A couple of years ago, we organized testimony to the Montgomery County Council in  opposition to a law proposed by County Executive Ike Leggett that would have exempted guests staying at Lockheed Martin’s luxury hotel from paying the County hotel tax.  As a result of our testimony, the County tabled the proposal and the law was never passed.

Mr. Leggett recently presented his new budget, and it included a no-strings-attached grant of $900,000 to Lockheed Martin–a pay-back of the hotel taxes that the County has collected from the company for the last two years!  We found this astonishing!  Read more here.

We testified against this outrageous example of corporate welfare on April 12 when the County Council took up Mr. Leggett’s budget. Occupy Montgomery County organized a protest outside the Council offices, in opposition.

We found it outrageous to offer this super-rich corporation–a war profiteer, by the way–a gift of almost a million dollars when Montgomery County is cutting all kinds of services. We were very pleased when the Council agreed with us and cut this gift from the County budget.