Montgomery County Civic Federation
Petition
An Amendment to Change the Composition of the County Council to Elect all 9 Members from Separate Districts by the 2006 election
During 2003, a large amount of discussion in the Montgomery County Civic Federation centered around changes in the county that have outpaced the construction of the Montgomery County Council. Currently, the Council contains 9 members: 5 representing specific districts in the county, and 4 "at-large" representatives for the entire county. These at-large representatives essentially represent almost a million people, making it difficult for them to really represent a specific constituency or for that constituency to feel like they have access to these representatives. More disturbing is how this structure, combined with funding of elections has created an environment where special interests (including interests from outside the county) have tremendous influence through campaign donations. Because of this, the Montgomery County Civic Federation is advocating a change to the Montgomery County Charter to have all 9 members of the council represented by community based representation.
With this change, council members will now represent about 100,000 people. We feel that this will make them more responsive to the needs of the citizens they represent, and increase the ability for new, grass roots candidates to emerge with new ideas and not beholden to a specific, well financed, special interest. This will allow citizens the ability to represent their communities that normally would not have the opportunity based on the costs of running for election -- bringing back government by the people, for the people, to the people.
To this end, the Civic Federation is circulating a petition to have an amendment placed on the ballot for the County's general election in November 2004:
| Petition Document in Adobe Acrobat format (54 KB), including common questions on the process of registered voter signatures. |
| A letter from Dale Tibbetts, MCCF District 5 VP, with instructions for volunteers collecting donations in Adobe Acrobat format (211 KB). |
Please note that you can download the petition document and print it out for signing, but you need to make sure that the front and back of the form print on the same physical piece of paper (the "summary" must be printed on one side, the signature list on the other).
Please return completed petition forms to:
Dale Tibbitts
9511 St. Andrews Way
Silver Spring, MD 20901
This Page Last Edited: September 26, 2004 .