As County Council President, Nancy Floreen Wants to Connect With a Broader Audience

Veteran council member says body must 'worry just as much about the people outside the room as about the people inside the room'

December 7, 2015 11:15 a.m.

Nancy Floreen says she’s learned through 13 years on the Montgomery County Council that “most people don’t know who we are” and “we’re just not that important to the average resident.”

It’s an attitude the recently installed president of the County Council says she always keeps in mind, especially when dealing with the types of issues that may attract the attention of just a tiny slice of the county’s population.

“We tend to talk a lot about the kinds of issues that have been brought to us that might be perceived as conflicts and less about really how much we’re doing to advance the community’s needs and interests,” Floreen said in an interview last week with Bethesda Beat. “I worry just as much about the people outside the room as about the people inside the room.”

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Floreen, a 64-year-old Garrett Park resident and fourth-term at-large council member, will set the council’s agenda and serve in the mostly ceremonial and logistical role of president of the nine-member body for the next year. It will be her second time in the position.

While George Leventhal, her predecessor as council president, pursued an aggressive legislative agenda and celebrated it with a slogan (“Government That Works”), Floreen said last Wednesday she’s not planning the same type of approach.

“We all have different personalities,” Floreen said.

Still, Floreen will guide the council through a number of challenging issues, including the possibility of increasing property taxes, a move that County Executive Ike Leggett has repeatedly said he might pursue in the next budget cycle.

Here are a number of issues Floreen has on her radar for the next year:

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Facing the prospect of a property tax increase proposal from Leggett

Floreen said it’s too early to know if Leggett will propose raising the county’s property tax rate as part of his proposed budget for the next fiscal year, as he has said he might do to plug a shortfall caused by lower-than-expected state tax revenues and the money the county must pay back due to the state losing the Wynne Case in the Supreme Court.

If Leggett’s proposed tax increase goes above the rate allowed by the county’s charter limit, it would require the approval of all nine council members.

“We’re all of different minds on these sorts of things,” said Floreen, who mentioned the county’s ongoing negotiations with employee unions as another factor that could impact Leggett’s budget proposal. He’s expected to submit it in March to the council.

“There are a lot of moving parts in any budget,” Floreen said. “There’s a lot of time between now and then.”

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Council President Nancy Floreen, left, shown in September 2014 at an event honoring Capital Crescent Trail supporter John Dugger. Credit: Aaron Kraut

Fighting the perception of Montgomery County as “business unfriendly”

Floreen led the council’s effort in 2010 to create the Montgomery Business Development Corporation, a county-funded “apolitical organization to provide a business-friendly perspective” and to market the county to potential new businesses.

She said the creation of the Montgomery County Economic Development Corporation, which will privatize most functions of the county’s Department of Economic Development in a nonprofit led by private industry leaders, is the next step of that process. She expects to the council to be involved with many parts of the new group’s implementation in 2016.

“I think an important function of government leaders is to be a cheerleader,” Floreen said.

In the past, Floreen has voted against measures seen by some as “business unfriendly.” She was on the losing side of a 5-4 vote in May in which the council decided to maintain the county’s energy tax at its current rate despite pressure from the local business community to reduce the rate.

A day later, she was the lone vote against the county’s overall $5 billion budget for the fiscal year that began July 1 based on her opposition to maintaining the energy tax rate.  

Floreen said she’s given up on trying to reduce the energy tax, especially with lower-than-expected state tax revenues predicted for the next county budget.

She also said she doesn’t see many of the new regulations the council creates (it passed one of the strongest paid sick leave measures in the country in June) as especially onerous to business.

The council earlier this year also passed one of the most stringent set of regulations on pesticides. Previous councils were among the first in the country to adopt smoking bans in restaurants and a law that requires all major restaurant chains to post calorie counts next to menu items.

“We have a very well-educated community. They follow this stuff. They read The New York Times,” Floreen said. “They realize they’ve chosen to live in a community that’s forward thinking. We hear the criticism that we impose certain controls, and I don’t agree with them all frankly, but we do have a very open process. It’s a very thoughtful process and I think it creates an interest in a community that is engaged and really pretty innovative.”

Protecting Montgomery County’s Department of Liquor Control from private competition

As the defacto spokesperson for the council, Floreen has taken on the challenge of defending the county’s embattled Department of Liquor Control (DLC) from two state bills that could open up the county to competition from private alcohol distributors and liquor retailers.

One of those bills would put the question on the November 2016 ballot, a prospect Floreen said last week would almost certainly result in the public voting in favor of letting private distributors in. Like Leggett, she said losing the money generated from the DLC could make it necessary to raise taxes.

“If it goes to a referendum, we lose,” Floreen said, “because tax conversations are difficult to be had.”

She said that it would be difficult for county officials to explain how difficult it would be to replace some or all of the roughly $35 million in profit the DLC adds to the county’s coffers.

“I don’t think anybody here is that wedded to having a county liquor system. It’s just a question of the dollars,” Floreen said, before adding that allowing private companies to operate in the county would be “a huge transfer of wealth really for Baltimore liquor distributors.”

The Montgomery County Council, with Floreen second from left in the first row, via Montgomery County Council

Approving major master plans that could influence development in Bethesda for the next two decades

Floreen said the council will hold its public hearing on the Westbard Sector Plan in late January. The Montgomery County Planning Department is set to approve and send its recommendations to the council Dec. 17.

The plan, which could provide zoning to allow for redevelopment of a suburban-style shopping center near River Road and Westbard Avenue in Bethesda, has attracted plenty of opposition from neighbors against significant development.

“I always view it as a good thing when community members have gotten down to arguing about should it be ‘x’ feet or ‘y’ feet tall,” Floreen said. “That’s a detail that most communities are not engaged in in this stage of the game.”

Floreen, who served two terms on the Planning Board before running for council and who chairs the council’s Planning Committee, will have a prime role in ironing out the final version of the plan.

“It’s important as legislators to remember that this is still a very suburban country,” Floreen said. “Sometimes, we talk a lot about transit and density and the like and not everyone is there. Montgomery County is still to its core, I think, a suburban place. We have to always keep that in mind.

“The challenge in some of these commercial centers is how do you balance the need for reinvestment with the need for what the neighborhood desires?” Floreen said.

Floreen’s Planning Committee will also be responsible for going through the Bethesda Sector Plan, which the Planning Board is expected to submit later next year. She said she’s looking forward to dealing with some of the newer concepts expected to be part of the plan—including the idea of allowing property owners to sell their density to developers of other properties.

“It has a number of sophisticated land use issues and how do we deal with a significantly built-out urban center but keep it thriving and interesting?” Floreen said.

On reaching a wider swath of the public

Floreen said that when she was first elected to the council in 2002, she remembers driving along I-270 near the Beltway split and thinking, ‘Oh boy, I’m in charge.’

“It was a very exhilarating time when I was first elected. And then I went to the supermarket and nobody knew who I was.”

Floreen said council members sometimes “operate in bubbles,” meaning her biggest challenge as council president over the next year is communicating the council’s work to more people.

“Unless a resident has some big issue in front of them that they want addressed at that moment in time, local government is just not that important to them,” Floreen said. “What we do is very important and it is a great privilege to serve a county of over 1 million people with such a diversity of needs and such a big budget. But we have to communicate with the community and encourage them to communicate with me so we can get things done together.”

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