Thread: MD - Leggett Wants Day-Laborer Center Near Shady Grove Metro

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 00956.html

Leggett Wants Day-Laborer Center Near Shady Grove Metro

By Ann E. Marimow
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, January 19, 2007; Page B02

Montgomery County Executive Isiah Leggett (D) announced plans yesterday to open the county's third day-laborer center, near the Shady Grove Metro station just south of the Gaithersburg border.

Plans for a county-funded employment center for day laborers, most of whom are immigrants, have been a source of controversy in Gaithersburg for the past year. Protests from neighbors and business owners scuttled several potential locations within city limits, leaving dozens of workers to gather informally on the edge of a residential neighborhood.

"We are reaching out to solve a practical problem," Leggett said in a prepared statement. "If we do nothing, this situation doesn't go away."

Under Leggett's plan, a double-wide trailer would be placed on a half-acre parcel of county-owned land in an industrial strip of Crabbs Branch Way near Shady Grove Road. His decision does not need approval from the County Council but will be reviewed by the county's Planning Board at a public hearing next month.

The dirt-covered lot -- sandwiched between a county maintenance yard and a warehouse -- has been cleared and was selected because of its industrial setting, accessibility to potential employers and its more than half-mile distance from residences, according to Leggett's aides. The site also is within walking distance of the Metro station and five bus routes.

The Rev. David Rocha of Gaithersburg's Camino de Vida United Methodist Church, who meets with the workers most days, said they are "celebrating the decision and are in support 100 percent."

Gaithersburg Mayor Sidney A. Katz said that he would withhold judgment on the location until he meets with Leggett today in Rockville. "The fact that I'm meeting with him is a very good step," Katz said.

Gaithersburg officials backed out of a location negotiated last year with former executive Douglas M. Duncan (D) because of community opposition. The issue was left unresolved when Duncan left office last month.

Even before the announcement yesterday, word of a possible location prompted criticism from those opposed to the county spending taxpayer dollars on projects that could help illegal immigrants. The center would be modeled after facilities in Silver Spring and Wheaton and would cost an estimated $24,000 a year, in addition to $45,000 in start-up costs.

Gaithersburg council member Henry F. Marraffa Jr. (R), an outspoken opponent of the centers, accused Leggett of trying to avoid a public debate after pledging in his campaign to create a more transparent and inclusive government.

"It sounds like a decision has already been made," Marraffa said. "He's going to find out the same thing from the neighbors on this site that we found up here. The neighbors just do not want it."

Patrick Lacefield, a spokesman for Leggett, defended the decision to choose a site before the public hearing. Leggett, he said, will consider comments from the Planning Board and the public, but, "all things being equal, we're likely to be going where we're going now."

Added Lacefield: "This is leadership. We were given a piece of unfinished business. We said we were going to move to resolve this in a practical way, and that's precisely what we're doing."

One nearby resident, Brad Botwin of Derwood, has created a Web site and circulated a flier urging his neighbors to "tell Ike and his trailers to take a hike." In his flier, Botwin says that the center would threaten long-range plans to attract high-tech jobs and more housing to the area.

Council member Phil Andrews (D-Gaithersburg-Rockville) disagreed. The site, he said, would provide an organized location for the workers, and that "it's not in anybody's back yard except for the county government's."

http://washingtontimes.com/op-ed/200701 ... -6623r.htm

Ike Leggett's end run
TODAY'S EDITORIAL
January 18, 2007

If at first you don't succeed, try 29 more times. That was Gaithersburg's failed approach to the issue of day-labor centers catering to illegal aliens, which city officials proposed for 30 different locations in 2006, each time facing an angry phalanx of local opposition. They finally gave up the ghost in November. Newly installed Montgomery County Executive Isiah "Ike" Leggett seems to have learned nothing from that experience.

Or, more to the point, Mr. Leggett's lesson is to build the thing just past city limits, where those nettlesome Gaithersburgers and their NIMBYism cannot stop it. As has been reported in recent weeks, Mr. Leggett is determined to get a center built. His deputies have identified locations near Shady Grove Road and Route 355 just over the border from Gaithersburg on the presumption that this time, the locals won't object to a day-labor center. The obvious lesson -- that people simply don't want a taxpayer-funded day-labor center -- was not learned.

Maybe the new locations will pass the NIMBY gauntlet, maybe not. What's more certain is that these centers are still of dubious legality and can bring a host of troubles that Montgomery County officials probably aren't even considering.

At root, they serve to enlist local government as a collaborator in the breaking of federal immigration law. They mean taxpayer largesse for illegal aliens who circumvent the law and a free service for the scofflaw business owners too cheap to hire legal immigrants. This is reprehensible, and reason enough to oppose it. The nation's current illegal-alien conundrum may be the fault of the federal government headed by an open-borders White House and a weak-willed Congress -- we certainly think it is -- but that doesn't absolve states and localities of the duty to honor federal legal strictures.

There are good practical reasons to oppose these centers as well. For one, they attract lawsuits, like the conservative group Judicial Watch's filing against Fairfax County in 2005 on behalf of Herndon residents. As the national immigration debate evolves, it's a fair bet that lawsuits will continue to be filed against cities and towns that attempt to operate in indirect or outright violation of federal law.

The other practical reason -- at least for politicians -- is that these centers can get an official thrown out of the executive suites and upend carefully planned community agendas. In Herndon, for example, the mayor and the three most vocal proponents on the Herndon Town Council were turned out the following year in a vote generally accepted as a referendum on the handling of the day-labor issue. The issue can develop legs and head in a direction no elected leader could anticipate.

Mr. Leggett should honor the will of area residents. The people of Gaithersburg obviously do not want this ill-advised day-labor center.
Building it next door is just a cynical way of circumventing them.

There have been protests after protests, against Day-labor Centers being placed in Montgomery County MD. No one wants them in or around the community where people live and shop.
Especially near the Metro Station where they propose to set up another Day-Labor Center. The metro has been relatively crime-free in that area, but it sure wont be long before the crimes begin, if they place the center anywhere near that area.
Doesn't Leggett get it yet? What a moron. Illegal aliens are not welcome, and need to be deported.