The Montgomery County Council’s hearing room erupted in shouting and jeers as Council President Natali Fani-González announced a budget vote would be postponed.
After an initial delay of nearly four hours, the 1 p.m. meeting ended as soon as it began with Fani-González telling the jam-packed hearing room, “We have more discussions to have among colleagues, so we’re going to postpone this session until tomorrow.”
With that, Fani-González and her 10 council colleagues filed out of the room as the crowd shouted, “Shame, shame!” and “Do your job!”
“Their proposal to cut $72 million from MCPS is not going to fly! And the reason that they’re not voting today is that they don’t have the votes to do it,” Montgomery County Education Association President David Stein told members in the audience.
Stein was referring to concerns over whether the council would fully fund the Montgomery County school system’s budget request of $3.8 billion.
Christine Handy, president of the Montgomery County Association of Administrators and Principals, said she had “never seen anything like this,” referring to the abrupt postponement of a vote.
School district leaders, Handy said, “have to make hard decisions every day! We have to do our job. We need them to do their job, and not defund our kids.”
‘I just don’t think that was the right thing to do’
In an exclusive interview with WTOP after the announcement, Fani-González said she was not surprised by the anger from the crowd, most of whom were school employees represented by union groups including MCEA and SEIU Local 500.
“I was not surprised, I come from the labor movement,” Fani-González said. “I expect that and more.”
But Fani-González said she held off on pushing for a vote from her colleagues because, “At the very last minute, I had a couple of colleagues who said, ‘We need more time.’”
She did not identify which colleagues indicated they were not ready to take the vote.
The council will take straw votes ahead of the formal vote planned for May 21. The 11 council members are required to approve a budget by the June 1 deadline.
“This is a very emotional budget, and I think today it was in full display,” Fani-González said. “I think my job as the president is not to say, ‘We have got to do this, my way or the highway.’ My job is to bring consensus.”
Asked how far apart the council is on coming to agreements on taxing levels and potential cuts, Fani-González said, “Anything can be on the table.”
The decision to hold off on the vote is unprecedented, but Fani-González said that’s because the current political and economic climate is also unprecedented.
“You have never seen three people running for county executive from the county council,” she said, referring to Council members Andrew Friedman, Evan Glass and Will Jawando.
The budget vote also comes as the county has been bruised by massive federal layoffs and residents are squeezed by inflation and high gas prices.
“It is a historic moment, and we’re going to get through this. I know we will,” she said. “People need time, and that’s OK.”
“At the end of the day, the budget is going to have things that I don’t agree with, but that’s part of compromising. And if people need time to reach a compromise, I’m going to give it to them,” she said.
The bottom line, Fani-González said, is that Thursday was not the right time to vote: “Although I could have proceeded, because I have the power to do that, I just don’t think that was the right thing to do.”
As of Thursday, the plan was to have the council reconvene for a vote Friday.
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