The Silver Spring Penguin

County council members on Tuesday said they won’t approve a $2 million appropriation to build the Fillmore music venue until Annapolis coughs up the matching cash, The Gazette reports.

It’s unclear why the council’s economic development committee withheld the money. However, The Gazette suggests the committee’s members — Michael Knapp (D-2), Marc Elrich and Nancy Floreen (both at-large Dems) — may have a bad taste in their mouths over the process that led to the county’s lease with venue operator Live Nation.

As talks to bring another venue operator to Silver Spring disintegrated last summer, the word on the street was that the county was open for business. But the county’s outreach traveled along the grapevine, not through official announcements, chief administrative officer Tim Firestine told the council last month.

“I don’t believe that word on the street is how you run an economic development office,” Elrich said at the time. “This falls between active recruiting and someone who just happens to walk through the door.”

The committee on Tuesday also threw in one more condition for the funding’s approval: The Lee Development Group, which owns the Colesville Road site, must clear planning-board hurdles for the project, The Gazette writes.

Reps from the county executive’s office were sweating the new twist, according to The Gazette. Aides worried that none of the committee’s conditions would be met in time to keep the project in next year’s construction budget.

The state budget should be a done deal by April, with the county budget closing in May. However, the committee can approve the money whenever it likes, according to The Gazette.

Both the state and county contributions would be raised through bond sales, not taken from existing funds, MoCo exec Ike Leggett previously explained to The Penguin. A total of $8 million in public money will go towards the venue’s construction. Cost overruns would be on Live Nation’s tab, Leggett said.