Elrich, Friedson butt heads over MCPS funding

County executive accuses council of underfunding schools—in spite of council’s $26 million addition

May 22, 2024 3:30 p.m.

Montgomery County Executive Marc Elrich is criticizing the County Council for “underfunding schools,” even though his proposed fiscal year 2025 county operating budget includes less money for Montgomery County Public Schools than the council’s spending plan.  

In a straw vote Thursday, the County Council preliminarily approved a $7.1 billion county operating budget for fiscal year 2025, which includes $26.3 million more for Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) than had been allocated in Elrich’s proposed spending plan.

Elrich’s $7.1 billion budget proposal represents a 4.9% increase from the current fiscal year’s budget. His proposal for the next fiscal year, which starts July 1, includes $3.3 billion for MCPS, funding 98.2% of the county school board’s request. The total school spending showed a $107 million increase over spending in the current fiscal year, but also represented about a $60 million cut in the school board’s funding request, according to board documents.

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With the additional proposed money for MCPS, the council’s proposal would fund 99.2% of the school board’s budget request. The council is set to take a final vote on the budget Thursday.

“The school budget’s coming up pretty short. And it didn’t have to be,” Elrich said Tuesday in an interview with MoCo360. “I’m a little baffled about the logic behind some of this.”

In the interview, Elrich said he had always planned to use money from a tax dollar-fueled fund used to pay retirement health benefits to county employees to close the 1.8% gap between what he proposed for MCPS and what the school board requested.

“People are paying a whole lot of money into this fund for nothing,” Elrich said. “That money could have been used to meet the current needs of the school system.”

However, Elrich did not include that funding idea when he introduced his proposed budget on March 14.

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Council President Andrew Friedson (D-Dist. 1) told MoCo360 Tuesday that he had never seen a written proposal to use so-called Other Post-Employee Benefit (OPEB) funding and that it was not part of the spending plan or amendments Elrich submitted to the council in March. He first heard of Elrich’s idea when asked by a MoCo360 reporter about it Tuesday.

“It’s hard to take seriously criticism about underfunding education from a county executive who recommended a budget that funded education dramatically less than what the council supported and ultimately has recommended and is poised to approve,” Friedson said.

Friedson dismissed Elrich’s idea as not serious and said the county executive has a “history of robbing the OPEB trust fund.”

“OPEB is not just an abstract conglomeration of four letters. It is the public health benefits that we are obligated from a fiscal standpoint to pay,” Friedson said. “So if the county executive is suggesting that he would fund education on the backs of the health care of educators, retirees and public servants, I think that is a really bad idea.”

When asked if he thought the public were aware of his idea for schools funding, Elrich said he was “not sure it was obvious” because the money wasn’t listed as a budget line item since it would come from an existing fund.

Elrich said he believes the council’s decision during budget deliberations in 2023 not to raise the property tax rate by 10% to help fund MCPS, as he proposed, set the school system back. The council compromised with a 4.7% rate increase, while still fully funding the school budget proposal. Friedson, who was then council vice president, did not support a property tax rate increase.

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“The council created the problem last year when they told the school system to use $33 million to hire people. But that was federal money, not county money,” Elrich said. “Those costs rolled into this year’s budget, putting additional pressure on the budget, leaving aside the normal inflation and everything else the school system had to deal with.”

Both the council’s version of the budget and Elrich’s proposal did not require a property tax increase.

The two unions representing teachers and service employees in MCPS—the Montgomery County Education Association (MCEA) and the SEIU Local 500—expressed deep concern over the proposed school spending in the council’s budget in a joint press release Thursday. They had also been critical of Elrich’s proposed school budget.

The unions said they recognized the cuts to the school board’s recommended budget would not be “as severe” as under Elrich’s proposal, but noted the council’s request would leave the district with $30 million less than “what is necessary to maintain current services.”

“It’s dismaying to see that painful cuts to programs and positions will now be unavoidable in the coming year,” the release stated.

Some councilmembers still are not pleased with the council’s recommended MCPS spending plan. After Thursday’s straw vote, councilmember and Education and Culture Committee Chair Will Jawando (D-At-large) said he was concerned that the proposed increase to the school budget still wasn’t enough, and that the MCPS workforce is “being asked to do more with less.” Less funding will result in larger class sizes and program cuts, he said, adding that he has “deep reservations” about the proposed budget.

Friedson said Tuesday he knew there was “0.5% of disagreement” between Elrich’s budget and the council budget, but that he was confused by Elrich’s claims.

“The council had the difficult task of finding consensus among 11 members who have different priorities,” Friedson said. “It appears the county executive isn’t in consensus with his own budget.”

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