The even split on the Montgomery County Council hardened yesterday as Nancy Navarro wrapped up four Council endorsements. As Peyton Manning once said, "It's on like Donkey Kong!"
Left to right: Mike Knapp, George Leventhal, Nancy Navarro, Nancy Floreen and Valerie Ervin.
Last year, four County Council Members (Phil Andrews, Duchy Trachtenberg, Marc Elrich and Roger Berliner) and County Executive Ike Leggett endorsed Don Praisner in the District 4 special election. Yesterday, the other four County Council Members (Valerie Ervin, George Leventhal, Nancy Floreen and Mike Knapp) endorsed Nancy Navarro. That suggests clarification of two issues:
Mike Knapp, Nancy Navarro, Leisure World Democratic Club President Jay Harding, Nancy Floreen.
1. The composition of a working majority.
The existing 4-4 split may have originally been based around views on development policy, but that has not always held. (Witness the odd alignment on the most recent vote on Planning Board Members.) At the moment, these two alliances may be based on personal relationships and convenience as much as anything since each side has its internal differences. But whatever the case, mathematics rules: it is better to be one of five than one of four.
District 18 Delegate Ana Sol Gutierrez endorses Navarro.
2. Future governance.
It is no accident that three of the last four County Council officers (Marilyn Praisner, Phil Andrews and Roger Berliner) have come from one side of the split. Rumor has it that Duchy Trachtenberg is slated to become Council Vice-President next year, meaning that she is the presumptive President in 2011 (assuming she is re-elected). A victory by the other side endangers this line of succession.
Yesterday's event now puts significant pressure on Council Members Andrews, Elrich, Trachtenberg and Berliner - as well as County Executive Ike Leggett - to endorse one of Navarro's rivals. Former Montgomery County Civic Federation President Cary Lamari is a veteran activist who has long opposed overdevelopment. He is a natural fit with their publicly-expressed views on growth. Delegate Ben Kramer (D-19) is a commercial property owner who supported Pay-and-Go in 1998, a pro-development policy labeled by Marc Elrich as "possibly the worst legislation in 50 years." The Kramer family is an old ally of Leggett's and Ben Kramer's self-financing makes him a formidable contender. Will the County Executive and the other four Council Members choose philosophical consistency (Lamari), expediency (Kramer) or neutrality?
We'll see!
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
County Council Coalition Backs Navarro
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comments:
Well, it's true that the lines of division are being drawn, but let's not count the voters out of the picture.
Let's also not forget that the line of division that you draw is pretty much a line between "spend more money to build, build, build" and "preserve, consolidate, retrench, refine".
However you might want to tend to express it, there's an alternative view about how last year's election came down.
I'd hazard the guess that the close race was between a lot of money and "machine politics" behind Nancy Navarro and all of the promises that the machine granted after her defeat -- but had to rescind due to economy/budget realities -- and people who wanted Fiscal Prudence, Very Slow Growth, and to Preserve the Legacy.
Ben Kramer's endorsement by the BCC Chamber of Commerce would tend to plant him on the side of the Council Split that just endorsed Navarro. So who does that leave?
Cary Lamari definitely has the long-time "street cred" and he not only walks the walk but talks the talk in terms of knowing everyone and having "been there and done that" on scores of contentious discussions and resolutions of thorny issues pitting residential interests against planner and developer intentions.
But some would say that it's good enough for politics to arrive at a compromise that pleases nobody about equally. Others might say that sometimes you don't need a dealmaker, you need someone who will be absolutely adamant about protecting what will be lost forever, from that which will profit for a moment. How would the voters feel, and how might the Council members feel (the ones who haven't yet endorsed anyone) if the voters (and developers) got the best possible deal, when what the voters needed was no deal at all?
Then there's me, a genuine Pagan Tree-Hugger with this thing for Urban Forest and Trout, and anyone who's been paying attention has felt my outrage over the sort of people and planning that cuts down trees, paves yards, and illegally parks a work fleet on the paved yard of their originally single-family detached house that they've turned into a worker barracks. A lot of people around here share that outrage, and a lot of people fully understand which workers who live that way are working for, who is profiting, who is getting employed, and who is being permanently passed over for job opportunities.
And do any of the other candidates have a history of being involved in anti-crime efforts, beyond giving lip-service? If any have, do they support spending even more taxpayer dollars on programs that have not been -- and cannot be, by any measured metrics -- shown to have any results at all? Or do they support more and better special police services that have one major objective, which combines disruption and destruction of organized crime with returning public spaces to the law-abiding taxpayers? I have done that.
As for me, I have a demonstrated capacity to self-motivate, self-educate, and stay on track and target over periods of years, and do it on my own thin dime. Search under "patents" at the US Patent and Trademark Office for patent number 7,464,403. I realize that some people might think that nobody counts for anything unless they work their way up the heirarchy. People like Tesla and Edison disagree. You have 120V AC at 60Hz in your wall plugs because Tesla wanted it that way, and your whole life has been illuminated by Edison's light bulb powered by Tesla's polyphase AC generators. I may not be that earth-shakingly original but at least I have done, on my own, something that most people can't be paid to do, whether they're the boss or lowest flunky. And I'll respect original thinking and independence as much as I respect orthodoxy and heirachialism. Maybe what the Council -- and the voter -- needs is someone who doesn't so much pick sides as much as they intelligently, and in an informed way, make the best decision.
And when it comes to not spending money we don't have on things that most voters don't want, that would be me.
Post a Comment