Just one day after the new Montgomery County Council was sworn in last month, Council President Marilyn Praisner, D-District 4, threw abucket of ice water on the county’s future economic prospects by calling for a retroactive moratorium on 82 major construction projects already in the pipeline.
Slowing down growth a bit until the county can catch up with infrastructure demands is one thing. Changing the rules in the middle of the game, after builders have invested years planning these projects, sends a decidedly negative message. That message is that, despite its many assets, including close proximity to Washington and a highly educated work force, Montgomery County is no longer a stable, predictable place to do business.
In an increasingly competitive international economy, that’s not the message most counties want to send. The Montgomery County Chamber of Commerce noted the “irony of a low-growth county (which grew just 1 percent in 2006) possessing one of the toughest planning and growth control systems in the nation” now reduced to imposing a countywide building moratorium, a last resort that Council Member Nancy Floreen, D-at large, rightly pointed out should be reserved for emergencies.
Montgomery County is one of the wealthiest jurisdictions in the nation. If it can’t afford basic transportation infrastructure, who can?
On Jan. 25, the council will hold a public forum on “Montgomery County Transportation Priorities.” They should call it “Non-Priorities,” because MoCo supports everything, it seems, except mobility — including a $100 million concert center Doug Duncan called the most significant construction project of his three terms as county executive, an honor usually reserved for a highway, transit or bridge project. And Duncan was elected on a pro-growth slate!
The obvious political impetus behind this ill-advised moratorium is the Clarksburg scandal. The moratorium is designed to divert the public’s attention from the fact that county employees under then-Planning Commission Chairman Derick Berlage deliberately altered site plansand even let the developer’s attorneys write the county’s legal opinions. Yet only minimal penalties have been imposed on the employees.
Current Planning Board Chairman Royce Hanson, who publicly criticized the county’s handling of Clarksburg, said last Thursday he is “deeply troubled” by the proposed moratorium and opposes it. You don’t have to be a planning expert with a national reputation, as Hanson is, to understand that creating such tremendous uncertainty in a process that literally takes years will likely send developers to other more business-friendly jurisdictions.
If you think that’s a good thing, look at a map. Montgomery County borders the nation’s capital. As long as people work for — and contract with — the federal government, they will be driving right through MoCo. A moratorium won’t stop the current 35 percent of drive-through commuters, it will merely reduce the county’s future tax base and thus its ability to keep up with even heavier transportation demands in the future.
When that happens, there will be an emergency, but by then it’ll be too late.
