Stop the Spend group narrowly misses 10K signature mark for ballot referendum 

Committee could appeal determination from county Board of Elections 

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August 17, 2026 2:45 p.m.

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The Montgomery County Board of Elections announced Monday that a proposed budget-limiting referendum is 302 valid signatures short of the minimum of 10,000 required to get on the November ballot. 

The group behind the initiative, the Committee to Control Montgomery County Spending, submitted signatures in two tranches. The first tranche, submitted July 21, contained 11,408 signatures, of which 7,999 were deemed valid by the county elections board. 

The committee submitted another 2,524 signatures on July 27. Monday was the deadline for the elections board to complete its review of the second tranche, which contained 1,699 valid signatures. In total, the board validated 9,698 signatures for the petition, according to Monday’s notice of determination from county Election Director Boris Brajkovic.  

Under Maryland law, the committee now has 10 days to seek judicial review of the board’s determination in the county’s Circuit Court. Mark Lautman, chair of the Committee to Control Montgomery County Spending, told Bethesda Today in a Monday phone interview that the group is considering its options. 

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In a Monday press release responding to Brajkovic’s notice, the committee said its petition drive relied on volunteers and paid circulators. One paid group returned a “substantial number of signatures” containing “serious irregularities,” the release said. 

The committee terminated its relationship with the group and subsequently entered into contracts with two others, Lautman told Bethesda Today on Monday. By then however, the “timeline was too compressed” and the committee was unable to collect enough replacement signatures. 

“We did our best, for sure,” Lautman said, adding that thousands of county voters “gave us their signatures as a sign of trust.” 

The so-called “Stop the Spend” referendum would have asked voters to decide 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.   

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The current county charter requires that seven councilmembers vote to pass the operating budget when the amount increases by a percentage higher than the regional rate of inflation.  

Lautman and Reardon “Sully” Sullivan, the originator of the Stop the Spend initiative, both 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.   

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.   

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.”   

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This is a developing story and may be updated. 

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Originally published at Bethesdamagazine