MarylandReporter.com (http://marylandreporter.com/author/len-lazarick/)
This is an updated list of candidates for local, state and federal office in Montgomery County, updated on Friday, Sept. 1, 2017. Candidates for county executive and County Council are listed first, followed by state legislature, Congress and then statewide office. This week we added the courthouse offices, candidates for comptroller and U.S. Senate, and fixed a few errors and omissions.
There’s a reason the local school superintendent is the highest paid local official in Maryland’s counties. It’s the toughest job in the county, heading the institutions where taxpayers spend the most money and that touch the most lives. The fierce competition for the top talent also drives up the salaries, and the average superintendent of large urban and suburban school system lasts only about four years in the job.
Crunch time is coming for the Commission on Innovation and Excellence in Education, chaired by former University System Chancellor Brit Kirwan and commonly known as the Kirwan commission. After nine meetings over the past year, the 24-member commission has heard from dozens of experts and consultants on many aspects of education policy, practice and funding. Now, it’s time to make some recommendations and decisions for a report due to the governor and legislature in December.
It was not a cold day in hell, but a cool morning in August that found Maryland’s usually scornful Democrats heaping praise on Republican Larry Hogan, including a current and a past election opponent of the governor. The Democratic elected officials even showered praise on a Trump administration cabinet secretary — without anyone mentioning the president’s name. Prompting the praise was the groundbreaking and federal funding of the Purple Line, Maryland’s largest mass transit project in decades.
Anjali Reed Phukan has been the only official candidate for state comptroller for four months now. She filed the same day she became a Republican on April 20, saying she wanted to be an “environmental Republican” like Gov. Larry Hogan. The 39-year-old Montgomery County native is as unconventional as her name
As they’ve done since the 1970s, hundreds of county officials flocked to the Ocean City Convention Center this past week to snooze and schmooze at the annual summer conference of the Maryland Association of Counties (MACo). Snooze is what most of their constituents would be doing at the scores of conference sessions on the nitty-gritty of local government, from planning and appeals to hiring and tourism. Attendance is actually quite good, and some sessions are packed.
Montgomery Reporter just published as complete a list as we could come up with of candidates in Montgomery County for local, state and federal office. What is Montgomery Reporter anyway? Montgomery Reporter is the edition of MarylandReporter.com devoted to news about Montgomery County government and politics.
Sen. Cheryl Kagan is an unconventional politician, particularly when it comes to fundraising. No breakfast fundraisers or evening receptions for the Gaithersburg senator. Kagan goes more for ice cream socials and afternoon concerts with the kind of singer-songwriters she’s been promoting in house concerts for years, as she did Sunday afternoon at an art gallery in the new Crown section of Gaithersburg, part of District 17.
The investment portfolio of the Maryland State Retirement and Pension System returned 10.02% for the fiscal year that ended June 30, raising the assets of the system to $49 billion, an increase of $3.6 billion over last year. That still leaves an unfunded liability of at least $20 billion. The exact amount of the shortfall if all promised benefits had to be paid out immediately has yet to be calculated this year.The year’s performance exceeded the system’s 7.55% target for annual return, and raised the five-year average to 7.64%.
Maryland often prides itself on how good its schools are and how much it spends on them. But the Kirwan Commission studying the state’s school funding and how it spends the money was told on Wednesday that Maryland actually lags behind several states with better test scores — Massachusetts, New Jersey and New Hampshire. On the other hand, compared to countries with top-performing students, U.S. schools spend far more per pupil. The conclusion, according to commission’s lead consultant, is that “money matters but how it is spent matters greatly.” He made a number of key recommendations.