The Council is required to appoint a Charter Review Commission every 10 years to review this governing document and make recommendations on changes. Their recommendations go before the County Council and the County Council votes on which items are approved to go before the voters on the November ballot. If the voters approve of a Charter Amendment, the change to the Charter is made. The Charter Review Commission had representation from every Councilmanic District. Dr. April Miller was the representative from Council District 5 which includes the Northern parts of Frederick County.

As of the writing of this article, the County Council has approved one amendment to go before the voters, with several other potential amendments pending. The approved amendment was a recommendation from the Charter Review Commission to reduce the acceptable borrowing limits for Frederick County. It is a fiscally responsible measure and was approved by the Charter Review Commission and by the County Council unanimously. I would urge voters to support this measure in November to make sure Frederick County never borrows too much money.

Another amendment that looks likely to pass to be put before the voters is an Amendment that would allow individual County Council Members more access to staff and information from the County Executive’s Office. This information can be used for drafting legislation as needed.

In my opinion, the biggest issue for Charter and one that the voters have not had a chance to weigh in on is whether or not the County Council will be able to move money within the county budget without increasing the overall budget. Currently, the County Council can cut from the $667 million county budget, but we cannot shift money from one line item to another, even if a majority of Council Members agree. So if we wanted to move money to road construction or public safety, we cannot currently do that. I have advanced an amendment that would allow a majority of County Council Members to vote to shift money around in the budget. We should not have one person ‘the County Executive’ singularly deciding how to spend hundreds of millions of dollars and that the elected County Council should have a method to be able to move money around in the budget as voters expect that we do. Even if it does not pass the Council to go to the ballot this election, this amendment will keep coming back until the voters have a chance to weigh in on whether this is the structure they want.

There are several other Amendments that will seemingly be deferred as not urgent enough for this cycle. Moving the date that the redistricting commission must report to their findings to an earlier date and reducing the number of votes required for the County Council to issue a subpoena do not seem likely to pass the County Council this year as neither has an application for the foreseeable future.

There are several amendments that deal with how to replace a member of the County Council or the County Executive should a position become vacant. I support the efforts of Council Member McKay to encourage a special election in alignment with the Presidential Election where possible to give the voters the ultimate say. These amendments are some of those that will have to be decided soon by the County Council if they are to be on the ballot in November.

Finally, there are some housekeeping amendments recommended by the Charter Review Commission that would end the Charter prohibition against County Council Members receiving benefits and allow for the Council President to make a higher salary than the Council. It is not clear whether these will make it to the ballot or not as of this writing.