Michael Knapp

Montgomery County Council Member Duchy Trachtenberg (D) says tax hikes will not be an option in closing the county's $250 million budget deficit.

"Last year we broke the charter limit," Trachtenberg told PolitickerMD.com. "We raised taxes to a fairly high degree."

Trachtenberg, who serves as chair of the council's Management and Fiscal Policy Committee, says it's premature to discuss how the council will deal with the deficit or by how much they will close the gap, but given that there will be no new sources of revenue, programming cuts are seeming a more and more likely scenario.