Scenario: Maria’s child is running a 103℉ fever. She rushes the child to the nearest urgent care facility. The receptionist asks for an insurance card and a $100 copay. Maria stalls: if she pays the $100, she won’t have enough money to buy herself beer and cigarettes. Instead, Maria gambles on the child’s recovery and goes to the adjacent liquor store.
Maria is not acting morally. She needs to cut back on the smokes and booze for her child’s safety. After all, Maria is a parent with an obligation to the child vested in her care.
I bring this up because Council Member Will Jawando has come out opposing Bill 2-25, legislation that encourages conversion of existing commercial property to residential. The extent of such conversions is arguably doubtful, because office buildings don’t have the proper footprint for apartment buildings. Regardless, Jawando’s opposition to the bill raises questions about his morals.
A stipulation of that bill is a provision for payment in lieu of taxes (PILOT): the developer converting the commercial property makes a one-time payment to the county instead of remitting annual property taxes. In the case of Bill 2-25, the county absorbs a net reduction in tax revenue as an incentive to increase the inventory of affordable housing. The amount of the reduction is “$230 million in property tax revenue per year, with total loss over that 25-year period of approximately $2.6 billion” (source).
(Additionally, an important provision of Bill 2-25 is that 15% of the units supplied be affordable, compared to 12% in today’s MPDU program.)
Mr. Jawando opposes the legislation because, as he mentions, the $2.6 billion abatement is unjustified and would be better allocated to education. Let’s put that on a bar graph.
Our current school budget is an atrocious $3.6 billion, so over 25 years and without any increases that comes to $90 billion—compared to $2.6 billion in lost PILOT revenues over the same period. That’s only 3%, and will surely be less because our voracious school district gets an increase almost every year. Does anyone in Montgomery County think that we cannot snip 3% off the school budget in order to deliver dozens of units of affordable housing? Are we really going to sacrifice the poor to appease the teachers’ union for 3%? Is the teachers’ union really going to say “give us that 3% and the poor can go hang?”
As far as Mr. Jawando and the teachers’ union are concerned, the answer to those three questions is yes—and that’s unfortunate. Just as Maria isn’t morally qualified to care for a child, if Mr. Jawando can’t stand up to the teachers’ union for 3%, he isn’t morally qualified to care for the county’s housing burdened.
(Bill 2-25 passed 10-1 with only CM Jawando opposing.)
