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Montgomery County Planning Board (M-NCPPC)

All five members of the Montgomery County Planning Board resigned Wednesday at the insistence of the county council after weeks of escalating misconduct accusations, media leaks and worsening staff morale.

The council, which appoints the board, voted unanimously in a closed session Tuesday to ask the entire board to resign, according to two people familiar with the vote, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. Those who didn’t resign would have faced a public hearing seeking their removal, the people said.

The upheaval at the planning agency shocked even longtime political observers in a county accustomed to intense development spats. It follows a trail of scandals and leaks that has dogged one of Montgomery’s most influential institutions since mid-September.

They included an internal investigation that found the board chair kept and shared a liquor cabinet in his office, allegations still under investigation of a toxic and misogynistic workplace, and accusations by a top staffer that the board’s vice chair of broke ethics rules in an effort to become chair.

“The Council has lost confidence in the Montgomery County Planning Board and accepted these resignations to reset operations,” Montgomery council president Gabe Albornoz (D-At Large) said. “We are acting with deliberate speed to appoint new commissioners to move Montgomery County forward. We thank the commissioners for their service to our county.”

“It was the totality of the controversies that kept mounting for several months now,” Albornoz added in an interview. “It just got to be too much.”

Council member Will Jawando (D-At Large) said of the planning board, “Their work is so important that we need a fully functioning board. We’d lost confidence in this one.”

The resignations came from board Chair Casey Anderson, Vice Chair Partap Verma and members Gerald R. Cichy, Tina Patterson and Carol Rubin. Cichy and Patterson have not been named in any allegation, but Albornoz said the council lost faith in the board as a whole. Anderson, Verma and Rubin said they accepted responsibility after they were reprimanded in the alcohol investigation. Anderson and Verma have denied the other accusations raised against them.

The board members collectively have served more than 25 years and have overseen a shift toward focusing denser development around transit stations to limit suburban sprawl and make the auto-centric suburbs safer for pedestrians and cyclists.

The five-member planning board approves individual development proposals and recommends to the council detailed master plans that determine where and how quickly communities should grow. The position of chair, whose job pays $215,000, is considered highly influential in a county where development issues often dominate the political discussion.

It’s unclear how much the shake-up might delay current development applications. The Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission said planning board meetings scheduled for Thursday and for Oct. 20 had been canceled, as well as a full commission meeting that had been scheduled for Oct. 19 with the Prince George’s County Planning Board.

Council members said they will select new board members Oct. 25 to serve temporarily until permanent members are appointed, likely after a new council takes office in December.

“We have an expeditious schedule for the interim appointments,” said Council Member Evan Glass (D-At Large.) “We recognize that time is money, and projects need to have oversight and scrutiny.”

Controversy mounted in recent weeks in confidential emails between board members, planning department employees and the county council that steadily leaked to the public, culminating Friday in the board’s abrupt decision to fire Gwen Wright, the planning department’s longtime and nationally recognized director.

Residents active in planning issues said it was the unexplained firing of Wright a day after she defended Anderson in an interview with WJLA-TV that caused the most concern. Two people close to the commission said Wednesday that Wright was terminated for speaking publicly about a matter that was under investigation.

Wright said Wednesday she was fired “without cause,” meaning the board found no misconduct. She said she spoke with the WJLA reporter to protect a staffer who felt manipulated as part of the investigation into Anderson’s alleged misogynistic comments.

Wright said she didn’t receive an email from a commission lawyer telling her not to speak with the media until after the interview ended. “I wanted to go on the record and say ‘People might have a problem with Casey, but don’t bring my staff into it,’ ” Wright said.

Anderson faced two investigations, one by the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission and one by an independent investigator contracted by the commission that is still in progress, after he was accused of keeping a full bar in his office and later of making misogynistic comments that fostered a toxic workplace culture, respectively. The source of the complaint about the alcohol has not been disclosed. Anderson, Verma and Rubin were <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/05/montgomery-council-casey-anderson/?itid=ap_danielwu" target=_blank>reprimanded </a>by the county council earlier this month and had their pay docked as punishment after the investigation found Anderson kept and shared alcohol in his office and that Verma and Rubin had accepted a drink.

