CNN host Fareed Zakaria stirred controversy last week when he delivered straight talk on why many jurisdictions like Montgomery County have become simultaneously unaffordable while operating on fiscal thin ice. He mentioned a number of familiar factors, but he articulated a particular problem quite well: The fact that the growth of Montgomery County's budget and spending outstrip every other relevant growth factor from business growth and school enrollment to population growth. We know the County spends way too much, as evidenced by our structural budget deficit and the shocking doubling of the budget's size over just the last decade. But when you compare the lack of growth in these other benchmarks to the steadily ballooning amount of spending, the County Council's reckless budgeting looks truly ridiculous.
For example, looking at the supersizing of the County budget, you would think that Montgomery County was enjoying rapid population growth. But even as the budget has reached one record high after another, MoCo's population has actually been shrinking. The County experienced a net loss of more than 9500 residents between 2020 and 2022, and an additional net domestic migration loss of another 11,153 people between 2022 and 2023. And of course, as we know, the very rich are exiting, and the majority of the people moving in are low-income.
"The arithmetic is brutal," Zakaria said in describing a similar population loss (relative to size) over the same period in New York City. "A larger [tax] bill is divided among fewer payers."
Likewise, the budget of Montgomery County Public Schools has grown to obscene heights, even as enrollment has plummeted this decade. And the more generous the Council is with our taxpayer money toward MCPS, the worse the performance outcomes are. It's literally money flushed down the toilet.
"New York already sits at the extreme end of the American tax spectrum," Zakaria noted. So does Montgomery County, whose residents shoulder the highest total tax and fee burden in the Washington, D.C. region. Incredibly, the County Council is currently proposing to raise property taxes yet again this year, and to massively increase the already-gargantuan real estate recordation tax. Both play a role in the unaffordable housing market. Property taxes have become the equivalent of a second mortgage, and high recordation taxes already dissuade homeowners from selling their properties, reducing supply even further while jacking up prices for struggling buyers. Heckuva job, Brownie!
In Europe, Zakaria adds, the NYC and MoCo-level of extreme taxation earns you perks like "free" healthcare, university education, and "amazing infrastructure." In Montgomery County, you get an unfinished master plan highway system, an unbuilt Potomac River bridge, an unbuilt M-83 Highway, an unbuilt Corridor Cities Transitway rail system, an unbuilt Montrose Parkway East, and no bus service to Damascus on weekends and holidays. Trash collection is down to once a week, and is picked up at the curb, requiring homeowners to do most of the job by hauling bins down to the street and back. Snow from a January storm is still melting on many streets.
Jurisdictions like NYC and Montgomery County, Zakaria concluded, "are out of control, promising more, spending more, delivering less and pushing off the fiscal problems to some future date." And then he dispensed this well-worded diagnosis of a central problem in Montgomery County's "leadership:"
"Unaffordability is what happens when government becomes a machine that grows faster than the society it governs." That is exactly the situation in Montgomery County. In a County that hasn't attracted a single new major corporate headquarters in over 25 years, the only booming growth industry is Montgomery County Government, and the best position to be in is either an elected office chair, or one of the many cronies and crooks in the Montgomery County cartel who receive financial kickbacks of taxpayer funds in the bloated County budget.
20 comments:
And I'm sure Elrich & Co are big fans of the new mayor of NYC.
Democrats never learned economics thinking everything is closed loop so "taxing the rich" will generate future income that they spend freely never considering that people with means will leave. Wes Moore is currently saying goodbye to quite a few of the prosperous middle/upper class leaving for lower taxes/regulation and importing those who will never get off of entitlements. Good luck with that.
"While not focusing exclusively on Montgomery County in his more recent, widespread critiques of "blue cities" (as of February 2026), his discussions regarding inefficient governance and high-spending, low-delivering urban areas are relevant to the political, high-tax,, and heavily regulated environment found in areas like Montgomery County." The operative in his biased publication is "like", he just as well should/could have focused on Fairfax, VA which is now another example of the heavily criticized practice of budgeting in the likes of MoCo.
Let's be real in this spin talk.
Your wording implies that Zakaria mentioned Montgomery County. He did not. You are being dishonest.
8:33: He was speaking about all jurisdictions to which the criteria he mentioned applied, and it most definitely applied to Montgomery County. Dishonesty would be normalizing corruption and incompetence, as the local press attempts to do when covering the County Council.
I thought it was brilliant!
I'm surprised at the low numbers of 9,500 people leaving the area. I'm sure it's way higher than that as mentioned in Uhaul rental records indicating Maryland is number 4 in the nation with people exiting the state.
“ Snow from a January storm is still melting on many streets.”
You were really desperate to find something new to add to your decade-old rant.
"Trash collection is down to once a week, and is picked up at the curb, requiring homeowners to do most of the job by hauling bins down to the street and back." Uhh, it's been like that for over 25 years here dude. That's not new. I was rolling the trash cans up from the street on the way home from the bus stop in the early 2000's.
"Snow from a January storm is still melting on many streets." Yes? It's winter. Sometimes snow sticks around for months.
11:30: "Apartment buildings for homeless people" are now twenty years old, and still a terrible idea. Time doesn't make bad policy better.
11:30 - Yep. I remember taking the trashcans to the curb since at least the 1980s.
With such wisdom you could run for council, oh wait, never mind
Where does the money go? Maybe we need a DOGE for the county.
I had the same initial reaction: reading this post quickly, one might well think that Zakaria had actually mentioned Montgomery County.
@9:29 - For once you are a minority and you're thought is useless.
And it's not so rosy across the river either. https://virginiabusiness.com/uva-virginia-economy-forecast-2026-gdp-unemployment-housing/
You need ICE for the county. That's where the money goes.
Apartments for homeless people is not a thing. Do you mean affordable housing for low income residents?
Note that 2020-2023 was during covid and the subsequent push for remote work. Numerous other cities around the country had people leave for lower cost of living areas and working from home.
7:14: "Apartment buildings for homeless people" is a phrase coined by the Steve Silverman/George Leventhal brain trust that they referred to at candidate forums in 2006. The oxymoronic concept was indeed deployed in at least two locations in downtown Bethesda, including the building on Cordell Avenue next to The Bethesdan hotel and Little Tavern building. They are apartments that house the homeless, not low-income residents.
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