Council President Leventhal News Briefing (PHOTOS AND VIDEO)
Montgomery County Council President George Leventhal held his first news briefing with reporters today, Dec. 8, at the Council Office Building. Leventhal talked about the upcoming budget challenges and working with his colleagues. He fielded questions about the Silver Spring Transit Center, the resignation of Economic and Development Director Steven Silverman, the newly formed Ad Hoc Liquor Control Commmitee, Governor-elect Larry Hogan and pedestrian safety in Montgomery County.
You can watch the briefing in its entirety here:
Mr. Leventhal, I’m curious why “the urgency of getting this facility open and accessible to the public” is #1 on your mind. Why isn’t public safety your #1 concern? Why aren’t you equally concerned with the federal, state and county funds that have been wasted on the lemon SSTC? with crony capitalism in Montgomery County? with seeing to it that something like this never happens again in Montgomery County?
Did you read the Montgomery County Inspector General report? If so, then why are you saying that “the fault lies (solely) with the contractors”? Your own IG report identifies systemic failures with Montgomery County’s project management for the SSTC. The IG recommends that these failures be corrected so that they don’t occur on future projects. Aren’t you and the rest of the council going to follow through on these recommendations?
Do your constituents agree with you that it is “the right decision to proceed (with “repairs”, and paying for them with public money) now and get this facility open and running (ASAP)”? If so, then how do you know that your constituents agree with you? Montgomery County didn’t hold public hearings to take citizen questions and comments on the public record before the decision to make repairs was made more than a year ago. Because you don’t know what the public outside Montgomery County think about Montgomery County spending their public money (53% federal and 11% state) “repairing” the lemon SSTC, what do you think that they think about that?