"We involved them on the Spending Affordability Committee and we had support from Republicans," Ecker said. "They saw the county government was doing everything we could."
Involving critics was vital too, he said.
"You get people around the table - inside the tent - and they become your biggest supporters," he recalled.
Charles C. Feaga was one of those Republican council members in 1991, and he's hardly known as an advocate for higher taxes, yet he supported Ecker's budget.
"At that time, taxes were not extremely high," Feaga said. "We inherited a different situation."
Now, he feels, "we have reached our maximum. We just cannot increase it a penny." In fact, Feaga thinks the county now has too many firefighters and police officers, though Ulman has worked to increase their numbers, arguing there are too few for the county's growing population.
Other things have affected taxes along the way.
Howard's income tax rates rose 30 percent to Maryland's legal limit in 2004, after then-County Executive James N. Robey, a Democrat, pushed it through in the recession after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. In 2008, state sales taxes rose as Gov. Martin O'Malley, also a Democrat, tried to solve the state's structural budget deficit.
On the federal level, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office recently concluded federal taxes are at their lowest in three decades, so people may be paying less taxes overall.
This current recession is much worse than the one he faced, Ecker said, but Ulman's got some federal stimulus money to help, and he's had a year or two in office to prepare, while Ecker faced a looming shortfall immediately upon taking office.
The former Republican, now Carroll County's school superintendent, noted the county had less of a financial cushion then too, as there was nothing like the county's $48 million Rainy Day Fund.
State Del. Shane Pendergrass, a Democrat who also served on the County Council in 1991, said everything in politics isn't always about partisanship.
"There are times in government when things are less confrontational. Chuck [Ecker] wasn't," she said.
"People on the council wanted to get things done."
And while Democrats and Republicans may not have agreed on spending and taxation issues, they did more often form alliances across party lines on land-use issues.
"You come to a point where you feel like you don't have choices," she said. "No tax increase is easy."
Ulman surely knows that feeling.
"We've cut as deeply as I'm comfortable with without destructively affecting services," he said.
