For Immediate Release: Wednesday, January 20, 2021
The Public Safety Committee will meet at 9:30 a.m. and the Planning, Housing and Economic Development Committee and Education and Culture Committee will meet jointly at 1:30 p.m. on Thursday, Jan. 21. Both meetings will be conducted on Zoom. Council staff reports and additional information on items scheduled for committee review can be viewed at: http://www.montgomerycountymd.gov/COUNCIL/ondemand/index.html.
The committee meeting schedule may change from time to time. The current committee agendas can be viewed at:
http://www.montgomerycountymd.gov/COUNCIL/ondemand/index.html.
On the guidance of Health Officer and Chief of Public Health Services Dr. Travis Gayles, there is currently no public access to the Council Office Building. The virtual Council meeting will be streamed live on the Council’s web page via YouTube (MoCoCouncilMD) and on Facebook Live (MontgomeryCountyMdCouncil) and can be watched on County Cable Montgomery on channels 30 (Fios), 1056 (RCN) and 996 (Xfinity).
Meeting: Public Safety (PS) Committee
Time: 9:30 a.m.
PS Committee: Councilmember Sidney Katz (Chair), Council Vice President Gabe Albornoz and Council President Tom Hucker
Topic:
Bill 45-20, Police - Community Policing - Data
The Public Safety Committee will review Bill 45-20, Police - Community Policing - Data, which aims to ensure greater transparency in the Montgomery County Police Department (MCPD) and to create publicly available data related to the race, ethnicity, gender and other voluntarily provided information about residents involved in policing actions. Councilmember Will Jawando spearheaded this bill and is a lead sponsor along with Councilmember Sidney Katz, Council President Tom Hucker and Councilmember Gabe Albornoz. All other Councilmembers are cosponsors.
Bill 45-20 would require MCPD to report demographic information about residents stopped (including a stop and frisk that does not result in an arrest) to the Council by Feb. 1 of each year. It would further require MCPD to maintain data sets on race and ethnicity, use of force incidents, criminal citations and juvenile citations, among others; and to post this data on its web portal.
The Council staff report can be found here.
#OpenPoliceData and #OpenPoliceDataMoCo are being used for this bill on social media.
Meeting: Joint Planning, Housing and Economic Development (PHED) Committee and Education and Culture (E&C) Committee
Time: 1:30 p.m.
PHED Committee: Councilmembers Hans Riemer (Chair), Andrew Friedson (Lead for Parks) and Will Jawando
E&C Committee: Councilmembers Craig Rice (Chair), Will Jawando (Lead for Libraries) and Nancy Navarro
Topic:
OLO Memorandum Report 2020-12, Youth Workforce and the Impact of Covid-19
The PHED and E&C Committees will meet jointly to review Office of Legislative Oversight (OLO) Memorandum Report 2020-12, which examines employment of youth ages 16-24 in Montgomery County in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic. The committees will discuss ways to expand virtual youth employment opportunities; how to address job losses in food service and retail; what further research is needed to understand why unemployment rates are high for Black young people when compared with their peers and identifying the best practices for improving teen employment to address equity and policy gaps.
The report found that despite overall national job recovery in the last decade, the youth workforce has not recovered to pre-Great Recession levels. As a result, the unemployment gap between youth workers and adult workers grew between 2009 to 2019. In addition, Black teens in Montgomery County have the highest unemployment rate among their peers (40.6 percent) – eight times higher than white teens and four times higher than Asian and Latinx teens.
The OLO report can be viewed here.
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Release ID: 21-019