If one navigates to the Montgomery County ‘Legislative Information Management System‘ (LIMS), filters the record type to “Resolutions” and searches for the keyword “hate”… a total of 53 hits comes up from the database.
Way back in 2006, there was resolution 15-554, which proposed to: “Consult with members of the Commission on Human Rights, the Interagency Fair Housing Group, and the Committee on Hate Violence to discuss the pros, cons and feasibility of combining or eliminating one or more of the existing groups;” — but this doesn’t seem to have been enacted.
Then, back in 2010 there was resolution 16-1474, a one-pager in which the County Council stated: The County Council expresses its sympathy for, and solidarity with, the congregants of B’nai Shalom of Olney as well as with all residents of Montgomery County. The County Council acknowledges that a hate crime directed against any segment of our community is in fact directed against our entire community.
In 2016, the County Council felt compelled to issue resolution 18-456, another brief document “condemning anti-LGBT discrimination laws and calling on the County Executive to suspend official County travel to jurisdictions where those laws are in place.”
Again in 2016, shortly after the election, the County Council once again felt compelled to issue a formal resolution on “Reaffirming Community Safety and Trust and Denouncing Anti-Immigrant Activity, Racial Bias and Discrimination, Anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, Hate Speech, Hate Crimes, and Harassment in Montgomery County”.
Resolution 19-55 was brought forth March 19, 2019 to “Reaffirming the Council’s Solidarity with the Muslim Community and Denouncing Acts of Terrorism, Islamophobia, and Hate.” The resolution specifically mentions it is in response to an international incident of terror that occurred thousands of miles away.
About two years later, again, another resolution, this one 19-744, was brought forward and adopted to “reaffirm Montgomery County’s commitment to combat hate and extremism.”
In November of 2022, after tabling an earlier ‘resolution’ on the subject, the County Council issued 19-1433, which stated as an “action” that “Montgomery County denounces and condemns antisemitism in all its manifestations.”
Reviewing the last two decades of Council resolutions, it is pretty clear that the Montgomery County Council is unequivocally against ‘hatred’ and various phobias, antisemitism and racism. And has been for at least 18+ years. And, that’s a good thing. Most likely, 97-to-99% of the residents and taxpayers of Montgomery County are as well.
The question then becomes: are these “official resolutions” moving the needle on the remaining (potentially) 1-3% of a population that (again, potentially) harbors something like deep hatred towards a particular group, in an area as vast, populated and diverse as Montgomery County, Maryland? Are those 1-3% going to be moved to come to a new conclusion on their inner belief systems or ideologies because of an official County Council “resolution” on a piece of paper?
If the County Council believes that these issued resolutions make an actual impact on the existence of hate groups or acts in the Montgomery County community or even Maryland writ-large, they should immediately release data and evidence to support such. It may be that they actually need to issue yet more ‘official resolutions’ in order to fully eradicate such hatred across MoCo or Maryland.
But if such evidence does not occur (and it likely does not), perhaps a change of tactics is overdue? Maybe this time could be better spent by the people who have their fingers in the County money and make the budgets that impact everyone?
Conservatively, if we figure it took nine council members, council attorneys and their staffs a part of a full work day to create, edit, issue and “vote” on resolutions, are we looking at about $7,000-$10,000 in taxpayer costs per issued resolution? Keep in mind, the antisemitism resolution took hours of internal debate until it was issued. Debate started in the summer of 2022 and the resolution was not issued until November of 2022. Walt Whitman High School was defaced with antisemitic graffiti in December, 2022.
Maybe less resolutions, but more actual community dialogue and good public/economic policy will help Montgomery County residents feel secure, welcome, and prosperous.
