The County Council resolution below says "full and transparent budget information from every County agency is essential to the integrity of our fiscal decision-making process."
But the Council only calls for the Office of Legislative Oversight to investigate the MCPS budget in one budget category, just category 12.
What about Categories 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 14, 37, 51, 61, 71, and 81?
Who is making sure there is "full and transparent budget information" on the rest of the MCPS budget?
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I think Category 12, Fixed Charges, (actually it should be labeled "BENEFITS") is a terrific place to start.
ReplyDeleteIt represents about $1 out of every $4.50 MCPS spends.
For the first time ever the Council appears to be exercising its authority to control school spending by Category. If I were doing it, Category 12 is where I'd start too.
Bob Astrove
Bob,
ReplyDeleteIt's not a start, it's an end. This is it. At this rate it would take the Council 16 years to exert any oversight over the entire MCPS budget. While this one category is "reviewed" the other categories are free to exist without oversight.
Case in point, remember the E-Rate hearing where the Council's Education Committee told Jerry Weast and Larry Bowers that it was the law that they were to bring E-Rate Rebates to the Council for appropriation?
That was the start of what? Nothing. It's never happened.
E-Rate was chump change. Cat. 12 is over 22% of the MCPS operating budget.
ReplyDeleteBob Astrove
$18 million wasn't chump change this year! E-Rate rebates could easily have topped that number by now. But, no accounting so we will never know.
ReplyDeleteI think the point is that $18M is "Chump Change" in the MCPS budget - eight tenths of one percent. So small that a little transfer between accounts covered it.
ReplyDeleteBut Benefit costs, 22% of the Budget, up from a very stable 16% when Weast got here, is a huge chunk of the school budget.
In fact, if we had only kept the growth in benefit costs to the growth of the school system as a whole, savings would be close to $1 BILLION over Weast's tenure here.
Bob Astrove