Moribund Montgomery County asleep at the (medical device) switch again

Missed another one. And another one! Montgomery County officials have failed to attract the relocating corporate headquarters of two healthcare firms. International medical device company Medacta is moving its HQ from high-crime Chicago to high-energy Nashville. And dental equipment supply firm Dentsply Sirona is leaving its gleaming York, Pennsylvania headquarters behind for Charlotte, North Carolina.

This is only the latest win for both Tennessee and North Carolina. Charlotte snagged the HQs of Honeywell, BB&T and SunTrust in the last six months alone. And one of Tennessee's scores included Montgomery County's own Discovery Communications, which moved the vast majority of its Silver Spring jobs to beautiful Knoxville.

Medacta has chosen a site at 6640 Carothers Parkway in the Nashville suburb of Franklin, where it will not only locate its HQ, but also construct a research and development facility, the Williamson Herald reports. This is exactly the type of suburban office park site Montgomery County could have offered. Barring the fact that the Montgomery County Council is hostile to business, and just raised taxes yet again, why didn't the County make a bid for Medacta?

Dentsply Sirona will create 320 new jobs in Charlotte, the York Daily Record reports. Considering that biotech has been the only bright spot in Montgomery County's moribund economy for two decades, why is the County not even pursuing healthcare-related firms like DS and Medacta?