Wicomico Board of Ed Gets Snippy Over Padding Budget

July 7, 2009 by Cato  
Filed under Education, Maryland, Wicomico Politics

At this morning’s Wicomico County Council meeting the Wicomico County Board of Education (WCBOE) again showed that the taxpayers come last.  Appearing before the council for routine transfer of funds requests, WCBOE Comptroller Bruce Ford simply refused to provide adequate answers to questions from council members Joe Holloway and Gail Bartkovich.

When asked why the WCBOE couldn’t get a little closer in their budget estimates, Ford kept coming back to “the Board has never asked the the council for extra funds during the year”.  That’s true.  The reason for this is simple.  The WCBOE of deliberately pads its budget each year; with the surplus going to the “School Construction Fund”.

This, in and of itself, wouldn’t be so bad.  We all know that Wicomico County schools need maintenace (being the bureaucratic morass that it is, the “School Construction Fund” isn’t for school construction).  Maintaing our schools is definitely “for the children”.  Of course, robbing the “School Construction Fund” in the “Great Dollar Swap” doesn’t look so good when there is a slush fund of $7 million of the taxpayers money (the “Rate Stabilzation Fund”) that the WCBOE wants to use for little perks like upping the taxpayer portion on retiree health care.

Ford’s response to about why the county can budget closer was almost snippy – “Well we have more stringent reporting requirements than you do”.  No Mr. Ford!  The county government has to report to the TAXPAYERS and VOTERS of Wicomico County.  Perhaps one day, the WCBOE will learn that they are who the WCBOE works for as well.