Country clubs all over Maryland benefit from a special property tax break that saves them millions of dollars every year. Here’s how it works.Decades ago, the General Assembly passed legislation…
Budget and Taxes
This chart from the last fiscal update says it all. The state is scheduled to run annual structural budget deficits of more than $2 billion into the term of the…
Weast Blasts Elrich
In a wide-ranging interview with the Montgomery County Sentinel, MCPS Superintendent Jerry Weast singled out County Council Member Marc Elrich, a former fifth grade public school teacher, for special scorn….
And so it has begun. MCPS Superintendent Jerry Weast has fired the first shot in what may be his last and greatest battle: the fight over the Fiscal Year 2011…
Weast: “Devastating Impact on the Children”
Has the MoCo Economy Hit Bottom?
Every business cycle has an inflection point, a moment when up turns down or down turns up. Economists have great trouble identifying them contemporaneously, often finding them after many months…
Big Budget Cuts Coming to MoCo
The Rogue Superintendent, Part One
County Council Member Valerie Ervin, the Chair of the Council’s Education Committee, recently called MCPS leader Jerry Weast a “rogue superintendent.” That statement is a culmination of years of tension…
Valerie Ervin on Maintenance of Effort
Following is an op-ed on the state’s Maintenance of Effort (MOE) law by County Council Member Valerie Ervin, Chair of the Council’s Education Committee, that appeared in the Gazette earlier…
A Note on Maintenance of Effort
One of the points made by Blair Lee in his must-read column on the state’s Maintenance of Effort (MOE) law for school funding is that Montgomery County has been paying…