Saks Jandel served First Ladies and the elite of Washington for 128 years, bringing the finest and latest fashions from Paris to D.C. It closes as the ownership decided to retire rather than hand off the coveted name and business to someone else. The doors shut as almost all of the other stalwarts that accompanied it along Chevy Chase's vaunted "Rodeo Drive" have gone out of business or moved into the District. Wealthy clients who kept them afloat in even lean times have fled Montgomery County's high taxes for greener pastures. Where they can keep more of their green.
As I reported earlier this year, the wealthy are fleeing tax-weary, economically-moribund Montgomery County in great numbers. Exiting residents took $1.8 billion in adjusted gross income with them to Frederick County alone, according to a study by the website How Money Walks. $643.09 million went to Fairfax County with MoCo expatriates; those leaving also took $615 million to Howard County, and $494.85 million to Anne Arundel County. When you examine the size of the yearly County budget shortfalls, it's obvious how our impotent and incompetent County Council is forcing the rest of us to shoulder an ever-larger tax burden of their own spendthrift design.
The dearth of the truly rich is being felt in many ways. One was the inability to raise money for victims of the Flower Branch Apartments explosion - in thirty days, only $600,000 had been raised for those left homeless by the catastrophe. Small change that could have been donated by just one tycoon alone, and that was the extent of noblesse oblige in the post-rich Montgomery County.
