WTOP: Montgomery Co. allowed to bypass state requirement for school budget

Kate Ryan, wtop.com 

ROCKVILLE, Md. - Montgomery County Schools have lost a legal challenge to a county council decision regarding the state's Maintenance of Effort funding.
A state board says Maryland counties have the ultimate authority over their budgets, including school budgets. The declaratory ruling by the Maryland State Board of Education is essentially a loss for the Montgomery County Board of Education, which had argued that the state's Maintenance of Effort Funding Formula was required, not optional.
Montgomery County Executive Isiah Leggett and the Montgomery County Council had countered that budget pressures simply didn't allow the county to keep funding at the higher levels. Instead of asking the state for a waiver as it did last year, the County Council simply didn't include MOE in its budget for fiscal year 2012.
Montgomery County Council member Craig Rice, who also served as a delegate in the Maryland State Legislature in Annapolis, said the move was not an 'end-run'.
"There was no strategy, there was no 'We're trying to get over on the school system,' that's not what this is about," Rice says. "This is about us just saying that when times are tight, we should have the ability to make adjustments, just like we do for all of our other departments."

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