In a fascinating flip-flop from just a few years prior, with Covid / Flu virus variants reportedly on the rise nationwide (CNN claims the official numbers don’t do it justice), Montgomery County’s Chief Administrative Officer (CAO) Richard Madaleno and the city of Takoma Park’s acting “Deputy City Manager” Andrew Bolduc have added their signatures to a Council of Governments (COG) letter asking Federal Government OMB Director Shalanda Young to return all federal government agencies to some kind of full in-person or hybrid in-office work schedule.
The opening part of this letter, signed onto by Madaleno and Bolduc, is shown below (highlights added for reference):
Why the push for the federals to return to their handsomely leased commercial buildings? Per a Fred Lucas (DailySignal.com) article about this interesting letter, it seems that MoCo leaders want their county government peers to feel “in-office schedule equity” with the Feds:
Local government employees for the District of Columbia, as well as suburbs in Northern Virginia and Maryland, have mostly returned to work, while working a few days each month from home. Their representatives sent a letter Wednesday suggesting that federal employees should do the same.
A July Government Accountability Office report that examined 24 federal agencies said the federal government “used 25 percent or less of their headquarters buildings’ capacity during three weeks in January, February, and March 2023.
But, could it be that the owners of these commercial building assets and the ancillary businesses next door (think restaurants, caterers, banks and more) are whispering in certain MoCo CAO ears about “lower assessed values” and the coming financial downturn if leases and utilization continue to be depressed in office parks across MoCo? It is all about “revenue” (taxes) for the MoCo one-party government beast – you don’t pay off the necessary interest groups without it.
Interestingly, Montgomery County government has a whole website / portal dedicated to “Telework” at its office of human resources. The County government went mostly “remote” and out of office during the winters of 2020 and through 2021, but is noted to be back in the office now.
In December of 2020, County Executive Marc Elrich proposed new coronavirus “restrictions” that:
…limits capacity at retail stores to one person per 200 feet and 150 total in a retail establishment, and also puts in place tightened capacity limits on sports and religious gatherings.
We need a bridge to safety until vaccines arrive and are widely available,” Elrich said. “And until they’re widespread, the only control over the spread of this virus, our own behaviors … We saw what worked to reduce the cases in the beginning of the pandemic, and I believe we need to revisit some of those steps now.”
It should be noted that no such vaccine exists right now (or ever did) that prevents spread of the original virus or these variants.
More to come.
