State extends deadline for school funding rule waiver

Mandate to spend same or more as last year

Wednesday, April 1, 2009

At issue is a funding provision known as maintenance of effort, which mandates that counties spend at least as much on education per pupil as in the previous year.

Under current law, counties have until April 1 to apply for an exemption from the state board, which has until May 15 to issue a waiver for the following fiscal year. But some counties are still drafting their budgets and are trying to determine the impact that reductions in local aid from the state will have on their ability to meet the maintenance-of-effort obligation.

The House of Delegates passed a $13.9 billion general fund budget on Thursday that included about $300 million in reductions to local governments.

The Senate Budget & Taxation Committee, which is in the process of formulating its budget recommendations, added a provision in the Budget Reconciliation and Financing Act that moves the deadline for counties to request a waiver to May 1 and gives the state school board until June 1 to act on those applications.

But since the House of Delegates did not include the same language in its version of the bill, counties cannot assume it will be included in the final product and are being advised to submit waivers by the original Wednesday deadline, said Michael Sanderson, executive director of the Maryland Association of Counties.

"It would be nice if we had a sense that this was a done deal in Annapolis and that folks could plan around that," he said. "The nature of the beast is that we're not going to see [the budget act] finished through the legislative process for another week or two."

In light of the budget woes, MACo was pushing last week for the General Assembly to grant an across-the-board waiver for all 24 jurisdictions, even as education advocates say it would harm efforts to narrow the classroom achievement gap, offer all-day kindergarten and make progress in other areas.

"We would absolutely go backward," said Diana Saquella, a lobbyist for the Maryland State Teachers' Association.

Montgomery County Executive Isiah Leggett plans to file a maintenance-of-effort waiver request to the state school board on Tuesday. Prince George's County Executive Jack B. Johnson has also said he would seek an exemption.

Still, Saquella, MSTA's lobbyist, said that some counties should be able to tap into their reserves or use federal stimulus money to fulfill the maintenance-of-effort requirement.

The current system forces each county to prove they have done everything possible to avoid seeking an exemption, said John R. Woolums, director of government relations for the Maryland Association of Boards of Education.

"We understand the bind that some counties are in, but we don't think all counties are impacted to the same extent," he said.

MACo's request is not without precedent. The General Assembly enacted legislation in 1992 that waived the maintenance-of-effort requirement in all counties for fiscal 1993, when a national economic downturn similar to the current one took a toll on local governments' budgets.

Staff writer Janel Davis contributed to this report.

abrody@somdnews.com