Despite a voter-approved 1990 charter amendment that limits property tax increases to the previous year’s total adjusted for inflation and the value of new construction, Montgomery County’s budget has ballooned 84 percent during the past decade.
Last year’s belated decision to abide by the charter limits was an anomaly; the County Council routinely votes to override the charter limits to finance an ever-expanding smorgasbord of county services.
For those who think more spending is a good thing, County Executive Doug Duncan’s $3.9 billion budget for fiscal 2007 does not disappoint. Besides being 7.6 percent higher than last year’s $3.6 billion budget, Duncan wants to add 1,071 more employees to an already bloated county payroll that consumes 80 percent of all county revenue. Paying salaries and benefits of county bureaucrats is the main reason Montgomery County taxpayers get to keep giving and giving and … .
The Montgomery County Civic Federation points out that the county has not done a Comprehensive Total Compensation Review for 15 years. The last one was undertaken just aboutthe time the charter amendment went into effect. Even residents of the richest county in Maryland have the right to know the long-term financial obligations they must shoulder by adding a thousand more workers on top of the 33,031 they already employ, especially since construction costs in the Washington area are also going up 20 percent.
Duncan’s five-year budget outlook confidently assumes that council members will continue their indefensible practice of ignoring voters’ wishes and overriding the charter limits year after year, virtually guaranteeing that property taxes will continue to escalate well beyond the rate of inflation or population growth. In a transparent effort to dampen rising apprehension about the county’s spending habits, budget analyst Steve Farber told council members that it will cost Montgomery County $1.6 billion to abide by the charter limits over the next five years.
Put another way, $1.6 billion is exactly how much Montgomery homeowners will be overcharged over the next five years beyond the charter’s reasonable limits. Phil Andrews, D-3rd District, warned that expanding county government could only be considered affordable if Montgomery County was “able to sustain it year after year after year.” That remains to be seen, but any sudden deflation of the overheated real estate market could spell big trouble.
There are also signs that even Montgomery County residents who supported the spending spree are now having second thoughts. “My assessment and my tax bill jumped 40 percent in one year, from $8,018 to $11,325,” one taxpayer told The Examiner. “Hard to believe I will have paid $39,464 in the past five years for the privilege of living in Montgomery County. Seems a little excessive, doesn’t it?”
Excessive indeed. And if Duncan and his big-spending cohorts on the Montgomery County Council have their way, there will be no end in sight for taxpayers.
