By Adam Pagnucco.
Part One looked at the change in expenditures by department, agency and broad function between the FY23 and FY24 approved budgets. Today, we will look at medium term changes in spending.
We define medium term as the period between the FY19 actual budget and the FY24 approved budget. This five year period ovelaps with the elected tenures of County Executive Marc Elrich and Council Members Gabe Albornoz, Andrew Friedson, Evan Glass and Will Jawando. (Council Member Sidney Katz also served in the four years prior to this period.) The middle of this period was dominated by the COVID pandemic, which saw a sharp but short recession and a huge infusion of federal aid.
The table below shows the five year change in expenditures by department and agency.
While MCPS had a great year in FY24, its expenditure growth was slightly below the all-agency total during this period. That’s because public school spending growth lagged most other governmental functions during the early years of this period. Non-local money for MCPS (of which state aid is the largest component) grew much faster than the local appropriation. This reflects a long-term trend in school spending of the county relying more heavily on state support over time.
The chart below shows the five year change by broad expenditure category. Education is MCPS plus Montgomery College. Public safety is animal services, consumer protection, correction, emergency management, fire and rescue, police and sheriff. Transportation is the operating budgets of the Department of Transportation, the parking lot districts and Ride On and related transit. Debt service is used to finance the capital budget. Everything else is all other operating spending.
Note how the highest rate of growth is in “everything else,” which is the total budget minus education, public safety, transportation and debt service. The biggest single factor here is the growth in health and human services, a gargantuan department which saw a spending explosion during the pandemic that has not eased since. The county council office’s rate of spending growth is also notable though it’s not large enough to drive overall trends.
We will conclude with long term changes in county spending next.