By Adam Pagnucco.
Council Member Kristin Mink has released a statement explaining her votes on the FY24 budget and the property tax increase. I have previously printed her thoughts on taxes, but her concerns about the transparency of the council’s budget process stand out for me. I see her point but I have mixed feelings about it.
Mink’s transparency concerns relate to the reconciliation list, which is a ledger of additions and subtractions from the executive’s recommended budget used by the council to make changes prior to their approval. In the old days, the rec list only included council changes to the executive’s budget. This year for the first time, Council President Evan Glass included the executive’s increases from last year’s budget along with the council’s changes. This is almost like zero based budgeting and it helped the council chop millions more from the executive’s additions than they did in prior years.
Mink’s issue is with exactly how the final funding decision was made. At first glance, a list of potential funding items totaling $294 million appeared on the council’s agenda for Thursday. And then POOF, later on, a list of items totaling $215 million that the council had agreed to fund via straw vote appeared. How did the council get from $294 million to $215 million?
One source told me, “Everyone was asked to mark their top priority items from the high priority list adding up with what would have been a 5 cent increase. Everything that got 6 votes was included on the final list, which only added up to 4.7 cents worth of items.” Two other sources confirmed this description.
Well, that’s hardly transparent since we don’t know which council members voted for which items. (That is no different from prior years.) I understand why Mink would have a problem with it. On the other hand, if the council had voted on every line item in public, they would have spent a lot more money, so the tax hike would have been bigger.
Folks, this is YOUR money since you are paying for all of this. How do you feel about it?
Mink’s statement is reprinted below.
*****
May 18, 2023
Today, I voted against the property tax and operating budget for two reasons: I do not believe they provide our school system with the resources needed to succeed, and I have deep concerns about the process that landed us here.
The County contribution to MCPS will increase by roughly 8.5% over last year, which is substantial, but in this time of unprecedented growth and need, many County department budgets are increasing by more than 10%. As with nearly every department that came before us, MCPS started with an aspirational request and eventually let us know the minimum needed to:
○ fund employee contracts,
○ prevent class sizes from increasing as enrollment grows,
○ and provide adequate service to our students in a historically difficult time.
This body decided not to meet that minimum, with the expectation that MCPS can find tens of millions of dollars in unplanned cuts to their existing budget. It’s a big gamble. What we don’t want is students next year having it worse than students this year, and I think that is a likely outcome.
All Councilmembers have noted that MCPS will have the funds to pay for the employee contracts, and they must do so. The problem is, MCPS has never claimed they wouldn’t have the money in the bank to cover contracts. They’ve said with this budget, they can’t fund contracts without sacrificing class sizes or making other cuts that will significantly impact the classroom.
We have record numbers of students living in poverty, receiving special education services, and learning English as an additional language. Enrollment is now growing at 2000 students per year. We rely on MCPS not only to educate our children but as a critical part of our healthcare delivery system, our workforce development plans, and our touchpoint for families struggling with food insecurity and other critical issues. And we are bleeding staff.
I think it would be reasonable and right to ask residents to pay a slightly higher property tax rate in order to fund more of the MCPS request, and I think most residents would have supported that. I am also committed to working with MCPS and the Board of Education, as well as using the full extent of the County Council’s jurisdictional powers under state law, to institute reforms that ensure the Council and public have a clear understanding of how dollars are being spent and why, and that we are better positioned to make fully informed assessments in future budget seasons.
I also want to share my concerns with the drafting process for this budget. There was a public process, but there was also a private process.
The weeks-long public process was robust and transparent, consisting of public hearings, numerous worksessions, and substantive dialogue between the Executive Branch, community stakeholders, and councilmembers. We made many hard decisions as a body to cut tens of millions of dollars in spending and eventually designated 176 items as High Priority new investments, which many quite reasonably believed meant the items would be funded.
There was then a private process, compressed into three days, in which we made significant cuts to the items that had just been publicly deemed High Priority. There was very little space for meaningful discussion with colleagues, and none of it in public.
The disconnect between what transpired publicly and the final reconciliation list deeply troubles me. I do not believe this kind of process will result in the optimal budget for our County nor an understanding from our constituents as to how we came to these impactful decisions.
As has been said, to fund all of the items we publicly agreed were High Priority during the public process would require a 5.7-cent property tax increase.
In order to get to 4.7, the Council quietly cut new Vision Zero pedestrian safety items, new funding for the Green Bank to accommodate their expanded mission, positions responsible for implementing parts of our Climate Action Plan, increased funding for overflow sheltering to accommodate an unhoused population that has increased 53% over last year, increased but still insufficient inflation offsets for our nonprofit partners who provide vital services to residents, and much more. All of which we had just voted, after public discussions and with public votes, to identify as High Priority.
I strongly believe any changes to that list should have been done collaboratively and in the view of the public.
I look forward to the work ahead. I know our full Council shares goals and values, and I share the belief that next year, together, we will be in a better position to take on an even tougher budget.