Council Committees Consider OLO Report on CCOC

Montgomery County's OLO (Office of Legislative Oversight) produced a report in March 2015 on the CCOC (Commission on Common Ownership Communities), and today two County Council committees (Public Safety and Planning, Housing, and Economic Development) held a hearing about that report.

The report makes many conclusions based on a survey it made. As pointed out by Council Member Sidney Katz, there are about 340,000 MoCo citizens living in COC's (common ownership communities) but the OLO report based is survey on 61 responses to its survey, which was only sent to 211 people suggested by the CCOC. That type of survey is useless.

Another issue discussed was whether the CCOC should remain under the Office of Consumer Protection (OCP) or should be transferred to the Department of Housing and Community Affairs (DHCA). The OLO report recommended moving it, but OCP and DHCA didn't seem to have strong feelings about this.

The real issue seems to be whether the CCOC is focusing on what it is supposed to, according to the MoCo Charter and regulations and the desires of the County Executive and Council. It is supposed to focus on education of COC's but according to the CCOC it is spending a lot of its time on hearings. However, Council President George Leventhal pointed out that the OLO report says only about 12% of the cases that come to the CCOC go to hearings. This led to what appeared to me to be confusing responses from staff present at the hearing.