Credit: Towfiqu Barbhuiya / Unsplash.com
To the Editor,
Montgomery County residents are being forced to pay for a 9% tax increase while our elected officials continue to spend recklessly on bloated government projects. The 2025 budget reveals a $15.8 million structural deficit, with expenditures soaring $43.1 million higher than last year. Rather than prioritizing debt reduction and meaningful investment in public safety, our commissioners are doubling down on wasteful spending, including a major expansion of the Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI).
The County has decided that instead of cutting costs and addressing essential services, they will use taxpayer dollars to fund political pet projects. The DEI office, once a one-person operation, is now getting up to four new positions, including two deputy chiefs, a director of immigrant affairs, and a senior administrator. At a time when families are struggling with inflation and rising costs, why is our county prioritizing ideological initiatives over financial responsibility?
While some funds are directed toward infrastructure, much of it is financed through new debt, rather than responsible budgeting. The 2025 capital budget is projected at $244.4 million, with $165 million in new bonds. This means Montgomery County isn’t strengthening its financial position, it’s mortgaging its future. Meanwhile, public safety remains severely underfunded at just 2.1% of the budget, proving that taxpayer needs are being ignored in favor of ideological pet projects.
On top of that, Montgomery County is actively rejecting the direction of the federal government. Since President Trump’s return to the White House on January 20, 2025, his administration has been eliminating DEI programs and cutting their funding at the national level—a move that ensures taxpayer dollars are used efficiently rather than wasted on divisive and ineffective bureaucracies. Montgomery County, however, has chosen to defy this commonsense approach and instead force its residents to foot the bill for an agenda that the federal government is abandoning.
The Democratic commissioners have proven that they are more focused on ideological posturing than responsible governance. The people of Montgomery County deserve leaders who prioritize lower taxes, public safety, and infrastructure, not bureaucratic expansion that serves no real purpose. This tax hike was a deliberate choice, one that disrespects every hardworking resident of this county.
The people of this county have a choice: continue down this path of higher taxes and irresponsible spending or elect leaders who will put fiscal responsibility and real priorities first.
**The views expressed in this Letter to the Editor are in no way a reflection of the opinions of the Access Network, its staff, nor its publications. Letters to the Editor are only the opinions of a reader, and details there within are not proven to be factual, accurate, nor complete by Access Network and should not relied upon as such.
