Montgomery County raises fine to $5K to address street takeovers

The Montgomery County Council unanimously passed a bill Tuesday to quell street takeovers, rallies that can draw dozens of cars, hundreds of people and block public roadways.

The legislation prohibits participation in unlawful racing and street takeovers on public highways and roadways and raises the fine limit from $1,000 to $5,000.

Municipalities across the country in recent years have grappled with an increase in takeovers.

In April, police announced the arrests of three suspects in connection with a February street takeover that resulted in damage to two police cruisers. In one instance, an officer was inside the cruiser when the rear window was broken and the windshield smashed.

Takeovers “have created really difficult and dangerous situations that threaten the safety of neighborhoods. They threaten the safety of other motorists,” council member Andrew Friedson, the bill’s sponsor, said on Tuesday.

Council members debated an amendment to the bill, introduced by Council member Kristin Mink, to ensure the legislation would not impact peaceful protests and other gatherings protected by the First Amendment.

But with support from only five of the council’s 11 members, the amendment failed.

“The First Amendment should cover these activities,” Mink said Tuesday. “But we are not in normal times, and those rights are absolutely very publicly under attack right now.”

Montgomery County Police Lt. Patrick Kepp told the council that takeovers he has witnessed involved “chaos, fireworks, fire, destruction of property, prohibition of others from being able to freely travel on the roadway.”

“These are violent events,” Kepp said. “They aren’t peaceful protests, and they aren’t treated as such.”

Rent-gouging restrictions

The council also passed legislation Tuesday that will prohibit landlords from using algorithmic price fixing to raise rents.

In algorithmic rent-fixing, landlords rely on companies such as Real Page, which generates prices for rental housing using public and nonpublic data from apartment building owners. The algorithm compares a building to similar properties.

In 2024, the Department of Justice opened an investigation into Real Page over accusations of price-fixing. The two parties settled in November.

And Maryland and Washington, D.C.‘s attorneys general filed lawsuits against Real Page in January 2025 and November 2023, respectively. Both suits are pending.

Council member Will Jawando, the bill’s sponsor, said that since introducing the bill in March, he’s learned of 86 multifamily properties in the county that have been identified in price-fixing lawsuits.

“These are thousands of families that are potentially impacted,” Jawando said.

New governance structure for Montgomery Community Media

The council passed a bill that will apply new standards to Montgomery Community Media, the nonprofit that streams council meetings on public access television. The legislation will require the council and county executive to each appoint one member to MCM’s board of directors and adopt new policies related to journalistic ethics, racial equity and social justice.

The bill’s sponsor, council member Kate Stewart, said she’s trying to align MCM with rules governing other nonprofits, such as Strathmore, that receive significant county funding. More than 80% of MCM’s budget comes from the county’s budget — in fiscal 2027, it received nearly $2.5 million.

MCM leaders had pushed back against the bill as a threat to press freedoms.

“Changing the governance structure of an independent nonprofit organization, and the government having the authority and ability to do that specifically or particularly because of funding, I think is really a dangerous precedent,” MCM CEO Jasmine White told The Banner last month.

Stewart has said she has no interest in censoring MCM.

“The important pieces of this bill are making sure that MCM and organizations that receive a large percentage of their budgets from taxpayer dollars are following basic open meetings and ethics rules,” she told The Banner last month.

The legislation that passed Tuesday included an amendment removing an initial provision that would have required MCM to comply with the Maryland Public Information Act as if it were a public body. It also includes a new provision requiring MCM to adopt bylaws protecting the editorial independence of the organization.

Banner reporter Antonio Planas contributed to this story.