Sixteen months after the new county charter took effect, a Montgomery County legislator is looking to amend it in an attempt to make the government more efficient and effective.
Two weeks ago, District 4 Legislator Ryan Weitz, chairman of the Education and Government Committee, presented his colleagues with a rough draft of an updated charter containing proposed changes.
Weitz said the current charter has “numerous errors and areas of concern” that he was able to address in the draft of the proposal.
“There are typographical errors, formatting errors and there are actually editors notes that are in the adopted charter,” he said. “Additionally, there are large parts of county administration that are completely left out — there is no department of data processing or a position that is responsible for the approval of contracts.”
Weitz said the one part of the draft, Local Law C, does not require a referendum vote and can be approved with a majority vote by the Legislature and County Executive Matt Ossenfort.
Weitz said his draft includes a consolidation of the county departments of Public Health, Social Services, Mental Health and the Youth Bureau into the Department of Health and Human Services. Weitz added that he is still working on a second draft that contains amendments that will need to be approved through a referendum. But he said he will discuss the amendments with his colleagues before including them in his second draft or revealing them to the public.
In 2012, county voters overwhelmingly approved a revised charter that eliminated the former Board of Supervisors and created a new nine-member county Legislature with an elected county executive. The charter took effect Jan. 1, 2014.
Ossenfort has spoken with the officials at the state Association of Counties and they have advised Montgomery County officials on the steps that need to be taken to revise the charter. Ossenfort said that he believes the charter needs to be amended and plans to support the changes Weitz has proposed.
“The need to update the charter is something that has been clear since the early stages of this new government,” he said. “We want to clarify the charter and make any changes that would make it a better document for the future. We have been working under it for more than a year and found that there are some gray areas that need to be cleaned up.”
Ossenfort said he isn’t a proponent of “changing any powers or duties,” but would like to add clarity to the language in the charter that specifies who has power to make appointments.
“All we really want to do is clarify,” he said. “We had a timeline that we set up last January and now we are acting on it.”
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