On April 23, 2026, the Montgomery County Government Operations and Fiscal Policy (GO) Committee, chaired by Councilmember Kate Stewart, met from approximately 9:30 a.m. to 10:50 a.m. in the 7th floor Council Hearing Room. The committee reviewed the FY27 Operating Budget and FY27-32 Capital Improvements Program for 11 departments and non-departmental accounts (NDAs). The committee recommended several amendments, placing certain items on the Reconciliation List for full Council consideration, and unanimously recommended approval of most budgets as submitted or as amended.
Good morning, everyone, and welcome to this session of the Government Operations and Fiscal Policy Committee. We have 10 different budgets to review this morning. I thank everyone for being here and also thank our central staff for the excellent packets as always. And thank our council vice president for joining us this morning. We're gonna get going with the uh first budget, which is the Office of Procurement. So Director Shetty and your team, if you want to come on up and I'm gonna turn it over to Dr. Toregas to walk us through the packet. Thank you very much. Uh as you see from your packet, the county executive has recommended a budget of 7,289,479 for the Office of Procurement, which is an increase of 1,262,723 or 21% from the fiscal year approved budget. There is no increase in the staffing of the department. It stays stable at 37.40 FTEs. And the additional expense of 816,170 dollars for the e-procurement system must be put on the reconciliation list according to council presence approach to the recommended budget. With your permission, I'd like to kind of go over each of the three offices, uh departments of uh the Office of Procurement. Uh and um uh I've got a couple of things to focus uh the committee's attention on. Uh we'll st uh we'll start with the uh Office of Business Relations and Compliance. Um the Office of Business Compliance, as you see uh is responsible with the various special programs to encourage our small businesses, our minority owned businesses, female owned businesses, and so on to take part in the economic uh activities of the county. Uh I asked I asked this a simple question is the county doing better uh uh from last year to this year. And uh perhaps uh uh director Shetty, you might want to give a little bit of a summary of the answer that you gave in terms of are we doing better in these programs and the also business relations and compliance? The budget itself is stable, there's no increase in the budget. Yes, good morning, everybody. Uh, and thank you, Dr. Taregas. Um the division of business relations and compliance has steadily done better. Every year we achieve new records when it comes to our spending with minority and local businesses. Uh so as of the last fiscal year, we spent over 33 percent of the addressable spend with local businesses, which is an all-time high percentage. And we spent um more than a quarter of a billion dollars with minority owned businesses, which is also an all-time high spend uh record. Uh so at this point we just seem to be breaking our own records year after year, which is something to be very proud of. Okay. Any, I guess we can stop to any questions regarding those programs. Um Director Shea, I just have a one quick question uh because I know we're going over your budget, but while we have you here, um are you seeing um and appreciate the work um and congratulations that every year we're um you know doing better and better in this area. Are there any um obstacles or other or barriers to you doing even more work in this area? And you can say the e-procurement system. I I think you know there are there is sort of a law of physics where you can only do so much with what you have. Uh we've we've our staffing is not increased in the seven years I've been here. We've we've made do with what we have, but we've gotten more out of out of each individual. Uh, but that's been without any technology enhancements. It's just been by motivation, by experience, by by training to the extent that's been possible, by better mentorship. But at a certain point, we are going to see diminishing returns because people can only give you so much at a certain point without it affecting morale and things like that. Um, yes, I I I will say uh, and even outreach is another example. We try to host these events, but there's only so many of us, and there's only so many places we can be at a time. And so outreach also starts to suffer once you've reached a certain a certain level. Um we've been smart. We've we've we've brought on partners from the outside, you know, these various chambers of commerce to partner with us. So we're working as smart as we can, as hard as we can, but at a certain point to scale, we're going to need more. Uh and the e-procurement solution that we've been talking about really allows it's it's a multiplier. It allows us to be that much more productive leveraging technology. Um at this point, as I would probably say again at some point, it's not something that that that is unusual in the world of procurement. In fact, we are the only jurisdiction that I'm aware of that is doing procurement without an e-procurement solution. Thank you. All right.