Montgomery County will not spend an extra $82 million on public schools next fiscal year, County Executive Ike Leggett told The Washington Examiner, citing the suburb’s chronic funding shortfalls as the need to buck state requirements. “It’s just not practical for us to fill that request,” Leggett said of Superintendent Jerry Weast’s call for tens of millions of dollars more in county funding. “We’d either have to raise taxes or tap department budgets that have already been hit hard the last two or three years. I’m not going to do that.”

Under state law, local jurisdictions are required to pay the same amount per student as the year before. But facing a $300 million shortfall — on the heels of filling a $1 billion budget gap — Leggett and County Council members say they would rather take a hit in state funding than raid department budgets.