On Monday, a top-ranking parks department official and former adviser to Anderson, Miti Figueredo, told the council in an email that Verma had sent the complaint about Anderson’s alleged comments. The email also said Verma intimidated employees and misrepresented their comments in the complaint so he could become chair of the board.

Albornoz told The Post on Tuesday the allegations about Verma would be investigated alongside Anderson’s alleged comments. Verma denied the allegations.

Montgomery council docks pay of official who kept alcohol in office

Rubin declined to discuss her resignation. When asked about allegations that the investigations into Anderson had stemmed from a power grab for his job, she said, “It was about accountability and assuring the policies of the commission were followed by the leadership. It was not a power grab.”

In her resignation letter to the council, Rubin said she had “acted responsibly and with integrity” during her time on the board.

On Tuesday evening, Verma told The Post he was taking a medical leave of absence due to stress. He expressed confidence in Montgomery’s future in a text message Wednesday, saying, “It’s been an honor and pleasure to serve this amazing county.”

Verma added Wednesday that allegations that he sent complaints about Anderson in an effort to become chair were baseless.

“The chair position was going to open in a few months,” he said. “This has always been about applying rules and regulations of the commission in a consistent and fair manner.” Anderson was set to leave his job as board chair in June 2023 because of term limits.

Anderson has apologized for providing alcohol in his office, but has said the allegations about him making misogynistic comments are false. He declined to comment on his resignation Wednesday. In his letter to the council, he said he was resigning because “it has become clear that conflict among members of the Planning Board has reached the point where effective collaboration and cooperation have become impossible.” He said he was most proud of his work drafting a proposed 30-year growth plan for the county, improving parks, advocating for more housing for residents of all incomes and supporting efforts to make cycling and walking safer.

Montgomery County Executive Marc Elrich (D) expressed concern about the controversy in a statement Wednesday and said the resignations were appropriate. He additionally criticized the board for pushing too quickly to adopt the county’s new 30-year growth plan, Thrive 2050, and called for further scrutiny of the board.

“This cannot be the end of the conversation on the dysfunction and structural issues at Planning,” Elrich said. “The Planning Board and Commission face a deficit of trust, and continued questions about management, transparency and process must be addressed.”

The upheaval comes as the council finalizes Thrive 2050 based on the planning board’s recommendations. The plan sets broad policies for how the county should develop long-term and has sparked controversy among opponents seeking less density and slower growth. Thrive 2050 sets guidelines on how the county can add more housing for residents of different incomes and grow in a compact way to be more economically competitive, environmentally resilient and racially equitable.

The board unanimously approved a draft of the plan to send to the county council in April 2021. The council is scheduled to vote on the plan Oct. 25 despite the planning board controversy, Albornoz <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2022/10/11/montgomery-thrive-2050-council-vote/?itid=ap_katherineshaver" target=_blank>said </a>Tuesday. It is widely expected to pass.

The council governs a county that continues to transform from a once-majority-White bedroom community into a suburb of more than 1 million people who are increasingly lower-income and more racially diverse.  The policies in Thrive 2050, planners say, will make the county more equitable for lower-income residents and communities of color harmed by previous planning policies that led many neighborhoods to become, and remain, segregated by race and income.

Stanford University, BA in History and MA in Communications

Daniel Wu is a reporter on The Washington Post's Morning Mix team. He joined The Post as an intern on the Metro desk in 2022 and previously worked for the Seattle Times and the San Jose Mercury News.

Daniel Wu

Princeton University, BA in politics

Katherine Shaver is a transportation and development reporter focusing on urban/suburban planning issues and construction of Maryland's light-rail Purple Line. Since joining The Washington Post in 1997, she also has covered crime, courts, education and local government.

Katherine Shaver

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All five Montgomery County planning board members step down after controversies

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