Did you know Montgomery County has five “Sister Cities”? Three are in Asia, one in Africa and one in, yep, Marc Elrich’s favorite country, El Salvador (more on this in another investigative post).
Per the ‘about’ page on the County’s Sister City website, the mission here is:
People have come to Montgomery County, Maryland from every corner of the globe. Montgomery County Sister Cities Inc. was established to connect Montgomery County to the world by encouraging and fostering friendship, partnership, and mutual cooperation through educational, cultural, social, economic, humanitarian, and charitable exchanges between the people of Montgomery County and people from various nations around the world.
Sounds innocent enough, if a bit vague. Montgomery Sister Cities is a part of Sister Cities International, which says it was “created at President Eisenhower’s 1956 White House conference on citizen diplomacy. Eisenhower envisioned an organization promoting peace and prosperity by creating bonds between people from different cities around the world.”
Montgomery County Sister Cities (MCSC) gets basically all of its budget via us, the (often abused) taxpayer. I read numerous Board meetings (the minutes are posted, although the Board seems to meet infrequently) and many of them echoed this (directly from the December, 2020 MCSC Meeting):
The MCSC organization gets pretty much all of its funding via the MoCo “Office of Community Partnerships” which basically lobbies on its behalf to get a taxpayer grant included each budget cycle. We detailed this office’s exclusionary language around “advisory groups” here in an earlier post. The granting appears to be for general purposes, “senior fellow” positions, and also to reimburse select County officials and politicians who travel to the Sister Cities.
It isn’t an overwhelming amount of money granted (in the scheme of a huge County budget), but what is it truly being used for? How much, exactly, are County Execs and Councilmembers getting from us to fund their “trips” and luxury travel expenses? Financial documents aren’t readily available on the MCSC website to provide specific insight into what is reimbursed.
Flashback: in 2017, the NBC News 4 “I Team” Investigated MC College President’s Travel Expense Reimbursement, which resulted in a County IG report:
The inspector general reviewed the travel of Montgomery College President Dr. DeRionne Pollard following a News4 I-Team report. He presented those results to members of the county council Monday.
The review showed the more than $91,000 spent in travel over a more than two-year span complied with what’s allowed in the president’s contract.
The IG also recommended the college be more transparent with students, staff and the community about spending and start reviewing the president’s travel as part of its yearly financial audit.
Anyway the “Sister City” partnership with Xi’an, China looks problematic from various points of view – beyond just the financial waste, and especially in light of events running up to and including 2023. If Montgomery County wants to insert itself in geopolitics, it should at least review who it is ‘partnering’ with.
First, the Montgomery County delegation that visited Xi’an in 2017 met with Xi’an mayor Shangguan Jiqing but he was implicated just a year later in a corruption / environmental scandal in that very province. The mayor was subsequently removed and demoted within the Chinese Communist Party. What did he agree to? Why no official retraction or notice from the County once he was revealed to be corrupt?
[Photo Above is Direct from Montgomery County Sister Cities website] Per description: County Executive Ike Leggett signed a Sister City agreement with Daejeon and renewed the agreement with Xi’an. Montgomery College and Xi’an have signed a Memorandum of Understanding.
Second, Xi’an has a small Muslim minority community that is repressed and living under constant surveillance and fear. The article is from 2019 but it is doubtless continuing to this day. From Xiaomei Chen’s reporting: “You can’t be too careful,” says one Chinese Muslim Hui I meet through a former colleague, and who does not want to be named in the international media. “You know the situation in Xinjiang? We don’t want that in Xi’an!”
Montgomery County Government hasn’t issued any formal plea for tolerance or equality towards Chinese Uyghurs, or Muslims, that I can easily research at the ‘searchMontgomery’ portal. Of course, as soon as war broke out in Ukraine, Montgomery College immediately issued an “In Solidarity” statement. Nothing wrong with this… but consistency seems to be lacking.
Third, China is totalitarian and has shown the world over the past three-plus years it does not care about the individual civil or economic rights of its citizens. During harsh Covid-19 lock-downs, Xi’an residents really suffered:
Xi’an now counts among the several Chinese cities that had one of the worst lockdowns in the nation last year. The city is famous for its terracotta army. Residents were not allowed to leave their homes for a month in December 2021, not even to buy food and other needs.
Is this the kind of “brand” and city partnership Montgomery County’s ‘liberal’ / obsessively tolerant establishment wants to be associated with?
And meanwhile, China continues to threaten the peace of neighboring Taiwan, which is where a Rockville, Maryland “Sister City” resides. It is time to re-assess this particular ‘partnership’ and get a full accounting of where the County travel ‘money’ has gone in the past.
If Council Exec Elrich is claiming a recession is nigh, then our money shouldn’t be flowing to expensive travel and dining overseas for County officials or politicians.
