FRIDAY, MAY 28, 2010
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B5
Montgomery takes big step
Personnel costs on table for next 6-year proposal
by Michael Laris
Montgomery County is going on a diet. And this time, officials say, they really mean it. On Thursday, it took the Coun-
RICKY CARIOTI/THE WASHINGTON POST
Shada Parada-Rodriguez, center, mourns at her husband Marine Cpl. Nicolas Parada-Rodriguez’s funeral at Arlington National Cemetery.
‘Something people would remember him for’
Corporal is last to be
buried in Section 60 before Memorial Day
by Christy Goodman
The U.S. Marines fired three ri- fle volleys. A bugler played taps. Luisa
Parada-Rodriguez
placed a heavy hand on the American flag presented to her by Sergeant Major Eric J. Stock- ton on Thursday. When her son, Lisandro, accepted another flag from Stockton, she grabbed his hand and held on. Her youngest son and his
brother, Marine Cpl. Nicolas D. Parada-Rodriguez, 29, was being buried with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery. About 150 friends and family took part in the last burial in Sec-
tion 60 on Thursday before sol- diers began placing flags on ev- ery grave in honor of Memorial Day. Parada-Rodriguez, of Stafford,
Va., died May 16 while support- ing combat operations in Hel- mand province, Afghanistan, the Pentagon said. It was his second tour in Afghanistan with the Ma- rines. He was a team leader assigned
to 1st Battalion, 6th Marine Regi- ment, Regimental Combat Team 7, I Marine Expeditionary Force at Camp Lejeune, N.C. Before joining the Marines, Pa-
rada-Rodriguez was in the Navy, his sister, Norma told The Wash- ington Post. He briefly held a ci- vilian job before joining the Ma- rines in January 2007, she said. “He said he just liked defend- ing his country,” she said in an earlier interview. “He wanted to do something that people would
remember him for.” His family described him as big-hearted, family-oriented and always striving to be a leader. Guy Krikorian and his wife, both of Southern California, flew across the country to attend Pa- rada-Rodriguez’s services and to show their appreciation to his family. The parents of one of his friends, they wanted to let the corporal’s family know “how much he meant to us and how sorry we are and we appreciate what he was doing for us,” Kri- korian said. Lance Cpl. Andrew Krikorian,
Krikorian’s son, was transferred to Camp Lejeune where Parada- Rodriguez helped him with the transition into a new base. In Af- ghanistan, Parada-Rodriguez served as the younger Krikorian’s team leader. “We looked at it from the standpoint of his family and
PETULA DVORAK
Working through grief, widow embraces empathy and support
dvorak from B1
nights on the bench. Ahearn brought food and water to her family, then talked for hours with Lena, who was 27 at the time and had a degree in psychology. Ahearn, then 39, returned to
the United States, divorced his American wife and returned to Lena. He converted to Islam so he could marry her. They wed in Jordan and eventually moved to Fort Bragg, N.C. Before settling down, they had a second wedding in Las Vegas that his family attended. Lena dyed her hair blond and wore a va-va-voom white wedding dress. They were an unusual couple.
It wasn’t uncommon for soldiers to return to the United States with English or German wives after World War II or Vietnamese wives after the Vietnam War. But in this conflict, our worlds, our culture and our people seem very far apart. Except on that bench near
Lena’s house. Then the bomb hit Ahearn’s
car. And there she was, a Muslim woman with a daughter, grief- stricken and alone on an Army
post in America. Not long after Ahearn was buried at Arlington, Lena and Kadi moved to an apartment in Northern Virginia, not far from her husband’s grave. She’d go online every few months to one of the memorial pages set up for Ahearn to write him a love note. She was grateful for her work
at a hair salon, where she could chat with her customers during the day. But at night, she went home to Kadi, who looked at the pictures of her father and said “Baba,” the Arabic word for daddy. Lena was aching. One of her husband’s friends
suggested she contact Taryn Davis, a war widow who founded the American Widow Project after realizing how lonely she was in her grief. If you have a few minutes
(which turned into a few hours for me) and a box of tissues, go to their Web site and read the blogs written by some of the widows of the nearly 5,500 U.S. service members who have been killed in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is an astounding portrait of the cost of war. There are hundreds of
wedding photos, smiling couple shots and baby-home-from-the- hospital pictures taken before a roadside bomb ripped apart a young family’s plans.
On some blogs, women send
chatty updates to their dead husbands about the kitchen tile, their kids’ schoolwork or the weird ping in the family car. On others, they go deep into their grief, the politics of war, the dark, dark wrongs of all of it. Lena tried that but ultimately found “I needed people. I needed to talk to people who were also experiencing this.” So she reached out to other widows, who regularly get together for tea, lunches, spa dates, even sky-diving outings. They are quintessential American women. All ponytails, jeans and “y’alls.” Lena worried they wouldn’t accept her, that her accent, her religion, her dark eyes would remind them of the place where their husbands were killed. “When I met the widows, I told
them, ‘If you guys don’t like me, for whatever reason it is, I totally understand it.’ ” They smothered her in hugs.
