Many Anne Arundel residents may be entitled to millions of dollars after a Maryland appeals court ruled the county government did not use collected impact fees within six years.
The Court of Special Appeals recently ruled the county failed to properly extend a deadline to spend nearly $5 million in fees a developer pays for road and school expansion.
Anne Arundel did not spend the funds six years after the money was collected, as required by law.
The county wanted to retroactively extend the deadline, because it inadvertently did not connect the fees to particular projects, according to the ruling.
“There is nothing that the county can do now to correct what it failed to do by the end of the sixth year,” Judge Lawrence Rodowsky wrote in the opinion.
The money was collected on developments built between 1988, when impact fees were first issued, and 1996.
Because Anne Arundel did not spend or allocate all of the funds, the money must be returned to the residents, according to county law.
But lawyers are debating over the refund amount.
Phillip Scheibe, one of the attorneys representing homeowners who filed the lawsuit, said the court?s ruling would return an additional $5.6 million used to buy temporary classrooms and other improvements that did not, in the court?s opinion, increase capacity. Compounded with interest and other fees, the county could be refunding more than $20 million, Scheibe said.
“We certainly got a favorable decision … that added a considerable amount of money,” he said.
But County Attorney Jonathan Hodgson disagrees.
“Those are just fantasies of the plaintiffs? attorneys? minds,” Hodgson said. “The true number has yet to be determined.”
Hodgson said the refund could be around $2 million, considering the appellate court ruled that half of the fees collected were allocated to projects not listed in the county budgets. The Court of Special Appeals remanded the issue of determining the refund?s amount to Anne Arundel Circuit Court.
Hodgson would not say whether the county would appeal the decision to the Court of Appeals, Maryland?s highest court.
“We?re looking at options and where we stand,” Hodgson said.
The county claimed a conflict of interest existed because Scheibe was a former county attorney.
But the court said the seven-year-old case was too far along to change attorneys.
However, Scheibe may not collect fees from the award, according to the court?s opinion.
Homeowners? attorneys are eligible for 30 percent of the award.
