Worcester County Commissioner Eric Fiori explains decision to not fund WCBOE above Maintenance of Effort

WORCESTER COUNTY, Md – Worcester County Commissioner Eric Fiori says for years the County Commissioners have been funding the district millions of dollars above the minimum requirement known as the maintenance of effort.
He says the trouble is every year that figure becomes the new minimum for the next year’s MOE and this year he says adding millions of dollars on top of that figure won’t happen unless the school can show them exactly where those dollars are going.

“With the impacts of the blueprint and the higher salaries that are coming forth and all our industries, including teaching, it’s made this budget a little bit more. We’ve looked at it a lot closer because these spends are going up considerably and we need to see where the tax dollars are going,” Fiori said.

He says even without the funding the school is still set to receive record funding levels including what the Commissioners put into an account to fund teachers’ pensions.
He says with over 70 new staff members hired in the last two years those costs are only going up.

He says even without that extra funding the school is still set to receive record funding levels including what the Commissioners put into the school budget on the back end to support the future of teacher pensions through a separate class of funding.

He says with over 70 new staff members hired in the last two years those costs are only going up.

“The Board of Education’s budget currently, they’ve funded this program flat for the last three years at $2.85 million. What a lot of people don’t see, the county does is come in and say, hang on a second, this program takes between 6 to $9 million per year, depending on retirees to fund, Fiori said adding that the commissioners are adding 3.8 million additional dollars for that purpose plus 4.5 million dollars into an investment style account to help secure future retirement funds.

“So what a lot of people don’t see when they’re saying, well, why aren’t you funding the school board at their full asking, well, actually, we’re funding tremendously higher, we’re filling in the gaps that the board of Ed is not in their budget,” Fiori said.

Fiori tells us the BOE is also set to receive 2.8 million in state funding with 4.1 million additional dollars also available to the district through state escrow grants.

Fiori says it he would be sold on adding additional funding above the MOE if he could see which line items it would be going, but he says the BOE has refused to send over those documents. Fiori tells us he is concerned over what he calls non-education spending being done by the BOE.

“We don’t want to run your department, we have enough to do on our own, We simply want to let the taxpayer see where all this money’s going,” Fiori said.

He tells us he is afraid a lack of transparent bookkeeping could also impact the school districts’ ability to receive Blueprint funding, as they won’t have the proper documentation to send to the state if they ask for the same thing the Commissioners are.

“Leadership has changed the state, they may look at this in a completely different manner, they may look at it and say ‘you don’t have clear financials, so we’re just going to fund you at X or Y’  and it’s a big concern because our county is one of the largest funding counties there is as far as the share from state to county, you know, I mean, we’re around 80 percent locally funded,” Fiori said.

He tells us despite multiple requests he still has not received budget details that he is satisfied with.

“What I received for documentation for the Board of Education. I wouldn’t make a decision in my own business budget from what I’ve received, not to mention the $132 million budget the BOE has,” Fiori said.

He tells he wants a collaborative process between the WCBOE and the commissioners, but they have options on the table if the district does not send them the budget breakdown they are asking for.

“We could call for a forensic audit to actually see and get a third party to come in. And this is one of the tools we have to actually look and dig in and dig into the box and see exactly where all this money is going,” Fiori said.

He tells us he expects teacher, faculty, and staff pay to be unaffected by keeping the funding to the MOE levels.

47ABC reached out to the WCBOE with a request for comment and did not receive a response.