PAC Digs Into Debate on Growth, With Teeth
Montgomery PAC Tracks Development

By Ann E. Marimow
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, February 11, 2007

Montgomery County Council member George L. Leventhal came loaded like a prosecutor to cross-examine two of the leading players in a group that has for the past year mocked him and other elected officials as being puppets for the development industry.

The targets of his interrogation at a recent public meeting: a retired actor from Bethesda and a telecommunications consultant from Rockville, who represent the evolution of civic activism into a politically charged operation with an edge.

Their all-volunteer political action committee, Neighbors for a Better Montgomery, campaigned vigorously last fall for County Executive Isiah Leggett (D) and a new slow-growth majority on the council that intends to tighten controls on development. The group also helped frame the debate that the council is beginning about how and where Montgomery should grow.

NeighborsPAC sought to dislodge Leventhal (D-At Large), who was first elected as part of a pro-growth slate in 2002, but he survived.

Lingering tensions boiled over last month in a heated exchange between Leventhal and Drew Powell and Jim Humphrey, two leaders of the group, which has created a database of developers' campaign donations and says that such contributions can have undue influence on policy decisions.

From the dais of the council auditorium, Leventhal suggested that the group's aim is to shut down growth, which he said is at odds with the wishes of most county residents. Leventhal quoted from Leggett's inaugural address and accused the group of engaging in what the county executive said he hopes to end: a "permanent political campaign and gotcha politics."

Powell shot back, saying that NeighborsPAC "reported fact." He challenged Leventhal to dispute the group's findings, but Council President Marilyn Praisner (D-Eastern County) intervened to end the exchange.

To admirers, NeighborsPAC is a watchdog, fighting to ensure that the voices of residents -- not just those of paid business interests -- are heard by government officials elected to represent them. Leggett and others who have benefited from the group's backing credit the PAC's leaders with translating eye-glazing policy decisions into tangible effects on taxpayers, the roads they drive and the schools their children attend.

"They made it easier for the average citizen to understand," Leggett said. "That helped create the atmosphere that I think led voters to make the decisions they made."

NeighborsPAC critics say its tactics are akin to those of national political parties and that it unfairly accuses politicians of making decisions based on inflated assumptions in the PAC's database about what counts as a development interest. Some critics have debated how much influence the group had in the election.

Former council member Steven A. Silverman, who lost to Leggett in the Democratic primary, said that NeighborsPAC members might have reflected the public mood, but "I don't think they created the mood."

The group of self-described eccentrics has its beginnings in 2002. Then-council member Blair Ewing brought together community leaders to create a broad-based political action committee with campaign activities to rival those of development and business interests.

Veteran groups such as the 80-year-old Montgomery County Civic Federation had long taken positions on issues, but the civic movement was not in the business of endorsing candidates or partisan politics.

"There was a sense that the county was in danger of becoming a decision machine for developers," Ewing said.

NeighborsPAC raised $63,000 that year, no match for then-County Executive Douglas M. Duncan (D), who helped make traffic congestion -- not growth -- the defining issue of the 2002 campaign. Duncan, along with real estate and development interests, poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into helping elect an "End Gridlock" slate of five candidates.

After the PAC's dismal showing, which included Ewing's defeat, it regrouped, seeking to turn the business community's fundraising advantage into a weakness. With volunteers digging into the interests of individual donors, NeighborsPAC spread the word in public presentations and e-mails about the percentages of contributions that council members collected from development-related interests.

An animated cartoon on the NeighborsPAC Web site portrays council members, including Leventhal, as marionettes whose strings are being pulled by a fedora-wearing developer with wads of cash.

Two of the public faces in the PAC's newly aggressive front got their start in civic activism close to home. Humphrey, a former actor with a penchant for Hawaiian shirts, is the group's technician, having learned to translate legalese at his former day job at the National Institutes of Health. He was inspired to master land-use policy after learning about a development decision affecting his neighborhood.

"That got my hackles up," said Humphrey, 56, who devotes 40 to 50 hours a week to NeighborsPAC and the civic federation. "Developers have paid advocates; citizens don't have anybody."

Powell, a sales consultant, is the burly, bearded public face of the group who turned data into quotable rhetoric. He was motivated to join the cause when he found out by accident that his home was in the path of a proposed Potomac River crossing. Later, he pulled his youngest son, a special needs student, out of public schools after losing a battle with school officials.

"Citizens cannot allow themselves to be intimidated by the school system or the county government," said Powell, 51, the PAC's executive director. "All these people work for us."

In talking about NeighborsPAC, Powell emphasizes that his group is not against development: "There's nothing wrong with developers giving money. There is, however, something wrong with candidates accepting more than half of their money from any one industry."

The NeighborsPAC message resonated with a new crop of candidates in the 2006 campaign. Leggett was among those who received its endorsement after taking the group's voluntary pledge to limit donations from development interests to no more than 33 percent of a candidate's total take.

Leggett said he was struck by the group's analysis of the council's decision in 2003 to rewrite the county's growth policy. The changes effectively lifted a moratorium on home building in some of Montgomery's most congested neighborhoods. The impact taxes that the council imposed on developers to build roads and schools fell millions of dollars short of projections, in part because of a delay the council allowed before instituting the higher fees.

NeighborsPAC had mixed results on Election Day. Marc Elrich and Duchy Trachtenberg, who ran unsuccessfully in 2002 with the group's endorsement, won at-large seats in a crowded field. But so did Nancy Floreen and Leventhal, both members of Duncan's 2002 slate.

And there were other factors: the absence of Duncan as a kingmaker, the influence of the teachers' union and its "Apple Ballot" recommendations, and revelations by Clarksburg residents of a breakdown in the county's oversight of development.

Regardless of whether the PAC was a determining factor in the election, few would dispute its emerging role as a force in the county's debate over growth. The question is how elected officials whom the PAC supported will vote in the months ahead.

To Leventhal, the council's unanimous decision this month to back off a proposed moratorium and vote for a weaker measure was a defeat for NeighborsPAC.

To Powell, the measure's provision that would probably apply tougher growth controls to all plans filed this year was a success -- and just the beginning of the broader debate he will be watching. "The jury is certainly out," he said.