voted unanimously on Tuesday to approve a bill<\/a> that will give displaced federal workers preferential treatment for county job openings. Only qualified veterans and people with disabilities will receive higher priority.\n<\/p>\n\u201cAt the core, this is about protecting our community and honoring the legacy, the talent, the contributions of hardworking federal workers who have been unfairly and, in my view, illegally fired and made displaced,\u201d said Council Vice President Will Jawando, who sponsored the bill.<\/p>\n
Jawando is hoping the county can help some of these displaced workers find good paying jobs.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhile this won\u2019t solve the problem, it\u2019s going to be one of the many things we\u2019re doing to try to mitigate that and send a loud and clear message to federal employees that we value you and we think you have something to offer,\u201d Jawando said. \u201cMontgomery County would be well served by your services.\u201d<\/p>\n
He also called on the private sector to help.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis needs to be an all-hands-on-deck approach. We\u2019re doing our part and continue to urge our private sector partners to take advantage of the great resource that is our federal employees,\u201d Jawando added.<\/p>\n
Council member Gabe Albornoz also voiced strong support but said he wants the message sent not just to displaced federal workers.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo make sure that we send a message to all of our county residents that are losing employment right now as a result of the federal reductions in our nonprofit sector, federal contractors \u2014 we are open for business for everyone,\u201d Albornoz said.<\/p>\n
He also urged careful execution of the preferential treatment policy, requesting regular updates on the program\u2019s rollout to ensure it is implemented smoothly.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was a department head when we implemented the hiring preference for veterans and for people with disabilities, and the execution of that was bumpy and there was some miscommunication,\u201d he said. \u201cWe want to make sure we are doing this right and that we don\u2019t create more problems than we are trying to solve.\u201d<\/p>\n
The preferential treatment for displaced federal workers will go into effect immediately upon getting the signature of the County Executive. It will remain in effect through July 2, 2027.<\/p>\n
Get breaking news and daily headlines delivered to your email inbox by signing up here<\/a>.<\/p>\n\u00a9 2025 WTOP. All Rights Reserved. This website is not intended for users located within the European Economic Area.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Federal workers affected by mass layoffs this year are getting support from Montgomery County. Federal workers affected by…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":14907,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[28,14260,14261,14262,14263,134,14264,14265,14266],"class_list":{"0":"post-14906","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-jobs","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-federal-layoffs","10":"tag-federal-workers","11":"tag-gabe-albornoz","12":"tag-hiring-preference","13":"tag-jobs","14":"tag-michelle-murillo","15":"tag-montgomery-county-council","16":"tag-will-jawando"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14906","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14906"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14906\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14907"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14906"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14906"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14906"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}