For Immediate Release: Tuesday, December 2, 2014
The Montgomery County Council today unanimously elected George Leventhal as president and Nancy Floreen as vice president of the Council. They will serve one-year terms as officers of the Council.
Council President Leventhal, who serves at-large, served as vice president of the Council for the past year. He is beginning his 13th year on the Council. He previously served as Council president in 2006.
“Richard J. Daley was the mayor of Chicago for 21 years, from 1955 to 1976,” Council President Leventhal said upon taking office today. “His slogan, ‘The City That Works,’ came out of his great attention to the efficient delivery of city services, as well as his efforts to ensure a healthy business and job climate so that Chicagoans are employed. And I want Montgomery County to be known as ‘The County That Works.’
“We are ready to work with Maryland’s new governor. We want a state government that works, and we want a County Government that works. We are not Congress, and we are not going to engage in petty partisanship at the expense of our efficiency or our productivity. We want results, and we want a County Government focused on customer service.”
Councilmember Leventhal is beginning in his fourth term on the Council. First elected in 2002, he chairs the Council's Health and Human Services Committee and also serves on the Planning, Housing and Economic Development Committee.
As chair of the Health and Human Services Committee, he leads the committee responsible for programs affecting the sick, the poor, the elderly, the homeless, the disabled, the mentally ill and abused and abandoned children, as well as libraries and the arts and humanities.
Council President Leventhal has championed access to health care for the uninsured, housing for the homeless, green buildings, mass transit and clean energy. Prior to his election to the County Council, he served as chair of the Montgomery County Democratic Central Committee and as legislative director to U.S. Senator Barbara A. Mikulski.
He has lived in Montgomery County most of his life and owns a home in Takoma Park with his wife, Soraia, and their two sons, Daniel and Chico.
Council Vice President Floreen has been an at-large member of the Council since she was first elected in 2002. She chaired the Council’s Transportation, Infrastructure, Energy and Environment (T and E) Committee until 2010, when she became chair of the Planning, Housing and Economic Development Committee. She remains a member of the T and E Committee.
Vice President Floreen previously served as mayor of the Town of Garrett Park. In 1986, she was appointed as a commissioner on the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission, where she served until 1994.
Throughout her tenure on the County Council, Vice President Floreen has been a tireless advocate for better transportation and transit options, expanded affordable housing, enhanced environmental protections and improved access to jobs and economic development.
Vice President Floreen is married to attorney/writer David O. Stewart and has three adult children.
The complete remarks of Council President Leventhal upon taking office today:
Thank you to my good friend Craig Rice. Craig led us well this past year. He is always friendly and courteous, to our constituents and to each of us. He conducted the Council’s business professionally and expeditiously. Let’s have another round of applause for our outgoing Council President, Mr. Rice.
And congratulations to our new Council Vice President, Nancy Floreen. We are going to have a great year.
Another election is now behind us. Some people may think that the election results demonstrate that Marylanders are fed up with taxes, but I don’t see it that way. I think Marylanders and Montgomery County residents want to know that their taxes are paying for a government that works.
Richard J. Daley was the mayor of Chicago for 21 years, from 1955 to 1976. His slogan, “The City That Works,” came out of his great attention to the efficient delivery of city services, as well as his efforts to ensure a healthy business and job climate so that Chicagoans are employed. And I want Montgomery County to be known as “The County That Works.”
We are ready to work with Maryland’s new governor. We want a state government that works, and we want a County Government that works. We are not Congress, and we are not going to engage in petty partisanship at the expense of our efficiency or our productivity. We want results, and we want a County Government focused on customer service.
I was glad to hear County Executive Leggett in his speech yesterday focusing on strengthening our economy and streamlining bureaucracy.
We want to generate jobs, so that everyone who wants a job will be able to get one. We need to take a real look at workforce development. We have a disconnect between workers who need jobs and employers who need workers. Some are still feeling the systemic effects of the recession and need re-training and skill development. We must have a more robust training or unemployment program.
I want to see us do a better job of marketing this great county. We should be marketing ourselves as an International Gateway, where no matter where your company is located in the world, we can identify highly educated and skilled workers who can do business with you in your language. That is among the characteristics that sets Montgomery County apart from other affluent jurisdictions: our international population—more foreign-born residents than any other county in Maryland—right at the doorstep of the Nation’s Capital. We need to focus on being a more globally-oriented economy that serves the national and worldwide market, not just local populations or the federal government.
The most important thing we can do to improve our economic competitiveness is invest in our transportation infrastructure. If workers can get to jobs faster and easier, more companies will locate and stay here. Our message to the new Governor must be that building new transit and improving our road network creates jobs and strengthens local entrepreneurship. There will only be new business startups in Lyttonsville, Long Branch and Takoma-Langley if the Purple Line is built. We have staging requirements in place that will prevent the Great Seneca Science Corridor from realizing its economic potential unless the Corridor Cities Transitway is achieved. We won’t see a thriving White Oak Science Gateway unless we provide express bus service along Route 29. These remain our county’s top priorities and we will not retreat from them.
