Editor’s Note: Welcome to “MoCo Politics,” a column by MoCo360 contributing editor Louis Peck providing behind-the-scenes perspectives on the political scene in Montgomery County and Maryland at large.
When Marlene Michaelson–then 29, with a master’s degree in city and regional planning earned at Harvard University several years earlier–arrived at the County Council building in Rockville in the summer of 1988, Montgomery County’s population registered around 750,000. The county government’s operating budget, including the school system, was slightly more than $1.25 billion.
By the time Michaelson, now 65, retired at the end of April after three decades as the council’s in-house expert on land use issues and then, for the past six years, as its executive director–both the county and its governance had undergone transformative change.
As Michaelson was preparing to depart, the County Council approved an annual operating budget of $7.1 billion, a more than five-fold increase from the era in which she arrived–in part reflecting a 40% increase in the county population to 1.06 million during that interval.
But perhaps the most dramatic shift was reflected in Montgomery’s demographics: One third of a century ago, approximately 75% of the county’s population was white. Today, that number is less than 45%, with a majority comprised of residents of Hispanic descent (20.5%), along with African-Americans and Asian-Americans, at 19.5% and 15.5%, respectively.
“I can’t imagine that anyone would have contemplated 20 or 30 years ago that a governor in another state near the border might have put immigrants on a bus to be brought to our county, and that we needed to assist them,” Michaelson reflected during a lengthy interview–alluding to recent episodes in which a number of those bused to Washington, D.C., ended up in adjacent Montgomery, due in part to relatives already here.
However, well before the national battle over border policy during the Biden administration yielded such episodes, the council was working to ensure that both its external actions and its internal hiring practices reflected the demographic changes close to home. Michaelson said she is most proud of that accomplishment since taking over as the council’s executive director in early 2018.
Pointing to the Racial Equity and Social Justice Act adopted by the council four and a half years ago, Michaelson added, “We do everything at the council to bring meaning to that law by constantly exploring how we can consider racial equity and social justice in policy and legal decisions–but also in terms of our interactions with each other in the office.”
The council’s central staff, which numbered 39 full-timers when Michaelson first joined it in 1988, today has grown to 52. Michaelson hired about 35 of those employees during her tenure as the council’s top staffer, due to staff turnover and expansion. In turn, Michaelson said that 60% of those new hires have been persons of color, including “a new multi-cultural communications team charged with outreach to our diverse residents.”
“We have a number of staff who were born in another country,” she noted, at a time when census figures indicate one-third of Montgomery’s population was born outside the United States.
“Marlene has done an outstanding job both recruiting and onboarding what is now a staff that is now much more reflective of the diversity of the communities we serve,” said At-large Councilmember Gabe Albornoz (D-Kensington), one of two Latino members of the 11-person council. (Michaelson was succeeded last month by Caven West, a former Detroit city official and the first person of color to serve as the council’s executive director.)
Such diversity is reflected as well in recent options offered to residents seeking to be heard during council sessions, either in person or remotely. “We now in council hearing rooms … can offer simultaneous translation to Spanish speakers. Years ago, we offered to translate, but it was not as seamless,” Michaelson said.
“In one of my favorite stories … there was a public hearing in which a gentleman was at work and didn’t have to leave work. He actually … offered testimony in Spanish, from his car, and went right back into the office. And I thought, how wonderful that we can really broaden opportunities for people to come to the council.”
While working to ensure council staff mirrors the current-day county, Michaelson also has sought to encourage future staffers interested in the type of work to which she has been devoted during her lengthy council tenure–and, prior to that, as a private sector consultant working on fiscal analysis of alternative energy projects for state and local governments for a half-dozen years.
In 2017, she started the Summer Fellows program, bringing from six to 10 graduate students to Rockville for 10 weeks to work on a research project at the council or for one of the county’s executive branch departments. “It has become one of the most popular internship programs for students getting masters [degrees] in public policy in the country,” Michaelson noted with pride.
That research at times has had an impact on policy development at the council–such as a project last summer by one program’s participants, which contributed to legislation introduced this March by Albornoz and At-large Councilmember Will Jawando (D-Silver Spring). Their “Child Investment Fund” would require annual appropriation of funds based on the county’s birth rate, with the money growing through investment and eligible to use for specified opportunities when a child turns 18, based on a family’s wealth and income.
An expanded council
Albornoz and Jawando are among the 35 council members with whom Michaelson has worked, during a tenure that has spanned 10 separate councils–comprised of seven elected members when Michaelson was first hired, expanding to nine members in 1990 and then to 11 members in 2022 following voter approval of amendments to the county’s charter.
