By Adam Pagnucco.
With MCPS getting a large funding increase in this year’s budget and doubts surfacing regarding its huge fund balances, use of instructional salaries money and ability to deal with the achievement gap, the school system is under renewed scrutiny. And in that context, the county’s inspector general has weighed in, calling the school system a “high risk operation” and requesting more positions to investigate it.
Inspector General Megan Davey Limarzi is an expert at getting more with less. With a current staff of just 17 full-time positions, she is responsible for investigating county agencies that spend billions of dollars and generate hundreds of complaints. She has one of the toughest jobs in government – and also one of the most essential.
Complaints about county agencies are soaring as demonstrated in this graphic from the Office of Inspector General’s FY22 annual report.
This year, Limarzi asked the council to add two positions to her staff which would be assigned to investigate MCPS. The council staff packet states:
The OIG [Office of Inspector General] requested 2.0 FTE to dedicate to MCPS oversight which was supported by the CE. In calendar year 2022 the OIG logged 162 hours on 14 MCPS related complaints, and 3,168 hours on 3 MCPS engagements, totaling 3,330 hours (more than 1 FTE {2080 hours}). MCPS systems, policies, procedures, processes are completely distinct and separate from County government. This requires our staff to devote significant time familiarizing themselves with these structures to provide the robust oversight deserving of the State’s largest school system, accounting for half of the Montgomery County operating budget.
The two positions would have an annualized cost of $286,864.
In an appearance before the council’s Government Operations and Fiscal Policy (GO) Committee on April 24, Limarzi made the case for these new positions. Let’s review what she had to say.
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Inspector General Megan Davey Limarzi speaks to the council’s Government Operations and Fiscal Policy Committee.
The request is for two FTEs [full-time equivalent positions] to being an educational oversight unit. During calendar year 2022, fifty percent of our investigations were related to MCPS. We logged 162 hours on 14 MCPS complaints and over 3,000 hours on investigations. That’s the equivalent of one and a half full-time employees working 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year, to do that work.
We have evaluated numerous contracts for compliance with MCPS policy. We did identify $133,000 of purchases by MCPS DOT employees that were counter to policy and we referred an additional $1,600 potential theft to law enforcement. And we identified insurance premiums with a minimum estimated value of $3 million that had been withheld from MCPS retirees.
Based on the dollars at risk at MCPS, the complexity of its operations, other inherent risks like political pressure, technological challenges and the mission and scope of their operations, MCPS is fundamentally a high-risk operation that is deserving of oversight.
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Limarzi told the council that without a staffing increase, the OIG’s ability to oversee both MCPS (which it has had authority to do since 2020) and the rest of county government might be hampered. Let’s note that MCPS accounts for nearly half of all county agency spending and more than 60% of combined agency employees.
The council agreed with Limarzi and funded the new positions. This was a wise decision because those new positions could very well ultimately pay for themselves.
The inspector general is an investigator, not a policy maker. But her view reinforces an emerging consensus that while MCPS needs more resources, it also needs more transparency and accountability. Council President Evan Glass made that point in a recent op-ed in MoCo360. Let’s hope that the council remains focused on this in the coming fiscal year.