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Montgomery County has a problem: It’s losing ground to its neighbors.
That was the message from Montgomery County Executive Marc Elrich last week at Bisnow’s Future of Montgomery County. He said he has been studying the policies of neighboring Virginia counties that have led them to be perceived as more business-friendly, and he thinks Montgomery County should copy some of them
“Montgomery County is missing something that some of our neighbors are better able to handle than we are,” Elrich said at the event, held at 2 Bethesda Metro. “We need to figure out how we can compete better with the neighbors in this region and around the nation.”
To reach a point where it has a competitive edge, the county must be willing to make moves to be more like its neighbors, he said.
“Since taking office in December 2018, I’ve focused very heavily on doing whatever I can to make the changes to try to make Montgomery County more like Fairfax County,” Elrich said.
Fairfax, Montgomery’s neighbor across the Potomac River, does better when it comes to attracting development and businesses and building public infrastructure, Elrich argued. He said the county should look to adopt some of its neighbors’ tax, infrastructure and planning policies.
“We are long past the point where we can afford to keep looking at the taillights of Virginia,” Elrich said. “We can’t be in a position where we continue to ask ourselves, ‘How do they do it?’ We know how they do it. It’s time for us to do what they do.”
The two counties are similar in size. As of 2022, Fairfax had a population of 1.15 million and Montgomery County had 1.06 million. Montgomery is about 25% larger than Fairfax by area, with 493 square miles to Fairfax’s 391 square miles.
But Fairfax’s gross domestic product, which the U.S. Department of Commerce calculates together with its much smaller neighbors, Fairfax city and Falls Church, was more than 40% higher in 2022 than Montgomery County’s.
Northern Virginia has a reputation for being more business-friendly. CNBC named Virginia the top state for business this year in its annual state competitiveness rankings, while Maryland was No. 31 on the list.
