Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We can't afford NOT to fund Kirwan. The schools are in trouble. You want businesses (and I'm not talking about the retail-on-the-bottom of condos businesses, I'm talking Fortune 500 or 1000 businesses) to move to Montgomery County? The schools must improve. Otherwise, no business is coming here.

It's a lot less expensive to educate a child, then put them in jail later. Not to mention, a good education leads to a good job, which leads to those same children paying more in taxes as an adult.

Their Kirwan Bill had a stopgap if the county collections dropped. This is why Hogan, the "moderate" Republican, sucks. He may be a great leader during this pandemic, but I hate every one of his policy decisions.

That’s ridiculous. Schools are not the reason that businesses are not coming to MoCo. It is the regulatory and tax environment. MD, and even more so MoCo, have rules and taxes that make it difficult and expensive to operate here. The business climate in VA and DC, to say nothing of other parts of the country, is much more friendly.

Despite griping here (and some legit problems) MoCo still has better schools than the vast majority of the country. They are better than DC and at least on par with VA. It is not schools that are causing the lack of jobs.

Sorry, if that fact doesn’t fit your political agenda.

+1 Montgomery County currently ranks 4th in per pupil spending in the US at $16,109 per student and yet we still can't get the job done.

Baltimore, Prince George's Count and Howard County are also in the top 10. Perhaps the issue isn't money but how it is being used and managed.

https://www.census.gov/library/visualizations/2019/comm/largest-school-districts.html

Hogan didn't veto Kirwan because of the pandemic. He vetoed Kirwan because he doesn't want Kirwan. Not now, not ever, not under any circumstances. He was always going to veto Kirwan.

Anonymous wrote:You're saying that revenues are going to plummet while at the same time complaining that the Kirwan funding exception only applies to plummeting revenues - i.e., right now.

No, I'm saying that the Kirwan funding exception only applies when revenues plummet large amounts, e.g. > 7.5% of the state revenues. That's good for probably this year and next year. But what happens in 2022, when state revenues are down 3%, but we still have not built up the state emergency funding. Where do we get $5B that the state is not bringing in with tax revenue? Should we raise property tax? That means home owners who have not recovered from being unemployed or having their businesses fail will now be facing foreclosure or bankruptcy. Should we raise income tax so people who are still maxed out on their revolving debt and living paycheck-to-paycheck have to choose between mortgage/rent, food for their families or necessities? Should we raise business taxes so that some of the small to middle range businesses who survived the pandemic and managed to just barely stay in business (doing better than the thousands of businesses that closed) now have to close or lay people off?

I agree that the Kirwan recommendations are good for school and good in general and that we definitely want to implement them. I just question why we have to pass a bill that runs the risk of financially bankrupting our state now. We can't afford it now. We have no idea what the future for MD is and how long it is going to take to economically recover from this crisis. I have a huge problem voting for a huge financial Sword of Damocles hanging over our heads ready to drop any moment and bankrupt the state. We should approve the Kirwan recommendations when the state is financially able to afford it or at least we can show a budget that will be able to handle these expenses based on our current revenue. Approving it first and hanging this huge debt over our heads without knowing how to pay for it is completely irresponsible.

You're saying that revenues are going to plummet while at the same time complaining that the Kirwan funding exception only applies to plummeting revenues - i.e., right now.