We want to be sure that we have equity and fairness in contracting. If we have disparities, we are excluding valuable talent. I congratulate Mr. Rice for making procurement and disadvantaged business reform a priority of his term as president. The two task forces will report on these topics during my presidency and I look forward to enacting legislation to address disparities in contracting.
Health care is a huge job generator, and we are home to six hospitals, the newest of which opened just this year. And of course Montgomery County is home to a wealth of companies, large and small, in the field of biotechnology. But we need to diversify our industries to keep pace with evolving technologies, and attract more cloud computing, cybersecurity, big data analytics and advanced communications.
Environmental technology also creates jobs. In 2007, I co-founded Bethesda Green, which today houses a green jobs incubator with new companies creating new jobs every day. In 2013, that little incubator supported 38 jobs and generated more than $1.1 million in investment capital. I want our county to push the leading edge in energy efficiency, greenhouse gas reduction and technology development.
On environmental issues, the County Council has been out in front, really pushing the envelope. We have a bill pending that will ban Styrofoam, and another one that will restrict toxic lawn chemicals. We are putting local government at the forefront of environmental protection, above and beyond what other jurisdictions are doing because we want to have the cleanest, safest, healthiest county in America.
And let me tell you: ensuring a clean and healthy environment is economically beneficial as well. Our beloved state of Maryland is known as “The Land of Pleasant Living” for many reasons. Among the most important of these is our delicious seafood. We know that if we want to continue to enjoy crabs and oysters and rockfish and make sure our children and grandchildren enjoy them also, we must eliminate toxic and harmful runoff that makes its way into Chesapeake Bay. And I look forward to working closely with Roger Berliner and Tom Hucker in the coming year to continue our county’s environmental leadership.
The Council is going to act and to hold the government accountable for results. How? Primarily by measuring outcomes. We are going to continue to rely on the Office of Legislative Oversight to help us assess what is working and what needs improvement.
Early in 2015, OLO will assist us to develop an inventory to assess where service delivery gaps exist among for-profit, not-for-profit and government-provided mental health services. I am delighted that Sidney Katz will be taking a leadership role in addressing the ongoing crisis in mental health service delivery.
We should be taking an outcomes measurement approach throughout county government, very much including our school system. I want to say to our school system: our public schools are the pride of our county. We all want to provide the funding necessary to ensure good outcomes for all students. We understand that growing populations of students with hard-to-meet needs are leading to huge pressure on MCPS’ resources. But before we begin our annual dialogue over how much money above the state-mandated Maintenance of Effort minimum threshold for school spending we can afford, we need to begin discussing what changes to Maintenance of Effort law we might all support, so that the County Council doesn’t worry every year about being penalized for doing the right thing for education.
I am also looking forward to working closely with our Annapolis delegation to maximize the amount of state aid for MCPS’ capital budget. If school overcrowding forces construction moratoria, that could endanger our state and county’s emphasis on job creation.
We are going to act right away to ensure accountability and results by establishing an Ad Hoc Committee on Liquor Control, chaired by Hans Riemer and including Marc Elrich as Public Safety Committee chair and myself as HHS Committee chair. OLO will assist us in developing a report with recommendations for how to proceed in this complex policy arena.
Effective communication with our constituents is key to providing excellent customer service. One of my goals is to develop a better and stronger working relationship with our faith communities and our clergy. The County Executive’s office now has an Interfaith Community Liaison as well as a Faith Community Advisory Council. This year, I am planning a County Council town hall meeting specifically for clergy. One communication tool I would like to propose to our faith community is an electronic bulletin board where clergy could share ideas and concerns with each other, as well as with county officials.
Of course we will continue our innovative efforts to communicate in television and streaming Internet broadcasts and social media as well. I share Nancy Navarro’s strong interest in expanding our outreach to people of all language backgrounds and I am impressed with the progress we and our staff have made recently to this end.
My commitment to sharing ideas and concerns extends to all of my colleagues as well. My door is always open to each of you. That’s a figure of speech, but if you find my office door is literally closed, please knock. If I’m inside, I’ll interrupt whatever I’m doing to hear what is on a fellow Councilmember’s mind. More importantly, each of you should expect to see me in your offices finding out how you think things are going and which direction you think the council should take. When the Council President speaks, he or she should be speaking on behalf of the body after consulting the body. If you ever feel surprised by something the Council President says or does publicly during my year in the post, I am falling short of my goal and I encourage you to let me know.
Thank you to each of my colleagues for placing your confidence in me. We are going to work together. We are going to produce. We are going to get things done. We are going to show what it means to be “The County That Works.”
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Release ID: 14-356
Media Contact: Neil Greenberger 240-777-7939, Delphine Harriston 240-777-7931