21/09/2026
Look at this graph for a second. Since 2019, Frederick County's budget is up 85%. Our population, the thing that's supposed to actually drive how big the budget needs to be, is only up 19%. That's not a small gap. The budget is growing more than four times faster than the number of people it's supposed to serve.
And before anyone says "well, everything costs more now," I checked that too. Inflation over the same period was roughly 30%. So even if you account for higher prices AND more residents, you're still left with a huge chunk of growth that isn't explained by either one. That's not the cost of doing business, it’s just more spending.
Sure, budgets typically grow year-over-year. The primary concern, though, is how much faster it's grown since Jessica Fitzwater took office. Under Jan Gardner, annual budget growth topped out around 10%. Fitzwater's very first budget grew 12.6%, faster than any single year under Gardner, and three of her four budgets have outpaced anything Gardner produced.
This is also the same stretch where Fitzwater pushed through the county's first property tax rate increase in years. So it's not like the extra money materialized out of nowhere. Fitzwater raised taxes on Frederick County families while the budget grew faster than population and inflation combined, and faster than it ever did before she took office.
This is exactly why electing a fiscally conservative County Executive matters. It's not about cutting services people depend on. It's about somebody in that office asking "do we actually need this" before asking "how much more can we take from taxpayers?" Fitzwater chose to grow government faster than the county itself, faster than her predecessor ever did, and asked residents to foot the bill.
We can do better than this. Frederick County deserves a County Executive who treats your tax dollars like they're actually yours. When elected, I promise to govern like a taxpayer. It’s your money!