“I was shocked. There was no problem. They took me right in. We were all going through the same thing, and they told me that all they know is my love story, and it’s like all of theirs.” No widows’ tea for Lena. Right
away, she went on a sky-diving trip.
“Did you jump?” I asked. “Oh, hell, yeah, I did,” she replied. “Jimmy was Airborne, so I really wanted to, like, to know what it felt like, what he did. That night I did it, I had a most amazing dream, like he came to me, and he was still alive.” Before visiting his grave, Lena plans to meet up with Taryn Davis and the widows Sunday for the 8 p.m. Memorial Day concert, which will honor the fallen and their families. The widows who cried and sky-dived and had tea together are beginning to arrive now; many of them will also visit Arlington Cemetery. These women will never be counted among the casualties of war. But that’s exactly what they are.
E-mail me at
dvorakp@washpost.com.
what he meant to Andy,” Krikor- ian said. “It would mean the world if somebody would be able to express something about our son” in a similar situation, he said. The Krikorian family was able
to meet Parada-Rodriguez one night last summer when he vis- ited their home and they found him to be a “very nice man” who could enjoy a good laugh. Parada-Rodriguez and his family moved to the United States from El Salvador when he was a child. They
Springfield, where Parada-Rodri- guez graduated from Robert E. Lee High School in 1999. In addition to his mother, sis- ter and brother, survivors in- clude his wife, Shada, another sister, Maria, and several nieces and nephews.
goodmanc@washpost.com
settled in
ty Council just a few minutes to formally adopt a $4.27 billion budget for fiscal 2011 that trimmed spending by $203mil- lion, or 4.5 percent, from what it approved last year. One budget down, five to go. In a break from past practice, the council will turn its attention to a six-year balanced budget plan. Council President Nancy Floreen (D-At Large) is pushing her colleagues to endorse the more conservative approach next month. Previously, the fiscal plan included annual shortfalls that could run into the hundreds of millions of dollars and would need to be closed each year. “We’re going to be leaner for the foreseeable future,” Floreen said. “It’s a new era for Mont- gomery County.” A draft of the long-term fiscal plan, submitted to the council by County Executive Isiah Leggett (D), shows spending for county agencies, after covering retiree health costs and bigger reserves, growing by less than 1 percent in fiscal 2012 and dropping by more than 2 percent in 2013. By con- trast, spending grew 9.8 percent in 2007 and 7.4 percent in 2008. But it was clear Thursday, even
after weeks of grim income-tax revenue projections and soul- searching over the role of gov- ernment, that the struggle over public spending in one of the na- tion’s richest counties is just be- ginning. With the fiscal pie ex- pected to expand much more slowly than in past years, the personnel costs that make up the bulk of the budget are on the ta- ble for possible cuts. Thursday’s votes prompted boos and catcalls from a group of dozens of police officers who pro- tested the canceled raises and forced furloughs that were part of the final budget deal. “We pro- tect kids, too,” read one flier held up by an officer, a jab at the pow- erful public schools, which re- jected calls for employee fur- loughs. “$4.3 billion in political priorities,” read another. After the council session, talk among police was about retribu- tion, from traffic tickets to ballot
toward frugality
BUDGET CUT BY $203 MILLION
boxes. One officer quipped that he’ll be on the lookout for coun- cil members making a “rolling stop” on their commute to work. Another said members are look- ing ahead to the Democratic pri- mary in September, when some incumbents on the county’s all- Democratic council will face challenges. “We’ll get our day. We’ll get the votes out there,” said Cpl. Gary Turner, huddling with frustrated colleagues on the steps of the council building. “There are offi- cers out there who just want to be paid according to what we do. We put our lives on the line every day, and we want to be taken se- riously.” A key factor driving Mont-
gomery’s budget has been salary and benefits costs for public em- ployees. Raises have outpaced those in the private sector in many cases, and the public schools have added employees faster than the population has grown.
Over the past decade, total spending on salaries and wages for government workers and school employees, after account- ing for inflation, was up about a third to more than $2 billion a year.
When Leggett called for trim- ming cost-of-living increases for teachers after he took office in 2006, he faced protests and little support from the council. When Phil Andrews (D-Gai- thersburg-Rockville) and Duchy Trachtenberg (D-At Large) sought to modestly reduce cost- of-living increases during an ear- lier budget season, employees handed out “Wanted” posters branding them “contract bust- ers” and “COLA thieves.” But the depth of the recession and warnings that Montgomery could lose its coveted and cost- reducing bond rating spooked elected officials and jolted politi- cal alliances. They also forced an acknowl-
edgement that county officials must take a new approach. “What the county’s dealing with is not something we chose to deal with, but something that landed on us and that we have to deal with,” Marc Elrich (D-At Large) said earlier this month when the council voted unani- mously to break union contracts by imposing a salary freeze and undoing a controversial set of re- tirement benefits known as “phantom” cost of living increas- es.
