Hi, and thanks for stopping by!

Art1 (7K)

My name is Art Stigile. I live at 312 W Edmonston Dr in Hungerford, with my wife, Jin, her son, Cary, our dog, Riley, and occasionally one of my three kids.

Jin fixes hot dogs for me and steak for Riley, so you know who is the top dog in our family.

I'm a budget analyst at the federal Office of Management and Budget, where I started in 1984. My group establishes the budget reporting and execution requirements that apply to all federal agencies.

We have the lead role in the government for defining budgetary concepts. Our job is to make sure that the budget accurately and transparently reports the Government's budgetary transactions.

propeller_head (2K)

I'm a senior member of that elite group of bureaucrats know as green-shades and propeller-heads.

It's a title that we wear with pride. Say what you like, we are the only office in the federal government that defines our job as saying "no."

When I'm not working on budgets, I'm probably in the middle of a home remodeling project or watching the Philadelphia Flyers fall short, yet another year, of winning the Stanley Cup.

What can I say? I grew up in Newark, Delaware, and have been a lifelong fan since the Broad Street Bullies started knocking heads in 1967.

Continue reading in next column . . .

Know of wasteful spending or a political attack that crossed the line? Email me with the details.
Art3 (5K)

Suggested Links

City of Rockville
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Rockville Central
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Max for Rockville

RockTrash Support For Once-Weekly Trash Service

I created Rocktrash in 2007 to organize and encourage my Hungerford neighbors to lobby the Mayor and Council to implement once-weekly trash service city-wide.

Despite the huge success of the trash pilot in Hungerford, the program was initially derailed by then Councilmember Marcuccio, mayoral candidate Drew Powell, and a small group of folks who lived outside the trash pilot and called themselves "Real Rockville." Here's an example of the real "Real Rockville:"

Their [RockTrash's] entire premise is "if it works for us, then everyone should accept this." Well, if that isn't the most selfish and narcissistic attitude, I don't know what is. Or better yet, the wonderful Republican attitude of let everyone choose what they want--yes, let's turn the entire system into chaos and no one wins.--Real Rockville email to Mayor and Council, the Gazette, and me.

Wrong on every point. After serveral overboard email attacks by the head of the group, I was fond of saying, "If that's Real Rockville, I'm happy to just be Rock Trash.

Suffice to say, the issue became a major campaign issue, and the outcome was a new Mayor and Council whose first action was to implement once-weekly trash service City-wide, by a 4-1 vote. The lone no vote was cast by Councilmember Marcuccio.

Read more about the trash issue here. . .

I retired RockTrash after the December 2007 vote. But I decided to resurrect RockTrash in January 2011, after Joe Jordan filed a FOIA request for all email between me and the City.

This was a below-the-belt attempt to silence my criticism of wasting taxpayers' money to subsize the golf course, and I appropriately took him to task for it.

It came on the heels of his ludicrous charge that the City Manager maligned him in an email concerning the distribution of a NGF report about RedGate.

Making a bad situation even worse, Councilmember Newton repeated the charge at the Jan 10, 2011 meeting of M&C, leading to a 3-2 vote by the Council to repudiate her statement.

So, RockTrash is back on the job, speaking out against wasting taxpayers' dollars and advocating for vigorous, but civil, debate about the City's priorities.

Regards,

Art Stigile