Credit: Rachel Ravina – MediaNews Group.
Impacts of decisions being made in Washington, D.C., found their way into the Montgomery County Board of Commissioners meeting as the board’s Democratic leadership expressed concerns about the ramifications of widespread layoffs of federal employees.
Commissioners’ Chairman Neil Makhija identified the implications of slashing federal jobs in his opening comments during the March 6 meeting. With media reports indicating there’ve been roughly 220,000 federal jobs cut so far, he spotlighted health care and housing in particular.
Public Health
The county experienced its first measles case of 2025, as Makhija said of the incident involving an unvaccinated baby who contracted the disease while traveling. He noted that contact tracing efforts were underway to identify anyone who may have been exposed to the virus and assess their vaccination status. Makhija added that partners at the Pennsylvania Department of Health and “multiple jurisdictions” also worked on this endeavor.
“Working quickly is of the utmost importance when it comes to public health and contact tracing in potential epidemics,” he said. “The [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] also plays a very critical role in these situations because the windows of time for response are very narrow.”
More than 95 percent of kindergarteners have received the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine in Montgomery County, which reaches “herd immunity,” Makhija underscored. The CDC recorded 208 measles cases and two deaths as of March 7, with a majority of cases found in Texas and New Mexico.
“It’s absolutely critical that we work to get the facts out there to our community, and that we encourage everyone to please speak to your physician, or your child’s pediatrician, about getting vaccinated because while it is an individual choice, actions do affect the overall community, and can save your child from being hospitalized due to measles,” Makhija said.
“Our public health department relies daily on the CDC for expertise,” Makhija said. “We don’t have the funds to hire environmental toxicologists or experts on specific diseases, and neither do a lot of counties across the country. We’re going to stay tuned in on what’s happening at the CDC and try to shift accordingly to make sure we’ll still be able to deliver and serve our residents on these issues.”
Housing
Makhija also expressed concerns about layoffs at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development as he again vocalized his ire concerning promised federal grant funding for homelessness services still not being delivered. Associated Press reporting from late February detailed that “more than a dozen programs within the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s portfolio would be affected by the loss of some 4,000 positions.”
The county had been awarded more than $5 million in U.S. Housing and Urban Development Continuum of Care grant funds for nine different area nonprofits providing housing and homelessness resources to those in need. County officials called a Feb. 28 press conference to spread the word out about this issue as neither funds have been dispensed nor information offered as to the delay.
“We have not heard anything from the Department of Housing and Urban Development on whether or not that funding is coming or not,” Makhija said, stressing that constituents contact their congressional representatives as county elected officials continue advocating for monies.
“We’re going to work to make sure we serve all of the people who need those critical services, whether it’s survivors of domestic violence, whether it’s veterans who are overrepresented in the population of those who are unhoused,” he said. “We’re going to maintain our commitment to our residents, but it’s going to be hard if we don’t have … federal funding.”
