Contact Your Senators Now to Vote YES on Senate Bill 848 to Fix Maintenance of Effort!
Contact by District, County, or Name
The Maryland Association of Boards of Education (MABE) and all 24 local boards of education strongly support SB 848, the Maintenance of Effort reform legislation. SB 848 satisfies all of the goals and objectives of MABE’s top legislative priority.
We urge support for SB 848 because it provides:
- Accountability: Making maintenance of effort the local funding floor, with a mandated waiver process to prevent counties from unilaterally rebasing at lower funding levels;
- Flexibility: Improving and expanding the State Board of Education’s waiver process;
- Fairness: Making the penalty for a county not meeting maintenance of effort without a waiver apply to the county, rather than the school system;
- Predictability: Providing a reasonable expectation for school board budgets for students, parents, and school employees; and
- Transparency: Guaranteeing an open process by which counties must request waivers to fund below the minimum maintenance of effort amount.
The long-term quality of teaching and learning in our schools depends on adequate local funding. The future security of adequate local funding depends on legislator's support for SB 848.
Please thank legislators for their continued support for Maryland’s outstanding public schools, and stress that we need their votes for SB 848 to fix Maintenance of Effort.
Call and email your Senator today!
To assist you in contacting your Senators, use these links to find them by: District, County, or Name.
Background: The Senate is now prepared to vote on a package of enormously important bills, including the Budget, Budget Reconciliation and Financing Act, Revenue bill, and Maintenance of Effort (MOE) Reform bill. All four of these bills were approved last week in the Budget & Taxation Committee.
The budget and revenue bills, containing tax increases and the shift of pension costs to the counties, are actually easier hurdles for the Senate to clear than the MOE bill. Why? The main reasons are that the MOE bill, Senate Bill 848, is an emergency bill requiring a three-fifths majority vote, and it’s facing strong opposition from county governments and the Maryland Association of Counties (MACo). The bill needs to be an emergency bill because it impacts the MOE waiver process for FY 2013 and needs to take effect as soon as signed by the Governor rather than waiting until the earliest regular effective date of June 1.
Therefore, it is critically important to make sure that every Senator hears from his or her board of education in strong support for SB 848 to fix MOE. Call and email your Senator today!
