac- cording to the McDonnell camp, critics of what Mr. Ma- lek did practice the politics of personal destruction, whereas Mr. Malek gets a pass — and a high-level position reforming
government — even after trying to destroy the ca- reers of government workers simply because their names sounded Jewish. In the memorable words of Lewis Carroll, “it would be so nice if something made sense for a change.”
LEONARD STEINHORN, Bethesda
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Regarding Jan Weymouth’s experience with doc- tors as she sought help for long-term chest discom- fort that turned out to be a rare cancer [“The pain in her ribs was all too real,” Health & Science, May 25]: Ms. Weymouth ran into what many women, espe- cially older women, fear they will encounter from the medical community, particularly from male phy- sicians: being seen as a hypochondriac and being given a false psychosomatic diagnosis. The rheuma- tologist Ms. Weymouth visited confirmed that fear, making it clear to her with “his dismissive tone.” The fact that she says that in the end she is thank-
ful that she was not correctly diagnosed for years, as she was accomplishing things during that time and she wonders whether much could have been done for her anyway, should not cloud the fact that a rush to a psychosomatic diagnosis, without thorough medical examination, should be recognized as an is- sue of medical ethics.
JUDITH CHURCH TYDINGS, Ijamsville, Md.
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