The Montgomery County Council unanimously approved County Executive Marc Elrich’s first three picks for his new administration Tuesday, even as the council’s lone female member said Elrich’s future choices should reflect the racial diversity of Maryland’s most populous jurisdiction.
After the votes, Council President Nancy Navarro (D-District 4), the council’s first Latina member, said the government in a majority-minority county should not be monolithic.
“Given who we are in Montgomery County today, that’s one thing I’m looking for,” she said in an interview after the meeting.
Elrich (D), who spent 12 years on the council before becoming county executive last week, appeared at the meeting in support of his nominees. In an interview later Tuesday, he said he is taking racial diversity “very seriously” and not filling positions as quickly as he otherwise might due to those concerns.
“I think people need to see people who look like them in county government,” he said.
In response to a question about gender inequity issues on the county payroll, Kleine told the council that the Elrich administration planned “a lot of women” to be among the “dozen or so” appointments still to be made.
Council member Craig Rice (D-District 2) asked Madaleno how he would approach his job as director of the Office of Management and Budget, saying his predecessor had an “adversarial” relationship with some agency directors.
Madaleno, an outgoing state senator who was vice chair of the Senate budget committee, pledged to work collaboratively and promised increased communication between his office and the council, which ultimately has control over the county’s $5.5 billion budget.
“Having been an elected official, having been a legislator, I’m used to an environment where you have to foster collaborative relationships if you want to get anything done,” Madaleno said. “Part of budgeting is saying no to some people, and that can be very difficult, whether it’s in the government or in the public. It’s being able to explain why that is happening and having that relationship.”
Madaleno, who also has served as a state legislative staffer and budget analyst, advocated moving to a two-year budget cycle, which Elrich has pushed, and said he would do more to include the public in shaping future spending plans.
“I think I have a reputation as being the budget person,” said Madaleno, who unsuccessfully sought the Democratic gubernatorial nomination this year.
Elrich introduced Kleine, a Silver Spring resident who spent a decade as Baltimore City’s budget director, as “someone strong enough to say what they think — to not automatically defer to what I might say.”
Kleine, a self-proclaimed “good-government geek,” detailed his public-sector experience as an analyst with several federal agencies, including the Department of Transportation and Office of Management and Budget, and as a deputy chief financial officer with the Corporation for National and Community Service.
In Baltimore, Kleine was key in instituting “outcome budgeting” — focusing on what city leaders wanted to achieve rather than how much money each department gets. He penned a book about his experience that was published this year.
Kleine said he plans on focusing initially on several areas Elrich has identified as top priorities: housing code enforcement, expanding early-childhood education by “leveraging future savings to go beyond an incremental approach,” and building the bus-rapid-transit system that Elrich has championed for a decade.
Council member Evan Glass (D-At Large) asked Kleine about department-head salaries in the county, noting that the Office of Legislative Oversight found that pay for those officials outpaced that of their counterparts in neighboring jurisdictions.
Kleine said he, Madaleno and Riley will have salaries “significantly below previous incumbents.”
He will be paid $280,000 per year, $23,000 less than the 2017 salary of the previous CAO, Timothy L. Firestine. Madaleno was hired at $200,000 a year, while his predecessor, Jennifer Hughes, made over $216,000 last year. Riley will earn $170,000, $14,000 less than the 2017 salary of Gabe Albornoz, a Democrat who was the recreation director before he was elected to the County Council this year.
Several council members noted the difference between the job of a city budget director and running a county of more than 1 million people, with council member Andrew Friedson (D-District 1) asking Kleine how he would navigate his new role.
“I know I’m not going to have time to get into the kind of nitty-gritty on the budget . . . frankly that’s not going to be easy for me,” Kleine said. “I’m going to have to figure out what level of detail do I focus on there, versus the other priorities we have.”