“No one envisioned at the time
any of the agreements were made that we would face an eco- nomic catastrophe of the magni- tude we are dealing with now,” he added.
larism@washpost.com
Montgomery budget box score
County officials cut total spending for the first time in more than 40 years. Here’s a breakdown of the $4.27 billion budget after the council altered County Executive Isiah Leggett’s proposals:
Total budget, FY2011, which starts July 1:
County government: $1.52 billion (-$106 million/-6.5 percent) Public schools: $2.10 billion (-$17 million/-0.8 percent)* Montgomery College: $266 million ($260,000/0.1 percent)
Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission: $114 million
(-$14 million/-11.3 percent) Debt service: $262 million ($13 million/5.4 percent) * Figure for 2010 excludes one-time debt payment of $79.5 million
Cuts for selected government departments*
Health and Human Services: $178 million ($-16 million/-8.4 percent) Police: $230 million (-$16 million/-6.5 percent) Fire and rescue: $182 million (-$11 million/-5.6 percent) * Tax-supported budget only
After verdict, Fairfax jurors give their views on case
teacher from B1
the jury’s verdict but was unapol- ogetic about prosecuting Lani- gan. “We believed, and believe, that this young woman was tell- ing the truth,” Morrogh said. He said the accuser was “a very cou- rageous person” for telling her story, even as teachers and fellow students rallied for Lanigan in her school. Fairfax County school officials could not say whether, or when, Lanigan might return to his job as a physical education teacher at Centre Ridge. “An innocent man was freed,”
Lanigan said. “I knew the truth would finally come out.” He added: “I’m looking for- ward to getting on the soccer field with my girls’ team, which I’ll do tonight. I’d love to come back to Centre Ridge and teach.” He also coached the varsity boys’ soccer team at Herndon High School.
His accuser said the incident happened Jan. 12 and it was re- ported to police Jan. 15. Fairfax detectives questioned Lanigan on Jan. 20 and he was arrested Jan. 29.
Since then, he said, “my life’s been an absolute living hell. Ev- erything I loved to do has been taken away.”
But the support of family and friends, including neighbors and relatives cooking meals or donat- ing gift cards, helped him and his family survive, Lanigan said. A Facebook page supporting Lani- gan has more than 750 members. Jurors heard two days of testi-
mony, then closing arguments Thursday morning. The most sensational allegation in the case, a Fairfax police news re- lease stating that Lanigan had laid on the girl in the equipment room, was not mentioned in the trial, and was recanted by the ac- cuser in a March preliminary hearing.
The girl testified that she and her friend were standing in the gym near the end of the school day when Lanigan picked her up by the hips and slung her over his shoulder, touching her breast in the process. The girl said Lani- gan carried her to the equipment room and laid her on the tum- bling mats, touching her buttock, then massaged her shoulders. She said he told her, “I’m going to treat you like a queen.” Lanigan testified that he thought he picked her up, swung her around briefly and put her back down. He said he never car- ried her to the equipment room and there were no mats there. The accuser’s friend said she saw no inappropriate touching. To convict Lanigan of aggra-
vated sexual battery of someone younger than 13, the jury would have had to find that the alleged groping was “committed with the intent to sexually molest, arouse or gratify any person, where the
defendant intentionally touches the complaining witness’s inti- mate parts or material clothing covering such intimate parts,” ac- cording to Virginia law. Four jurors said they thought
that Lanigan should never have been arrested. “There wasn’t really an investigation,” al-Ghafa- ri said. Jurors said they were gratified by the Lanigan supporters’ emo- tional response in the court- room, and some of the jurors spoke to Lanigan and his family afterward.
Some jurors said they thought
that Lanigan’s main accuser, who testified that she feared losing her spots on the safety patrol, the in-school video news team and the “PE Pals” gym cleanup crew, might have had her own trou- bles.
“I think she put herself into
something she couldn’t find her way out of,” al-Ghafari said.
jackmant@washpost.com
Key revenue increases:
Energy tax increase: $110 million
Cellphone tax increase: $2 to $3.50 per line Ambulance fee: $400 for basic emergency life support
How they voted:
Yes: Nancy Floreen (D-At Large); Roger Berliner (D-Potomac-Bethesda); Marc Elrich (D-At Large); Valerie Ervin (D-Silver Spring); George L. Leventhal (D-At Large); Nancy Navarro (D-Eastern County); Duchy Trachtenberg (D-At Large) No: Phil Andrews (D-Gaithersburg-Rockville); Michael Knapp (D-Upcounty)
Related actions:
The council created a commission on restructuring government. The Leggett administration has been working on a similar initiative, and both branches say they are developing ideas for cutting spending long term. The council passed a $5 per ton tax on carbon dioxide emissions that would affect the Mirant Corp.
— Michael Laris
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