Expanding on last year’s Maintenance of Effort requirements mandating counties’ levels of funding for K-12 education, Montgomery County senators are seeking to establish similar requirements for county critical services throughout the state. Representatives of county governments think it’s a bad idea.
Read MoreIn a nearly 11-hour session, the House of Delegates fended off proposals to level fund the fiscal 2013 budget, block shifting teacher pension costs, and eliminate an income tax hike.
Scores of amendments were attempted on the controversial bills, but none passed. All of the bills will go for final votes Friday or Saturday exactly as they came from their committees.
Read MoreIn the Senate’s proposed budget plan, some of the costs of teacher retirement would be shifted to county school boards over the next four years, not to the county governments next year, as Gov. Martin O’Malley had proposed. But the approved proposal would ultimately force counties to give their school boards $500 million more over the next four years.
Read MoreTeachers from across the state expressed anxiety about education funding and the teacher pension plan to a panel of state and local officials at a town hall event Monday evening near the State House.
Read MoreEducation groups in Maryland are asking the legislature to require waivers from counties that fall below maintenance of effort funding levels. Maintenance of effort mandates county governments to spend no less per student than the prior year or face penalties reducing annual increases in state aid.
Read MoreAs counties struggle to meet their education funding requirements under the state’s maintenance of effort program, legislators wonder if shifting teacher pension costs under Gov. Martin O’Malley’s budget plan would make a difference.
Read MoreA bill providing more reasons to excuse a county from maintaining its public education budget when financial times are difficult received wide support in the House Ways and Means Committee on Wednesday.
Read MoreThere was so much bad news for county governments in the governor’s budget that they want to be able to pass some of the trouble down to their school systems.
The Maryland Association of Counties (MACo) will ask the legislature to lift the requirement that local governments maintain the level of public school spending for the coming year.
The counties had already been seeking legislation to make it easier for individual counties to apply for a waiver of this “maintenance of effort” law, but this change would give “blanket” permission for all counties to cut spending, though local school boards have been wary of reductions.
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