"No one would be exempt from the potential harm" of shifting the costs of teacher pensions onto the county would cause, Harford County government spokesman Bob Thomas, who previously served more than a decade on the local school board, said following a local unity press conference on the issue Monday afternoon.
Heads of county agencies, the school system and local government employees gathered at the Harford County Board of Education's headquarters in Bel Air to announce their united front against Gov. Martin O'Malley's proposal to make counties responsible for paying at least half of the annual cost of teacher pension benefits. The Harford protest was one of several planned around the state.
Harford County Executive David Craig, Superintendent of Schools Robert Tomback, Board of Education President Leonard Wheeler, Sheriff Jesse Bane, Harford County Public Library Director Mary Hastler and Susan Lesser, who attended on behalf of Harford County Education Association President Randy Cerveny, spoke about the pension shift issue from different perspectives.
Regardless of how each speaker assessed the impact on his or her organization, once they stopped speaking it was clear where everyone stood: Harford County opposes the cost shift.
"They [the state] don't look at the unsustainability" of the plan, Craig said, calling O'Malley's proposal "unrealistic."
"For Harford County, there is no offset [in costs], really," he added.
If the cost shift is approved by the Maryland General Assembly, which Craig doesn't believe it will be, the county executive said it would cost the county around $14.7 million over the four to five year implementation process.
This is the equivalent, he said, to the jobs of 171 teachers, 91 principals, or 222 correctional officers, which, Craig added, is more than the county has in the latter two categories. It would also equal 40 percent of the county's "rainy day" fund, held in reserve for emergencies and to keep its high credit rating.
"It would be a wipeout for us," Craig said, adding that Harford stands with Maryland's 22 other counties and Baltimore City.
"This is the state's retirement system" that the counties would be paying for, Tomback said. "[The school system is] completely dependent upon state, local and federal funding."
Wheeler said O'Malley's proposal is "one that I reject because it would send us [the school system] backward."
"We went through great pains to protect this institution of education," Wheeler continued, saying that includes tenure and retirement benefits for teachers. "It's important that we protect them [the teachers] as they raise our future."
Lesser, the teachers union representative, echoed Wheeler's thoughts, saying she is "very concerned" about the effect of shifting costs would have on the students and teachers.
Bane said his office's greatest concern is holding the line on spending while struggling to reduce crime. If the county is forced to find funding for the teacher pensions, other spending priorities are likely to suffer, he noted.
The Harford County Sheriff's Office, which is the chief law enforcement agency in the county, has fewer than one police personnel (0.80) per 1,000 residents," Bane said.
"Despite [its] growth, there has been no [personnel] increase at the detention center since 1998," he added.
The county has also experienced growth with the recent base realignment and closure, which affected Aberdeen Proving Ground and all of Harford County, he continued.
Another increase Bane has seen: The number of traffic-related fatalities, a topic he has spoken several times about in the past month.
"I have nothing left to cut but personnel," he said.
Hastler summed up what everyone else had said.
"We [the county] need to work together, and we need to support the economic development in the county," the library director said.