The Government Operations and Fiscal Policy (GO) Committee met on Friday, April 24, 2026, from 9:30 a.m. to 11:13 a.m. in the County Council Hearing Room, Rockville, Maryland, as part of the FY27 Operating Budget and FY27-32 Capital Improvements Program review. Councilmember Kate Stewart chaired the meeting; Councilmembers Shebra Evans and Sidney Katz also participated. Staff from the Office of Racial Equity and Social Justice, the Office of Grants Management, the Office of Management and Budget, and council staff presented the items. All decisions were made without an enumerated roll-call vote.
Good morning, everyone. Happy Friday. This morning we have our government operations and fiscal policy committee. We will continue discussing operating budgets and have one other item from the Office of Racial Equity and Social Justice that we will be discussing today. So we'll start with them and then we'll move on to our Office of Grants Management. I will turn it over to our central staff, Miss Mendy Singleton, to walk through the packet. Hi, good morning, Chair Stewart, Council Members Katz and Evans. Yes, we are here to talk about the operating budget for the Office of Racial Equity and Social Justice. I will talk about the executive summary and then the budget. So the county executive recommends an increase of $90,331 or $500 or 5.39% from the FY26 approved operating budget for the Office of Racial Equity and Social Justice. The county executive's budget includes no items that must be placed on the reconciliation list per the council's budget approach. The increases recommended for ORESJ consists entirely of compensation adjustments and non-discretionary operating expenses. The operating budget equity tool analysis scores ORASJ with an 11, indicating that ORASJ has a proactive and strategic commitment to advancing racial equity and social justice. I'll say a little bit about that in a minute. And then with respect to the summary of the FY27 recommended budget, the general fund 1,766,779 or a change from the FY26 budget of 5.39%. Personnel costs 1.1,526,780 or an increase of 6.2% for 8.5 FTEs. And the operating costs 239,999 or 0.7 increase from the FY26 approved budget. With respect to the department background, those are at circle two. And then a little bit more about the operating equity tool, operating edge equity budget tool, the OBET, just indicates effective leadership of the countywide implementation of the RESJ RESJ Act in Montgomery County and undertaking numerous GARE framework activities and enables other departments through its trainings, technical assistance tools, analysis, and expertise to do so. And I think you all know that GARE is the government alliance on race and equity. Again, with respect to the budget items, I just shared those with you. Again, there are no changes that are required to be placed on the reconciliation list, and the staff recommends approving the budget as recommended by the county executive. Great. Thank you so much for that overview. I'll first uh turn it over to uh Director Ward if you have anything uh you want to share with us. Pretty straightforward budget, and then we'll open up to colleagues uh for questions. Sure. Um just want to uh express that we are at our 8.5 fully staffed uh team, I think are ably um implementing the racial equity and social justice law. We uh of course have our policy team who uh implements our operating budget tool, our capital improvement tool, as well as uh write our RIAs. Uh we have a training team that has uh put together, gosh, now we've created about 11 trainings, most of which are also are delivered facilitated by our team with one with the help of one contractor and are also available via self-guided training, meaning you can get online and take those trainings when and however you would like. Uh and our newest component is our community engagement folks, and we have a community engagement team that is putting together a community engagement tool in our effort to implement our to implement the community engagement uh phase of the law as well as reacting to the OLO report on community engagement in the county overall. Um feel confident about our work. Happy to answer any questions uh that you may have about any piece of the work that we are in charge of implementing. Great, thank you. And I look forward when we're not in budget to have you back again. This spring got a little busy, but it's always nice to have you all back when we're not deep in budget to explore some of the work you're doing. And I think especially with the community engagement work, you know, that um Office of Legislative Oversight report we got was very well done, and being able to actually implement some of that is great. One question I had an alternative colleagues is um just wanted to um dig into the operating equity budget tool and um see from your perspective how that has gone. I think for our committee, uh we've had we've discussed it with the departments that come before the committee. Um we're glad to see many of our departments that come before us are are getting a uh score of a seven or more, and those that are more in the six range and lower um really have identified some of the issues um in terms of what they have to document and things they need to do. Um I think this committee is hearing less from um departments uh who are smaller that uh they're running into issues um with trying to figure it out and they're working with your office and other departments um to move forward. So I think that is a movement in a good direction. I think in past years we've heard more from some of especially some of our smaller departments that they were really struggling. Um, and I think we're we're hearing less of that um this year. Um so yeah, we'd like to know like how how you thought it was good went this year and curious to know why we went back to scores, because last year we didn't do scores, and then yeah, so just curious about that. Sure. I will say that I think that um overall the county uh has a higher comfort level that departments have a higher comfort level with the tool. Uh we changed the tool, we tweaked the tool just a little bit every year, but quite frankly, the GARE framework remains, right? How are you normalizing, operationalizing, and um organizing in this space? And so we feel like people are becoming used to this type of um inquisition and also putting together better responses, meaning really talking to us about what they're doing and how they're doing it.