In three months I’ll have been on the job for six years and have two remaining. Decisions that I and my team made early on are showing their impact, and a picture of legacy is beginning to emerge, particularly in education.
It started in December 2018, very soon after we showed up on the fourth floor of the Arundel Center. The Budget Office sits adjacent to the County Executive offices, and the team there, led for 25 years by the fiscally conservative and very outspoken Director John Hammond, was prepared for my arrival.
John and his staff sat me down for a presentation on the fiscal condition of the county, with initial projections of what we’d have to work with in the budget that would be due to the County Council that spring. They’d watched me campaign on a promise to increase teacher pay and implement the Anne Arundel County Public Schools facilities master plan. They also heard me say that I hoped to pay for it without a tax increase, but that I couldn’t promise that without seeing revenue projections.
The numbers they showed me were ominous. My predecessor had exceeded affordability in the last capital budget by $73 million. Full funding of the AACPS capital request would be impossible within revenue projections. I would need to raise revenue or cut projects.
But then Hammond let me in on two little-known facts. The first was that the county property tax cap, that had for so long been used as an excuse to underfund education, was in fact not a cap. He told us that the Maryland General Assembly had passed legislation preempting local caps when revenue from higher rates was needed to fund education.
He also told us that the county charter had a never-used provision allowing for the creation of special funds for permanent public improvements with dedicated revenue sources.
Hammond never recommended that we use these shiny new tools to solve our problem, but the fact that he, a former Republican elected official, offered them up to an incoming Democratic administration confirmed for me that career public servants do put service over politics. And it wasn’t the only time I learned that lesson. It happens every day.
Our first budget did create the Permanent Public Improvements fund, paid for with a one-tenth of one percent income tax increase, and it raised property taxes to cover the cost of new AACPS staff and long-awaited pay raises. I and the four County Council members who passed that historic budget were told that we’d all be voted out after one term, and we were willing to take that risk. But all of us who ran were re-elected with larger margins than before.
More importantly, that budget and the ones that followed made possible what happened this week.
School opened with fewer teacher vacancies than before the pandemic, and no bus driver vacancies. I spent the evening with Dr. Bedell last Thursday, and his enthusiasm was infectious. He said he’s never in his career seen such excitement among staff for the start of a school year, or seen it happen so smoothly. He credits the success in recruiting to word on the street that AACPS is a great place to work, where staff are respected and innovation is welcome.
Nobody thinks our work is done. Vacancies are still high in food service because those positions are still paid below market levels, and Dr. Bedell often passes out copies of his Belong, Grow, Succeed Strategic Plan to show everyone where we are headed.
But on Tuesday, the state released data showing that for the second year in a row our county’s math and reading scores are going up, and that our increases this year are the largest in the Baltimore region.
Because we fully funded the AACPS capital request that first year, we celebrated this week the openings of the extraordinary Severn Run High School, Two Rivers Elementary, and Old Mill Middle South. And there are more under construction.
Providing great facilities, great teachers, great support staff, great career readiness programs, and a great start in life to the young people of our county is pretty damn satisfying to those of us who pay attention to them and think about their futures. But the ripple effects are everything. Our economy depends on an educated workforce. Our public safety depends on the degree to which young people feel connected. Our community institutions thrive only if the next generation is prepared to take them over.
So forgive me for bragging about the wisdom of the hard budget decisions we made in year one, but this week the signs can’t be ignored. AACPS is ranked as the most sought after school system in D.C., Maryland, and Virginia, and the bond rating agencies got it right. We are a triple A place and our future is worth betting on.