Part Two of an ongoing series. Part One is here.
On July 26 I filed four public information requests all on the same subject: how Montgomery County’s 911 fee gets set, certified, and collected. Two of them went to state agencies. Two of them went to Montgomery County.
Here is what came back — or rather did not.
The Maryland Department of Emergency Management produced partial records on August 7, just twelve days later. Public Service Commission notices for both fee increases. Three years of distribution schedules. And Montgomery County’s own independent 911 expenditure audits for fiscal 2024 and 2025, prepared for the county by SB & Company, LLC.
Here is the kicker: a state agency in Hanover sent me Montgomery County’s audits. The county did not.
The Comptroller of Maryland acknowledged my request within ten working days, gave a date certain, and delivered an interim production on August 28 with a written account of what it holds, what it is still searching for, and what belongs to somebody else. It also referred me to the agencies that would have the rest, which is what General Provisions Article § 4-202(c) requires.
Montgomery County has said absolutely nothing.
Not a partial production. Not a denial. Not a request for more time. Not even an acknowledgment that the request arrived. Thirty-four days, two separate county offices, zero words.
What the statute says about that
The Maryland Public Information Act gives a custodian thirty days to grant or deny a request. If producing the records will take more than ten working days, the custodian has to say so in writing within those ten days, and explain how long it will take and why.
Neither county office did either thing.
Section 4-203(b)(3) addresses exactly this situation. Failure to produce records “constitutes a denial of an application that may not be considered the result of a bona fide dispute unless the custodian has complied with paragraph (2) of this subsection and is working with the applicant in good faith.”
Paragraph (2) is the ten-day notice. It never came. So this is not just a slow response. Under the plain text of the statute it is a denial. Simple as that.
There is one more relevant item here and it is a “mistake” that is on me. I addressed the Council request to the Clerk of the Council. I have since learned the Council designates a different staff member as its Public Information Act liaison. But that is not a defect in my request. Section 4-202 and the implementing regulation require a recipient who is not the custodian to say so within ten working days and, if known, point the requester to the right person.
That did not happen either.
What I asked for
None of it was exotic. None of it was salacious. None of it was really controversial.
At least it should not be.
The adopted resolution setting the FY27 County 9-1-1 fee, with its number, its date, and its recorded vote. The certifications the Finance Director is required by state law to send to three agencies. The independent audits the county is already required to have. The workpapers behind an expenditure figure the county itself published.
And an answer to whether the county telephone tax applies to low-income Lifeline customers on wireless lines, a question its own code and its own website appear to answer differently. I put that one to the Department of Finance directly on July 26, and again inside the records request. Neither has been answered.
Every one of those documents exists. The reality is that I already have several of them — because Hanover sent them.
This morning
I asked the Maryland Public Access Ombudsman for assistance with both requests.
The Ombudsman is an independent state office, established by a 2015 law, that works to resolve disputes between people who ask for public records and the agencies that hold them. It is free. It requires no lawyer. Its published list of the disputes it handles begins with a custodian’s failure to respond within thirty days.
The process is confidential, so I will not write about what happens until it is resolved. If records arrive, I will publish the records accordingly. If a Final Determination issues, I will report as much as I am allowed to share.
Separately from the records requests, I have sent written questions since July to the County Executive’s office (Marc Elrich), to the Office of Management and Budget, to the Police Department, and to two Montgomery County councilmembers (Will Jawando and Andrew Friedson). Nobody is legally required to answer a request for comment. It just speaks to a culture within county government.
Why this is the story and not a complaint
I ran for office and built a forum. Thanks to my professional career, I know the Ombudsman exists. And I had already obtained enough from two state agencies to write around the county’s silence — which I did.
Almost nobody who files one of these has any of that.
The Public Information Act was written on a simple premise: that a resident can ask a government what it is doing and get a direct answer. But when a government does not reply, the resident’s options are an office most people have never heard of, a lawsuit, or nothing.
The overwhelming majority choose nothing, and the local governments know this. That is the part I need to write because I want you to know it too.
The records I asked for describe a charge on every phone and every cellular smartwatch in a jurisdiction of over a million people, raised 157 percent in two years. When the Council took the second of those two increases to a public hearing this April, nobody spoke. The reason nobody spoke is that nobody knew. And the mechanism built to let people find out is one a county can ignore for thirty-four days without consequence, unless somebody with a forum happens to be the one asking.
I will publish whatever arrives, on the day it arrives. Assuming it arrives.
