Montgomery County voters will be asked to decide this November whether the county executive should be limited to serving two terms.
The County Council voted Tuesday to approve placing the referendum for a two-term limit on the Nov. 5 general election ballot while also criticizing the process that allows citizen-led initiatives to result in ballot questions. The current term limit is three four-year terms, or 12 years.
The initiative calling for a referendum on a two-term limit is sponsored by the Committee for Better Government, which is led by former Montgomery County Republican party chair and unsuccessful 2022 GOP county executive nominee Reardon Sullivan. The committee submitted a petition to the Montgomery County Board of Elections to request that the referendum be placed on the ballot. The petition was required to meet a threshold of 10,000 valid signatures to appear on the ballot.
County election director Boris Brajkovic sent a letter to Sullivan on Wednesday informing him that the county elections board had validated 15,956 petition signatures, allowing the ballot initiative to move forward.
Before knowing whether enough signatures had been validated, the council unanimously agreed that the proposed term-limit question was eligible for the November ballot and its language correctly written if the signature threshold was met.
But councilmember Evan Glass (D-At-large) noted that he had written a letter, co-signed by all 11 council members, to the Maryland General Assembly asking the legislature to consider changing the requirements for future citizen-led ballot initiatives to qualify to appear on the ballot. The General Assembly will not meet again until the next session begins in January 2025.
According to the letter, Article XI-A of the state constitution requires potential charter amendments to receive the signatures of 20% of the jurisdiction’s registered voters, or a minimum of 10,000 signatures.
“At the time this constitutional provision was ratified in 1978, Montgomery County had a population of 584,000,” the letter says. “Today, Montgomery County has a population of over one million residents. Given the population growth within Montgomery County and across the state, we are requesting that the General Assembly amend the Maryland Constitution to replace the existing requirements with more proportional metrics.”
Glass has been critical of the petition process since the council began discussions on proposed amendments to the county charter in June.
The 11-member Charter Review Commission is appointed by the County Council and is tasked with presenting a report to the council in May of every even-numbered year and to present proposed amendments members believe should be made to the county charter.
The commission released a report in June opposing Sullivan’s proposal, and recommended an alternative proposal that the charter be changed to limit a county executive to serving a total of three terms throughout the executive’s lifetime. Currently, a county executive could technically be elected to serve more than three terms, as long as an additional term is not consecutive with the first three. However, no councilmembers chose to move forward with this proposal.
“I have major concerns with a decades-old process that the state of Maryland allows for the county’s charter commissions to operate,” Glass said at a June 18 council meeting. “More specifically, it is the Maryland constitution that allows for referenda to get onto the ballot with an extremely small percentage of the population supporting them.”
In an email to MoCo360 on Wednesday, Sullivan expressed his frustration with the letter written by Glass.
“I am deeply disappointed that Councilman Evan Glass is pushing to override the will of the people and change the state law on ballot petitions,” Sullivan wrote. “His actions demonstrate that the politicians who are screaming ‘Defend Democracy’ don’t really want Democracy on the ballot and don’t want to listen to or even consider the voices of all the citizens.”
He said he believes the council views citizen petitions as a way to undermine its power.
“Anything that can disrupt the power of the County Council is an anathema to them and they want to squash it,” Sullivan wrote. “They understand that when citizen referendums are put on the ballot, and the process is not corrupted by unilaterally conceived, competing Council-driven amendments, they tend to pass.”
At a July 16 public hearing, several speakers expressed support for the two-term limit initiative.
“I think there are many advantages to term limits. Term limits prevent a single individual from accumulating massive power,” said county resident Amy Waychoff. “We must restore the principle of citizen representation and rid ourselves of long-term career politicians.”
Laurie Halverson, a member of the Montgomery County Republican Central Committee, said limiting the number of terms would hold the county executive accountable to all residents.
“If our county executive serves no more than eight consecutive years, he or she will be less likely to show bias to any special interest group and more likely to focus on serving all,” she said.
Others criticized the proposal, saying it was a ploy to get rid of current County Executive Marc Elrich (D).
“The current attempt to reduce the term limit is the effort of those who were unable to win an election the established way,” said Dolly Kildee, representing the SEIU Local 500 union. “Instead, they seek to subvert the will of the electorate because they know they can’t win a fair and open election.”
Silver Spring resident Cheryl Gannon shared a similar perspective.
“This is a private grudge aimed at a single person under the cover of a rule change and should be strongly opposed by the council,” she said.