Michaelson acknowledged initial nervousness about how an increase to the 11-member council would play out, but quickly added: “I have really been pleasantly surprised. This has been a body that, in my view, has been functioning really well.”
With a chuckle, Michaelson–the first women to hold the top job on the council staff–added: “I have joked that I thought that maybe some part of it is because we have six women on the council now, and they have more of a focus on collegiality. But [U.S. Rep.] Jamie Raskin reminded me of who his female colleagues were—and said, ‘No, Marjorie Taylor Greene is not a good example’,”–an allusion to the outspokenly conservative House colleague with whom Raskin has clashed.
The expansion to an 11-member council last year was accompanied by an increase in district-based seats from five to seven, reducing the number of constituents represented by any one of the occupants of those seats from more than 200,000 to about 150,000. Nonetheless, Michaelson is concerned about the increasing pressures in the era of online, instant communication, as she leaves the council staff to spend more time with her family in which she is now a grandmother. She said she is not retiring but plans to “continue working in some capacity that that doesn’t take quite the number of hours that this job does.”
“The workload of council members has just increased dramatically,” she said. “Five or six years ago, we estimated that hard mail–which we barely get anymore–and email had increased 10-fold. I’m guessing that if we looked at that again now, it would probably be 20-fold. And that’s not counting the fact that many council members have Facebook, Instagram and Twitter/X [accounts].
“They are trying desperately to be responsive to the citizens; it is an incredibly hard job. It creates a very challenging work environment for them, and for us as staff, in how we support them.”
To be sure, the council staff–like the rest of county government–has grown substantially since Michaelson joined it. Available budget documents from 1988 show the council staff numbered 67 full-timers; today, it stands at more than 100.
In part, this reflects the increase in the number of elected council members over that period: About 50 staffers now work in the offices of individual legislators, in addition to the 52 on the council’s central staff. This does not include more than a dozen staffers in the Office of Legislative Oversight, which–while not under the direct jurisdiction of the council’s executive director–regularly produces deeply researched reports on topics identified by the council for study.
Source of institutional knowledge
The size of this legislative apparatus has led to suggestions by local political insiders that the council’s executive director, along with the county’s chief administrative officer (the executive branch’s day-to-day operating chief) are the county’s two most powerful unelected officials.
Michaelson (who, along with her successor, West, is one of just five people to hold the top council staff job since the post was created more than a half-century ago upon adoption of the county’s current charter) pushed back against adjectives such as “powerful” or “influential” to describe the position she has held. “Our role as staff is to provide objective analysis. It has never been to try and push an agenda or influence the outcome,” she said, adding, “We play a much stronger role in providing an institutional history.”
In a legislative body where elected members are now limited by statute to three four-year terms– and on which only a handful have chosen to serve longer than that, even prior to the adoption of term limits–“you need people who can say ‘That was tried 15 years ago, and let me tell you why it didn’t work’,” Michaelson contended. “Or perhaps: ‘It was tried 15 years ago, it didn’t succeed, but here’s why it didn’t, so you can make it better.’ Those are important contributions we make.”
At the same time, there have been instances in which the exercise of Michaelson’s clout was apparent. “There are a few key areas in which I thought I had to weigh in very strongly,” she said. “And that’s when the prerogative of the council was being diminished in any way. One of the most important jobs I have had is protecting the authority of the council, its ability to make decisions and choices, and not have that stripped in any way.”
Not long after she took over as executive director, Michaelson “strongly recommended” that the council override a veto by then-County Executive Ike Leggett during his final year in office. It involved a rather arcane issue: Leggett’s line-item veto of an appropriations by the council to fund the county’s Clean Water and Permit Compliance Program.
In a memo at the time, members of the council’s legal staff contended Leggett’s veto–and his office’s interpretation of that veto–opened the way for Leggett to spend $46.6 million more than the council had appropriated. The council’s legal staff suggested this was a usurpation of the authority to appropriate, which they said rested solely with the council under the county charter.
In turn, Michaelson sent a memo to council members in June 2018 urging an override of the veto “to preserve the integrity of the council’s institutional role in the budget process” and “to prevent the executive from spending money in ways not contemplated or authorized by the council.” The council subsequently voted to override the veto by 7-2, one more than the needed two-thirds.
More recently, Michaelson was at odds with County Executive Marc Elrich–a member of the council for 16 years during Michaelson’s time on the council staff–regarding the process of hiring and classifying some county managers. Elrich, in five and a half years as county executive, has complained repeatedly of being stymied in advancing his policy goals by a limited authority to hire and replace those other than the top directors of county departments and agencies.
