Montgomery County Council members are asking residents to repeal two charter amendments overwhelmingly approved by voters roughly 30 years ago that limit the county’s ability to place landfills and store sewage sludge in residential areas.
County Council Attorney Mike Faden says the move is necessary “to clean up” the charter because neither mandate would hold up in court, but the man who sponsored both amendments says he’s worried the county may want to change its waste policy.
Nearly 77 percent of Montgomery residents voted in 1980 to prohibit the county from burying or trenching sludge through residential land, after county resident Robin Ficker, who frequently sponsors charter amendments, got the item on a ballot. Ficker, a perennial candidate for office and thorn in the side of some local leaders, says today that many residents backed the change because the county used to put sewage sludge in open fields near Germantown town houses rather than pay to process it. “People were fed up because their kids and dogs were going out and trudging around in these fields and coming home with sewage sludge on their shoes,” Ficker said.
Ficker also sponsored the 1978 amendment to prohibit the county from setting up a landfill in a residential area — about 67 percent of voters supported that measure.
The ballot referendum would also remove a 1982 charter amendment, again sponsored by Ficker, that prohibits the county from doing business with the now-defunct C & P Telephone Co. unless it ensures Gaithersburg and Montgomery Village residents are given local rates for D.C.-area calls.
Faden says none of the amendments belongs in the charter, because recent Maryland Court of Appeals case decisions prohibit residents from “legislating through charter amendments.”
In a memo to council members, Faden said charter amendments legally must focus on the “form and structure of government.” He referred to a 1998 case in which a judge said Montgomery residents could not vote to prohibit county leaders from spending money on speed bumps because it left “virtually no room for an exercise of discretion by the county council.”
There are no active landfills in Montgomery County, but waste is burned and then shipped, with non-recyclable rubble, to Brunswick County, Va., where Montgomery pays to deposit trash.
The contract with the Virginia dump expires in 2012. Montgomery environmental officials did not return calls for comment.
