Montgomery County is engaged in egregious political cronyism with the “non-profit”, CASA. This is an established fact and one we will not stop exposing. And kudos to Adam Pagnucco at MontgomeryPerspective.com for diving even deeper into the issue today (though he dare not type the word “cronyism” about the County Council or Marc Elrich).
What is cronyism? Generally defined:
Cronyism is a specific form of in-group favoritism, the spoils system practice of partiality in awarding jobs and other advantages to friends or trusted colleagues, especially in politics and between politicians and supportive organizations.
What did Adam P’s reporting reveal?
But more egregious, more ridiculous, is the following excerpt:
This ‘non-profit cronyism’ defined. Political favoritism to Gustavo Torres, the exec director. The County Council and Marc Elrich would not extend this kind of money or (public / taxpayer) physical building asset lease below-market to any other non-profit org in this way.
What this means is that Montgomery County politicians (all Democrats, most of whom rely on CASA’s 501c4 and Super PAC for advocacy and electioneering help during election season) are picking “winners” and losers in the “immigrant services” not-for-profit space based on political considerations not economic/market or value-driven ones.
This means that the quality of “immigrant services” work by CASA can continue to decline and the taxpayers continue to get milked and, frankly, screwed, but this decline and deterioration does not matter. The market can’t speak for us, the taxpayer, because we are under threat of force to fork over property taxes to the County Council and meanwhile CASA solely relies on government grants, so it has no actual reason to reform, improve, or deliver better services. There is nothing voluntary about this crony “arrangement”. It is a divisive, destructive arrangement that shuts out potential new policy innovations and non-profit orgs, while siphoning millions away from taxpayer-demanded services like roads, bridges and clean schools.
We’ll have much more on CASA in the future but for now, this crony institution has been getting hammered in the local press for what it recently posted on X.com regarding Israel-Palestine. This public pressure is good but doesn’t go far enough.
In a truly anti-crony, transparent and fair local government environment, CASA wouldn’t be afforded any special privileges or public building assets — and the risk to its voluntary donation base via the working people of MoCo would have probably put it on edge regarding issuance of flippant, very divisive comments about geopolitics thousands of miles away.
We’ll have more on CASA’s large and interesting staff in the near future. More to come.
