Every bit of what just happened to the Baltimore County school system's budget proposal — the superintendent's request for a major increase in funds, the closed-doors meetings between board members and County Executive Kevin Kamenetz, the superintendent's decision to cut his own request — was entirely predictable to anyone who has followed county politics. It has happened every time a superintendent has chosen to violate the unspoken rule that you don't make the county executive look bad by requesting more money than he wants to give.
Well, not entirely unspoken; there was one instance in 2001 when a second-term county councilman by the name of Kevin Kamenetz laid it out quite explicitly. When a superintendent asks for what he wants rather than what the executive is willing to provide, "all it does is make the county executive out to be the heavy," Mr. Kamenetz said at the time.
That year, a then-new superintendent, Joe A. Hairston, asked for a $77 million increase in school funding when the county's spending affordability committee decreed that the county's overall budget could increase by no more than $67 million without triggering the need for a tax increase. The county executive at the time, C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger, was not amused. He had always arranged things behind the scenes with Mr. Hairston's predecessor, after having worked to oust a previous superintendent for making the tension between the system's needs and the county's financial will explicit.
But that tension is inherent when Maryland's system for funding education intersects with Baltimore County politics. Unlike in much of the country, school systems here do not have independent taxing authority and instead rely on local governments to supply them with much of their operating budgets — typically about half, with the rest coming mainly from the state and federal governments. Local government officials generally (and particularly in Baltimore County) complain that they must raise huge amounts of money for the schools but have no real influence in how it is spent.
What makes the situation so combustible in Towson is that Baltimore County leaders' desire to be viewed as pro-education is coupled with a near religious zeal for avoiding increases in the property tax, which hasn't gone up in a quarter century. In 2001, Mr. Ruppersberger was plotting a run for governor and wasn't about to raise taxes. Mr. Kamenetz, who is also now being talked about as a potential gubernatorial candidate, has made clear that he isn't going to do it either.
But working the school budget out quietly behind the scenes prevents the public from fully appreciating the trade-offs involved in the county's budget and tax policies. Baltimore County executives may like to avoid being "the heavy," as Mr. Kamenetz once put it, but that's the job they campaigned for. Superintendent Dallas Dance violated the Baltimore County way by asking the county for an 8 percent increase in its contribution for the next fiscal year -- admittedly a huge amount in a year when the county budget isn't flush. But if he hadn't, voters would have had no way of evaluating whether the county's level of support was truly sufficient to meet present needs.
In particular, it's worth noting that one of the cuts he made in response to Mr. Kamenetz's meetings with school board members was a reduction in the number of new teachers of English as a second language he planned to hire to respond to the county's growing number of immigrants — a touchy political subject, given anti-immigrant sentiment, but one the county can't ignore. (The superintendent plans to phase the increase in over three years.) Mr. Dance also reduced the amount he requested for preventive maintenance on school buildings, the importance of which Gov. Larry Hogan highlighted last week at the Board of Public Works.
Another way of looking at things is that Mr. Kamenetz was merely telling the board members of the fiscal constraints he had laid out to Mr. Dance long before and giving them the opportunity to determine what cuts were appropriate rather than putting that decision in the hands of politicians. Ultimately, though, that point of view is flawed. An executive or council could cut the district's request and suggest what specific line items should be reduced or eliminated, but they are really only responsible for providing a gross appropriation. The superintendent and school board can make adjustments after the fact.
Baltimore County is heading toward a system in which a majority of the school board will be directly elected by voters, and we hope that leads to a more transparent discussion of the schools' needs and the county's willingness to support them. The fact that school board members met with the executive in small groups and thus not did not trigger the state's open meetings law is nothing new; something similar took place in 2003 when the board was preparing its first request for then-executive James T. Smith Jr.
Indeed, what happened in 2001 was the real anomaly. Mr. Ruppersberger called in Mr. Hairston and the system's chief financial officer and demanded that they cut their request by $20 million, but the superintendent and school board held their ground. In the end, Mr. Ruppersberger cut $14 million from the schools — and cut the property tax by $10.5 million. Everybody declared victory, but the voters for once could actually see the score.