57% of County Budget Not Enough for MCPS - Property Tax Hikes in Legislation

Senator Madaleno is after your money - for the children, of course. "Kensington senator wants to allow property tax hikes to help schools" was the original title of this article in the March 2, 2011 Gaithersburg edition of the Gazette.

Apparently, 57% of the county budget isn't sufficient for MCPS. Furloughs for county workers - but not MCPS employees - isn't sufficient. Therefore, in these dire economic times, the taxpayer is again asked to pony up.

On top of that, it appears the voters of Montgomery County don't know what they're doing when they go to the polls. Sen. Madaleno is referring to the Ficker Amendment, passed in 2008, that requires all nine members of the County Council to approve a budget that exceeds the county's charter limit on property tax collections.

Sen. Madaleno explains:

Madaleno said Monday that he does not think voters knew what they were voting for in 2008.

"I don't know if they could have foreseen what was going to transpire in the next two years," he said, referring to widespread cuts at all levels of government. "If we did polls now to get the public feeling (on the issue), maybe that wouldn't pass today."

Of course the MCPS is in agreement with this legislation. Based on internal expert analysis, the BoE will consequently publicly support this legislation during the March 8 meeting.

Sen. Madaleno's recent money-raising legislation that sought to increase MCPS coffers by charging children to ride the school bus was withdrawn in December 2010.

Hopefully this legislation will be withdrawn, too. Unfortunately time and resources are wasted that could be better spent on finding real solutions.


SB 316 Property Tax – Charter Counties – Education Funding

Authorizing the county council of a charter county to set a property tax rate higher or to collect more property tax revenues than authorized under the county charter under specified circumstances for the sole purpose of funding education; requiring a charter county to appropriate to the local board of education specified revenues and prohibiting a charter county from reducing specified funding to the local board of education under specified circumstances; etc.

-Agnes Jones-Trower