What we’ve accomplished in a year…

One year ago tonight, I was sworn in as the County Executive after the County Council appointed me. It was an interesting, and unexpected, way to take office.

Purple party lights still hung from the windows, dangling above an open bar, when I entered the County Executive office for the first time. That’s a fairly good analogy for what the coming weeks and months would reveal. Seeing how our government had been run made me really angry. It still does. But I was – and am – glad to be in a position to do something about it.

And I’m proud of how much we’ve done in such a short time.

We’ve got lots of accomplishments to point out, and lots of ways we’ve been able to improve your government, even while we manage a historic pandemic and the economic and humanitarian crises that it has caused.

We created an annual report to make it easy for you to see how much we’ve done, and how hard your government is working for you. Here is a link so you can read it for yourself, and decide whether you think what we’ve accomplished in a year is a job well done.

And that’s another improvement – unlike the last administration, we want you to be able to see what we’re doing. That’s why we published a Fiscal Transparency report that makes our finances easier to understand, why – unlike the former County Executive – I attend County Council meetings, why I give weekly County Executive reports, and why we created a Transparency Portal that help you see with your own eyes what is happening to grant money from the CARES Act. Reporters, watchdogs – even political opponents – can see exactly what we’re doing in real-time.

If you told me a year ago what we’d achieve this year, and what we’d go through, I would have had a hard time believing it.

I’m proud of where we are, and where we’re going. I hope you are, too.