Nicole Raz
WMAL
WASHINGTON (WMAL) — Despite a rough financial year for Montgomery County, they’ve come out with a Triple-A bond rating.
“We had the great recession, sequestration, and you know we had the Wynne case, which had across the state of Maryland, local jurisdictions–Montgomery County included–repay taxpayers who had not received tax credit for out-of-state taxes; at least some of them. And the impact of that decision throughout the entire state was a little over $200 million,” County Executive Ike Leggett told WMAL.
Montgomery County was responsible for about $115 million of that $200 million.
It was the way the county handled their challenges that impressed Fitch, Moody’s, and Standard & Poor’s, he said.
“What we did was as soon as the decision came down, we decided to go back to amend our budget and to put in place a very aggressive savings plan that started this year–even before the impact of the decision was actually felt,” he said.
Wall Street was impressed with the county’s quick and long-term response to the legal decision. Leggett said he also was faced with some very difficult decisions over the past few years with budgetary constraints.
“I made some very difficult choices. For example, I eliminated 10 percent of the county’s entire workforce; I reduced our contributions on health, on retirement; we furloughed certain employees; we were very restrained in terms of providing increases on salaries.”
But ultimately those difficult choices have boosted the county’s reserves and closed more than $3 billion in budget gaps.
The triple-A bond rating won’t solve all of the county’s financial problems, but it will certainly help to alleviate them going forward.
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