Montgomery County officials, reeling from what could amount to a $500 million budget shortfall next year, have started to point fingers.
The projected deficit ballooned after Maryland officials rejected a county bookkeeping maneuver made this spring to shift $80 million traditionally kept on the county’s tab to the schools’ budget. The shift appeared to fulfill the county’s state-mandated duty to fund the schools at a level consistent with previous years.
Maryland Attorney General Doug Gansler did not agree, calling the move “inauthentic” last week and opening the door to as much as $57 million in fines.
But depending on which Montgomery official explains it, the move was either nifty problem solving that should be allowed by the state, or legally suspect gimmickry that should have been stopped.
“The county did this to itself,” said Councilman Mike Knapp, who voted against the current year’s budget partly because he was wary of the maneuver.
Knapp said County Executive Ike Leggett should never have presumed the solution would work. Instead, he said, the county should have owned up to its inability to fund the schools at the asked-for level.
While that would’ve exposed the county to a fine, it would also have reset the school system’s base budget $80 million below what it currently is. That is important because the schools use the current year’s budget as a baseline for next year’s request.
“We were broke,” Knapp said. “Why not stick with that?”
The schools, for their part, intend to plan for fiscal 2011 based on what they were given in fiscal 2010, said School Board member Pat O’Neill.
And since the county has been told it can’t pull the same move as it did last year, it will need to fill in the $80 million another way, plus about $20 million for increased enrollment and whatever fines the state levies.
O’Neill said Superintendent Jerry Weast questioned the legality of the budget fix last spring. County officials bear more responsibility for the financial failing, she said, because the move was their decision.
Council President Phil Andrews isn’t so sure, and saying the blame lies with the state and the law itself for not allowing more flexibility in tough fiscal times.
The shift “was supported by the superintendent with the consultation of the school board,” Andrews said, a perspective echoed by Leggett spokesman Pat Lacefield.
“We put our heads together with Weast,” Lacefield said. The maneuver “was something we said we’d do one time.”
