By Adam Pagnucco.
U.S. Senator Chris Van Hollen (who has not endorsed in the county executive race) and a number of allies of Council Member Will Jawando, who is running for executive, have branded the negative attacks on him by the Affordable Maryland PAC as “lies.” The Super PAC, which is financed by the real estate industry, has run both a TV commercial and a website criticizing Jawando. It’s understandable for Jawando’s supporters to be alarmed by this Super PAC because it has raised $1.3 million, a total exceeding Jawando’s campaign budget.
So are they right? Is this Super PAC lying about Jawando?
Take a look at the website. It’s unquestionably brutal. It’s also well researched. The site’s claims are supported by dozens of citations of media outlets including Bethesda Magazine, the Banner, the Washington Post, WTOP, MCM and multiple TV stations. It also cites the Stephen S. Fuller Institute at George Mason University, the county’s planning department and even this website. (You Super PAC people need to stop reading blogs!) It’s hard to characterize all of this reporting, especially by legitimate news sites like Bethesda Magazine, the Banner, the Post and their competitors as “lies.”
The real question is whether the site is fair.
Many sections of the site criticize Jawando for votes he cast and public statements he has made. That’s legitimate. Of course it’s fair to hold elected officials accountable for such things. It’s their record in office.
Where it gets dicey is the site’s criticism of Jawando for MCPS’s performance. Specifically, the site and the TV ad raise the issues of MCPS’s declining enrollment, test score problems, falling graduation rates, various management issues and the Beidleman scandal. The site comments:
Will Jawando has chaired the Montgomery County Council’s Education & Culture Committee — the body with oversight responsibility for Montgomery County Public Schools — since December 2022. During his chairmanship, MCPS has produced one of the most troubled governance records of any large school district in the region.
So because Jawando’s council committee has “oversight responsibility,” he is at least partially responsible for MCPS’s problems. That’s the nature of the site’s case against Jawando on schools.
This touches on an issue that has troubled school activists and others for years: Maryland’s bizarre system that splits responsibility for funding, overseeing and managing public schools. In Maryland, county executives recommend school budgets after receiving requests from school boards. County councils and commissions then fund schools, but they do so in broad expenditure categories rather than in line items and they are subject to state mandates (like the Maintenance of Effort law). Elected school boards hire superintendents and set broad policies. Superintendents run the schools on a day-to-day basis. (Prince George’s County has a different system set up by state law but let’s set that aside for the purpose of this discussion.)
This system means that no one entity has complete control over local school districts. School boards and superintendents don’t control funding. County executives and county councils have no management authority. The latter can use their bully pulpits and – perhaps – some funding as leverage, but that’s no substitute for real control. The effect of this is that when things go wrong, all of these folks tend to point their fingers at someone else. “We’re trying our best, but it’s their fault.”
This is confounding for anyone trying to evaluate, impact or otherwise deal with MCPS as well as most school districts in Maryland.
In most of my home state of New York (that’s the Empire State for all you wannabes), school boards directly levy property taxes and voters approve school budgets. Most county, city, town and village governments have no funding or management roles with the schools. I’m not saying that that system is necessarily better, but the accountability lines are much clearer. If you’re a voter and you don’t like what is happening in the schools or the levels of property tax required to fund them, you can vote against your school board members and vote against the district’s budget. Most school budgets pass, but when they don’t, school districts can face tough choices.
So if I were working for this Super PAC – and I’m not working for any politicians or interest groups this cycle – I wouldn’t be completely comfortable with pinning MCPS’s problems on Jawando. Senator Chris Van Hollen addressed this when he criticized the notion that Jawando “is solely responsible for some of the problems in our schools.” One can debate how constructive Jawando has been in dealing with them, but if Jawando were not in office, MCPS would still have challenges. That said, if MCPS were doing better, Jawando and all of the county’s politicians would be taking credit for that. These are politicians after all!
There is one more thing about this debate that interests me.
In my first report on the Affordable Maryland PAC’s activity in this cycle, I noted that they had conducted at least one poll. The folks running this PAC are sophisticated players. I bet every single thing that went into the TV ad and the website has been poll tested. I believe they would not be attacking Jawando on schools if that issue were one of his strengths. Instead, it’s reasonable to wonder whether it’s actually a weakness identified in their polling. If MoCo voters really are unhappy about schools – and they kicked out three school board incumbents two years ago – that would be a twist in this year’s election. And such sentiment would go far beyond any activities of this Super PAC and indeed the county executive race itself.