After the county’s quadrennial Charter Review Commission convened last year, Elrich–appearing before the panel in December–complained: “You’ve got people [in county government] whose view is ‘This is my career and you’re not going to make me change what I do’.” Addressing the commission, he asserted: “I would be wrong if I told you there aren’t people who put a lot of effort into making sure you don’t get to carry out what you’re trying to carry out.”
He continued: “There’s a level of management that a manager really ought to have control over. If everybody’s civil service–merit, your control … is really, really limited.”
However, Michaelson, while seeking to sidestep a direct confrontation with Elrich, questioned his shifting of some such employees from merit to non-merit status–while taking particular issue with his effort to hire some of those non-merit employees without having them subject to scrutiny and approval by the council.
“If you take that away, then there is absolutely nothing to prevent the county executive–and I want to emphasize I’m not making any comments about this county executive or his appointments–but a future county executive…could take every position that is no longer subject to an interview process and say, ‘Anyone who worked on my political campaign gets a position. It doesn’t matter if you have the right criteria’,” Michaelson told the Charter Review Commission a couple of months after Elrich’s appearance.
Michaelson–who met informally with several commission members before her appearance before the full panel–ultimately prevailed. On a 5-5 vote, the commission fell short of the majority needed to recommend a change in the county charter to allow the county executive to make appointments to non-merit positions below the level of department or agency director without obtaining the assent of the council.
Michaelson “was very effective in her arguments,” commission chair Jim Michaels, who voted against recommending a change in charter provisions on non-merit positions, told MoCo360. “None of the council members called to lobby me on this issue and I’m not aware that they called anyone else on the commission to lobby on it,” Michaels said. “I think they trusted her to do an effective job–and she was in fact very effective.”
Guiding Thrive 2050
A highlight of Michaelson’s tenure as executive director took place a year and a half before she retired: Drawing upon her years as the council’s land-use expert, she helped guide the county’s Thrive 2050 land-use plan through the council unanimously. Thrive 2050 foresaw denser development in a jurisdiction where, according to county Planning Department figures, 55% of zoned acreage remains occupied by residential detached or rural residential single-family structures, with another 38%of acreage dedicated to the county’s Agricultural Reserve.
“Marlene has played a role in the development, directly and indirectly, of just about every [land- use] master plan that’s been passed by the council over the last 20 years,” Albornoz noted. “Thrive 2050, of course, was a particularly controversial issue, because you had a really divided community in some ways and passionate feelings all the way around. Her level of depth and knowledge was really helpful to the central staff, and also guiding the council in general … to work through that whole process.”
Michaelson arrived in Rockville just two years before then-Councilmember Neal Potter, who had strongly resisted growth in the county, defeated then-County Executive Sid Kramer, a growth advocate, in a surprise upset. “Neal Potter was not a big champion of economic development. He kind of liked the county the way it was, so why bring in more businesses?” she recalled. “So, both on growth and economic development, you saw far more splits [then] among council members and the council and executive.”
“I do think the issues have changed,” she added. “Now, I would say this council and executive are uniform in wanting to promote economic development. They all support housing development, which is also very different than it was.”
At the same time, she acknowledged the divisions between Elrich, a growth skeptic throughout his long political career, and the council during the recent Thrive 2050 debate. “There are differences, and one of them is the fear of some of our residents that we will take existing single-family residential neighborhoods and convert them to more dense areas,” she said, while asserting: “There wasn’t anything in Thrive 2050 that said that’s what we should do. The problem was, at the same time, there were some ideas for zoning text amendments and other ideas floating around to allow that.”
Nevertheless, going forward, how to provide greater quantities of affordable housing “is going to be the tension point for us–what do we do about existing single-family neighborhoods, how do we preserve that option for people who want it, and, at the same time, provide more dense options near Metro [stations],” Michaelson predicted, adding: “I think we are going to have to look at creative ways to provide more housing. But I don’t think it will ever, in Montgomery County, be a blanket ‘Anyone can develop as much as they want anywhere they want.’ It’s going to be targeted and make sense.”
As she prepares to spend more time enjoying her long-time home in Carderock Springs along the Potomac River, Michaelson concludes more than one-third of a century in government with a faith in its power to do good.
“One of my favorite parts about the role of government is building community,” she said. “Every time we build a school, we create community. And now we’re looking for other ways to do that–whether it be the yappy hours in county parks, where people can bring their dogs and have a beer. Or when we do something like co-locate a library in a [recreation] center, and provide a space where people want to be with each other–and civic greens, whether they be public or private gathering spaces, for events that draw communities together.”
“That to me is so critical–I feel that, in this digital age, people are seeking ways to establish connections with others,” she said. “And we [in government] play a very important role in that.”