Gov. Martin O?Malley was visibly agitated at last week?s Board of Public Works meeting as he held up a chart showing record funding of Montgomery County school construction. It was more than four times as much than Gov. Robert Ehrlich?s first two years and $5 million higher than any other jurisdiction.
But Montgomery County lawmakers, such as Sen. Rona Kramer, the delegation chairman, said the amount is still less than they believed they had been promised and entitled to because Montgomery County?s school enrollment, at 137,717 students, is the highest in the state.
By that calculus, in the long-standing tug of war between Montgomery County and the Baltimore region, Montgomery still comes up short, getting the lowest amount per student among the state?s four largest jurisdictions.
That?s exactly how it is supposed to work, documents of the Department of Legislative Services say. Counties with higher incomes and higher property values are expected to pay more of their own bills. “In fact, several state aid formulas distribute aid inversely to local property and income wealth,” says an annual report called “The Balance Sheet.”
That?s why Montgomery County gets back just 18 cents in direct state aid for every dollar it sends to Annapolis and Baltimore City gets back 95 cents.
This doesn?t count prisons, universities and highways run by the state. In fiscal 2009, Montgomery gets $708 per person, 22nd in the state, and Baltimore gets $1,952, No. 1.
David Lever, the executive director of state school construction, said: “Size is not the measure of need. We never work from a per capita formula. That would be a very misleading way to allocate capital.”
For instance, a small jurisdiction might have one or two “big ticketitems” that are “absolutely critical” to many of the students in the county, Lever said.
“We do use size as a very rough scaling” for amount of aid, but “it doesn?t always work out this way,” Lever said. For instance, Baltimore County has a larger number of students than the city ? 104,000 compared with 81,000 ? but a smaller number of facilities, and the ones in the city are older and more poorly maintained.
“We?re looking at relative parity,” Lever said. This year Baltimore and Prince George?s counties and the city all got $41 million, despite differences in size, a pattern that?s been true in recent years. “Frankly, we haven?t heard any complaints about that.”
School construction aid FY 2009
County Total dollars Per student
Anne Arundel County $27.4 million $373
Baltimore City $41 million $504
Baltimore County $41 million $393
Carroll County $11.7 million $414
Harford County $14.7 million $376
Howard County $18.2 million $368
Montgomery County $46.3 million $336
Prince George?s County $41 million $315
