Stop the Spend committee turns in another 2.5K signatures for review
Total number of submitted signatures tops 13K; at least 10K valid signatures needed to place budget-limiting measure on ballot
By
Ceoli JacobyJuly 30, 2026 11:35 a.m.
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The committee behind the proposed “Stop the Spend” charter amendment submitted another 2,524 petition signatures to the Montgomery County Board of Elections on Monday, bringing the total number of submitted signatures to 13,823.
If at least 10,000 signatures are deemed valid by the board in the coming weeks, voters will decide in November whether to amend the county charter to tie year-over-year spending increases to the regional rate of inflation unless all 11 members of the County Council vote to exceed the rate.
The current charter requires the council to set spending affordability guidelines, including a ceiling on funding from property tax revenues and a ceiling on the aggregate operating budget, as part of each year’s operating budget process. An operating budget that exceeds the guidelines requires the vote of eight councilmembers.
Officials have 20 days to validate and count each tranche of signatures. Board President David Naimon told Bethesda Today on Tuesday that no extensions are allowed under Maryland’s election law. Monday was the deadline for the committee to submit additional signatures for review.
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Previous initiatives
Reardon “Sully” Sullivan, the originator of the “Stop the Spend” initiative, and Mark Lautman, the current chair of the Committee to Control Montgomery County Spending, had a hand in previous ballot initiatives, including a successful push in 2024 to limit the county executive to two consecutive terms in the office.
Some portion of the signatures submitted for citizen-led ballot initiatives such as Stop the Spend are likely to be deemed invalid for reasons such as inconsistencies between printed and signed names or missing contact information.
The group behind the term limits measure submitted more than 20,000 signatures for that petition, according to reporting by WTOP. Of those, around 16,000 were validated by the county elections board, Bethesda Today reported at the time.
Lautman in 2020 also served as treasurer of the committee behind the Nine Districts referendum, also known as Question D. That measure, which did not pass, sought to eliminate the council’s four at-large seats and convert them to district-level seats.
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Lautman assumed chairmanship of the Committee to Control Montgomery County Spending after the State Board of Elections in February determined that Sullivan — now the Republican nominee for County Council District 1 — could not lead the ballot initiative because of his status as a candidate.
At the time, Sullivan told Bethesda Today he had already been planning to step back to focus on his campaign. He said he would continue to remain involved with the initiative “in an advisory capacity, supporting Lautman and the committee’s efforts to place the measure on the ballot and see it enacted into law.”
Dispute over language
As elections officials work to review the 13,823 signatures submitted by the Committee to Control Montgomery County Spending, Sullivan and Lautman are taking issue with the Office of the County Attorney’s proposed ballot language.
“The language is confusing and contradicts the spirit of our referendum,” Lautman wrote in a Wednesday email to the office, which was also sent to Bethesda Today.
The county attorney’s proposed ballot language is posted to the State Board of Elections website for public comment.
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It reads in part: “A vote “Against” Question A would retain the current Charter language that requires the affirmative vote of seven out of the eleven Councilmembers to adopt an operating budget for the County that exceeds the prior year’s operating budget by a percentage increase greater than the prior year’s annual average increase of the Consumer Price Index for all urban consumers for the Washington-Baltimore Metropolitan Area, or any successor index.”
Sullivan and Lautman say the question that appears on the ballot should specifically reference “spending” and “inflation.” The county attorney’s suggested verbiage, Sullivan wrote in a Wednesday email to the office, “works to confuse the voters and obfuscate the intent of the ballot petition.”
Only public comments submitted by 5 p.m. Thursday will be considered by ballot question drafters, according to the State Board of Elections. County Election Director Boris Brajkovic will publish the results of the signature review process once that review is complete, Naimon said.
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Originally published at Bethesdamagazine