A judge on Monday said Montgomery County Executive Ike Leggett’s office “undeniably sought to persuade and intimidate voters” into supporting the county’s new ambulance fee. But he also decided that firefighters are allowed to campaign for the fee outside polling stations Tuesday.
Montgomery County Circuit Court Judge Robert Greenberg ruled that critics of the county’s outreach failed to file a lawsuit soon enough or prove that Montgomery officials would sway voters to support the fee.
In fact, Greenberg said on-duty, in-uniform firefighters deployed to polling stations “may not sit well with a segment of the electorate and may lead to the defeat of Question A.”
The last-minute decision sets the stage for one of the more contentious ballot initiatives in county history, with both sides expected to spend much of Election Day canvassing voters.
The debate has consumed Montgomery’s otherwise pedestrian election cycle and pitted volunteer firefighters — who sued the county for using taxpayer dollars for ambulance fee marketing — against career firefighters — who could be laid off if the ambulance fee is rejected.
The government outreach certainly has irritated some county residents.
“Your tactics on the issue of ambulance fees should be characterized as intimidation,” Silver Spring’s Noam Unger wrote Leggett. “Of course, paid firefighters support your stance on the fees when you choose to threaten their jobs.”
After the state’s highest court forced the referendum on the ballot, Leggett announced that 87 firefighters would be given pink slips and 11 ambulances eliminated to plug the $13 million budget gap created without the revenue.
Leggett’s office has pumped taxpayer money into tens of thousands of fliers, posters and other promotional material supporting the fee. The county’s website is filled with photos, brochures and testimonials about the necessity of the charge.
Leggett’s representatives dismissed the intimidation claims.
“I don’t think that is true,” Leggett spokesman Patrick Lacefield said. “If anything is intimidating, it’s taking $14 million a year out of the budget.”
However, one executive branch official, who asked to remain anonymous when discussing Leggett’s outreach, called it an “unprecedented misuse of county resources that even supporters of the ambulance fee felt uncomfortable with.”
Under the measure, county residents’ insurance companies would be charged between $300 and $800 an ambulance ride. Uninsured residents are not required to pay the fee, and noncounty residents would be on the hook for any cost not covered by their insurance companies.
