Montgomery’s top elected official announced plans Tuesday to reorganize county government in ways he said would help refocus efforts and place greater emphasis on customer service.
County Executive Ike Leggett’s plans include transferring the Division of Solid Waste from the Department of Public Works and Transportation to the Department of Environmental Protection, abolishing the Department of Homeland Security, establishing an Office of Emergency Management and Homeland Security in the County Executive’s Office, and putting police in charge of facility security. Leggett said the restructuring was cost, revenue and job neutral.
He said he hoped the changes would improve accountability.
“Take something like solid waste. Solid waste management is an integral part of environmental protection,” Leggett said, adding that reassigning it would “help us long term.”
Montgomery County’s recycling rate reached an all-time high of 43.2 percent, with residents and businesses recycling a record total of 528,187 tons of waste from July 2006 to July 2007. Washingtonian Magazine awarded Montgomery top honors in a “Who Does Best at Recycling?” evaluation of 13 local jurisdictions.
As county leaders continue to wrestle with growth issues, the reorganization will also create a department of transportation that can focus solely on traffic engineering, capital transportation projects, and highway maintenance and operations.
Council President Mike Knapp said the reorganization “needed to be done,” pointing to a recent study that showed county road projects are costing about 50 percent more than initially budgeted and taking almost three years longer than planned to complete.
“This is a good thing,” Knapp said. “I just hope it pays off in more than a rearrangement of deck chairs.”
