Voters to consider expanding County Council

First published Tuesday, July 30, 2024 in the Dundalk Eagle.

If voters approve it in November, Baltimore’s County Council will expand.

Voters will decide whether the council should stay at its current size, seven members, or expand to house nine in a question on the November ballot after the County Council approved the referendum earlier this month.

“This is an opportunity for the county to move out of 1956 and into 2024,” said council Chair Izzy Patoka at a meeting July 1.

County Executive Johnny Olszewski Jr. also wants to expand the council — but to 11 members.

“Baltimore County has grown and changed profoundly since 1956—the County Council should too,” he wrote in a statement provided by his press secretary. “The measure passed by the County Council earlier this year should be a floor, not a ceiling.”

He supports adding another question on the November ballot asking whether there should be 11 members of the council, four more. The advocacy group 4More!4BaltimoreCounty, a coalition of 20 advocacy groups, organized the campaign to put the question on the ballot but fell short of the 10,000 signatures needed to put the question on the ballot.

Until six weeks ago, when Vote4More made an announcement, council members laughed at the idea of adding more seats, chair Linda Dorsey-Walker said in an interview Thursday.

The council, according to Dorsey-Walker, said, “’They have how many names? Maybe we’d rather try to put something on the ballot now.”

Her initiative is 2½ years old. She argues that each council member represents too many people — currently about 122,000 people — and smaller districts are needed so all citizens can be better represented.

She pointed to the council only having one person of color on it — despite people of color making up almost half of the county. Adding four more representatives would mean each council member would represent about 77,600 people.

“We need to have a county that reflects the top players who live here now,” she said. “And the fact of the matter is that the county is now half and half, minority and non-minority.”

The County Council and county executive appointed a workgroup last year to look into expanding the council. In its final report published in March, the workgroup recommended expanding the council to nine members, although the majority was against the expansion at first.

Dorsey-Walker pointed to a similar 1978 commission appointed by then-County Executive Theodore Venetoulis, recommending that the council expand to 11 members.

Voters will not see that option in November.

Vote4More dropped off 10,275 signatures on July 8, Baltimore County Board of Elections Director Ruie Lavoie wrote in an email, but the Board of Elections rejected almost 3,000 signatures because they did not meet the requirements.

The campaign submitted another roughly 1,500 signatures on Monday, July 29, not enough to make up for the invalidated signatures.

The expansion to nine members will cost taxpayers at least $1.4 million in salaries and benefits for the new council members, staff and equipment, according to the workgroup report, bringing the amount spent on the council to at least $6.1 million.

An expansion to 11 members would have cost at least $7.6 million, according to the report. The council building would need to be renovated as well, the workgroup stated, which would cost about $12 million.

It will be more expensive than that, though, because the council made all its members full-time, increasing their salary. The council chair is currently paid $70,000, while council members are paid $62,500, according to the report.

The Baltimore County Personnel and Salary Advisory Board will set council member’s salaries in December 2025. Council members can accept the board’s recommended salary or decrease it, but not increase it.

Councilmember Todd Crandell, a Republican who represents Dundalk, called the expansion a Democratic “power grab” in the July 1 meeting, but said he would support the expansion to nine members as a compromise because he “absolutely” does not support the proposal to expand the council to 11 members.

“I think that we can find the middle ground between seven and 11. The middle ground between seven and 11 is nine,” Crandell, who did not respond to a phone call to his assistant and an email, said.

“And we compromise,” he said July 1. “We do what we do in bipartisan fashion. We compromise after taking a logical approach to this.”