MoCo union leader on County Council: "I'm tired of these clowns"

I am delighted to hear at least one union representing public employees in Montgomery County at last speaking out against the County Council's move to deny salary increases that had already been negotiated in previous contracts. Gino Renne, president of the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 1994, told The Washington Post's Bill Turque that his union will consider supporting the effort to get term limits on the ballot in the County this November.

"I'm tired of these clowns," Renne told Turque, after the Council's clown move to increase taxes to the highest overall level in Montgomery County history, and cheat his members out of their salary increases. There was some dissatisfaction with the Council incumbents in the 2014 election, with George Leventhal losing the endorsement of the teachers union, for example. Many other Council members did not receive endorsements from various public employee unions. But labor did not actively try to take anyone out, and all incumbents were reelected.

Not surprisingly, that boosted the delusional self-confidence of the Council, who already take you, the taxpayer, for a complete sucker.

The Democratic primary and November general election in 2018 are now shaping up to be the biggest bloodbath for incumbents since 1990. When motivated, labor can deliver significant money and boots on the ground in elections. And the putrid record of this all-Democratic County Council means many voters will have had quite enough of one-party rule in Montgomery County, where the key Council decisions are non-partisan ones, such as budgets and development.

Multiple communities devastated by recent planning decisions countywide are now joining forces to fight the developer-driven planning process. That process has its nexus of power in the County Council, which receives more than 80% of its campaign cash from developers. A Council vote has directly threatened several neighborhoods with the prospect of having a bus depot dropped on them. 

That was all before the Council jumped the shark and busted the budget for years to come by massively-exceeding the maintenance-of-effort level of funding for Montgomery County Public Schools, without even reviewing the finances of MCPS before voting (fortunately, I did, and you can now read what fools the Council were in refusing to read this audit first).

To do that, they raised record taxes on the poor as well as the rich, and everyone in between. It's real money, gone for good out of the wallets and bank accounts of working families. For an encore, they are now planning to complete the shift of school construction funding from their buddies the developers to YOU - with proposed tax cuts of up to 60% for developers on impact taxes and school construction payments.

The result is increased support for term limits, which could take out several incumbents before votes are even cast in 2018, when voters can finish the job by voting the rest of the bums out.

I'm tired of the clowns, too - aren't you?