Harford County Executive and MACo President David Craig along with Julia Gouge, President, Carroll County Board of Commissioners addressed the relationship between municipalities and counties this morning at the MML Summer Conference.  The session entitled, “Let’s Talk: Municipal & County Relations” provided an environment for officials that have served at both levels to speak on how to sustain and build good working relationships, particularly when there is not consensus.  On behalf of Carroll County, Commissioner Gouge stated,

“We have found that our departments within Carroll County Government as a whole had a general sense of cordiality and cooperation in their working relationships with our municipalities.”
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“We recognize that the towns and the County will not always share the same views. We also recognize that we are interested in many of the same things. All of the constituents of the towns are also constituents of the County Commissioners.

We have a quarterly meeting known as the Council of Governments. Up until just recently, a member of our staff coordinated these meetings with our municipalities. He has since accepted another position, so this is definitely a vacancy we will look to fill.   

In these last two very difficult budgets, even as we were cutting funding and holding funding flat, we did not reduce our revenue sharing with the towns by even $1 (note – some towns saw reductions and other towns saw growth because of the distribution formula).”

Executive Craig  echoed the Commissioner’s sentiments stressing the importance of building strong relationships between municipalities and counties.

Click the following link to view the handout provided by Commissioner Gouge, MML Panel Discussion 6-30-2010.