[Part One] Long-Haul Commuting Drives East Montgomery Congestion?

This posting derives at least in part from a comment made to the Maryland Politics Watch "Sierra Club Endorses Navarro" article.

Sierra Club of Montgomery County had individual interviews with at least most of the candidates in the Special Election for the District 4 Council seat.

I thought I had covered most of the issues rather well, as I am after all a person long involved in issues around the ecology and environment, but some of the people interviewing me were flatly flabbergasted when I pointed out a couple of facts to them.

Sierra Club's thinking is that the majority of traffic congestion in Montgomery County in general -- and in the East County in particular -- is based on shot-haul commuting, or at most it's based on commuting mostly within the County. Thus, in their minds, short-haul mass-transit, or long-haul but strictly intra-county mass-transit would significantly reduce both dependence on the automobile -- and thus traffic congestion -- as well as environmental impacts.

This isn't strictly true. I pointed out to them some significant facts that made the logic of this assumption fall down, this shook them almost to the point of enraging them.

The County's commuting problem is driven by the fact that there are many more jobs in Montgomery than there is housing.

More than half of the police force and about the same percentage of the teachers live outside of Montgomery because of two factors:

1. There is almost no affordable housing available in Montgomery that is suitable for a public servant to raise their families.

2. Although we pay premium salaries to our civil servants -- under the theory that if they can afford to live here, they will -- the premium salary differential increases the profitability of commuting very long distances because that costs far less in time and money than can be banked in the differential between housing costs in Montgomery and housing costs out-of-county.

Have you fallen out of your chair yet? Are you quivering in disbelief?

Sorry about your Sacred Cow there, fellahs.

We might pay a police captain enough to buy a $750,000 dollar home in Montgomery, but if they can buy the same home in Frederick County for $250,000 merely by adding 1.5 hours daily commute and bank the $500,000 difference, That's 7500 hours of commuting over 20 years of commuting 1.5 hours 5 days a week. Divide the $500K differential in housing costs over 20 years of commuting to pay off the mortgage, and that 1.5 hour commute pays $66.66/hour of driving... well worth it. Indeed, it would be foolish to not do so.

Note that this isn't money that the County is paying as part of their salary arrangements.

This is money that more or less falls out of the math of the situation.

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Of course, we needn't pause to point out that this has several obvious effects. However, I like to belabor the obvious so you'll just have to bear with me.

1. County employees who live outside of the county pay their county income taxes where they live, not where they work.

2. County employees who live outside of the county will very likely do most of their shopping and spending, as will their family, where Montgomery County cannot tax the sales, spending, nor the commercial properties where these people shop.

3. County employees who live outside of the county cannot vote in Montgomery County and cannot be expected to vote to support political programs or decisions. (They also can't vote to replace bad policymakers.) One major downside of this may be that, deprived of direct electoral powers, the relative power of representation by Union becomes more essential to the non-resident County employee, and Unions tend to try to negotiate the deals that award the most taxpayer-funded pay and benefits to County employees, regardless of where they live.

4. The "sixty-six dollars an hour commuter benefit" (see above) is a function of the mathematics of disparity between the costs of housing in different markets and jurisdictions. With a 1.5 hour commute each way, at $66.66/hour, this function of the math of the situation effectively puts $200.00 per commuting day into the pockets of this employee. As a function of the mathematics, rather than as a direct payment or negotiated benefit, this cannot be taxed, it cannot be withheld, it cannot be seized, and it can't go anyplace other than into the pocket of the long-haul commuter. It's pure profit. A person would have to be extremely intolerant of spending time commuting, or an ideologue or an idiot, to fail to take advantage.

There is also the simple fact that if you can find a house for $250,000 within a 1.5-hour commute of your job working for Montgomery County, you have probably found a house in a very uncrowded market, with very little ecological or environmental damage, in a jurisdiction with schools for the kids which are almost as good as Montgomery's excellent schools, and it is almost completely certain that you don't have Montgomery's congestion or crime-rate.

For every County employee who takes advantage of this, it is 100-percent Epic WIN and ??? PROFIT.

For almost every County employee who does not take advantage of this, it is 100-percent Epic FAIL and would make about as much sense as wearing a Guy Fawkes mask and repeatedly stabbing yourself in the foot.

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I first got wind of this a year ago, when I was running for that Special Election and suggested that one way to deal with Foreclosures would be to have the County guarantee on-time payments if the banks would transfer the mortgages to County employees such as police officers and fire-rescue/EMT workers, so long as they moved in-County to occupy these foreclosed properties. County employees could "live where they work" and everyone would benefit.

I thought this would get me votes. Actually, it got me sneers. I wondered why.

Finally some kind souls stopped sneering at me long enough to try to sell me the story that it was because the officers/firefighters (etc.) preferred to raise their kids out in the country, etc etc.

Even this seemed entirely reasonable and a perfectly good reason for about half of all of the County's police and teaching employees to live outside of the County.

Then I did the math, and understood the sneers.

I was asking these fine people to give up the 'sixty-six dollar an hour commuter benefit", as well as abandon their inexpensive semi-rural or rural safe and unpolluted communities, and move into foreclosure-riddled places like West Wheaton.

I'd sneer, too.