With Gov. Martin O’Malley’s budget proposal for next year due on Jan. 21, Maryland Education Coalition Chair Charlie Cooper urged residents to “stand up and organize” immediately to prevent cuts in state funds for public schools at a panel discussion Thursday at Bowie High School.
In light of a $1.6 billion shortfall the state will face next year, and the loss of federal funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, Cooper and other panel members expressed concern that education could face cuts in the governor’s plan or from the legislature’s “sharp knives” during a discussion in front of dozens of teachers, parents and others. The panel was organized by the Maryland Education Coalition, a non-profit advocacy group.
Local school systems are already struggling with their own budget pressures and hearing about other possible strains, such as a transfer of teacher pension coverage from the state to the counties.
The panelists asked attendees to rally to maintain state aid badly needed by local school systems by informing others and making themselves heard by state legislators and the governor.
“If we don’t make noise, those cuts are coming,” said Neil Bergsman, director of the Maryland Budget and Tax Policy Institute.
Monica Evans, a member of the Maryland Coalition for Inclusive Education and a parent of a kindergartner in a Prince George’s County public school, attended the event to get more information about how to best reach out to other people about what can be done to prevent cuts.
“We will have your back,” Evans told the panelists. “Our kids need us.”
The panelists suggested joining email listservs with information about when and how to contact legislators, as well as arranging meetings to organize schools and communities. They also recalled successful efforts in 2004 to protect education funding from cuts, which included a march in Annapolis during the legislative session.
Abigail Breiseth, co-founder and vice chair of Southwest Baltimore Charter School, said her school used “phone and email brigades” in 2004, a tactic she hopes to bring back.
“We’re going to have to benefit from our past experiences,” said Alvin Thornton, chair of a commission that developed one of the state’s key education funding formulas.
Thornton said that Marylanders have to let legislators know they are willing to put their money toward education, which must remain a priority for the state to succeed.
Shaun Adamec, a spokesman for the governor, said there are funds the state can rely on next year that will help protect education. Federal Race to the Top money will likely contribute, as will 80 percent of the $179 million the state gained from the Education Jobs Act of 2010.
“The governor I think in the last four years has demonstrated his commitment to education,” Adamec said.
Although the governor has not indicated he will make cuts to education, Cooper cautioned those at the event “against complacency.”
Lindsay Powers, Capital News Service
Bill Parks says
The financial mess we find ourselves in is of our own doing.
The United States is a sovereign monetary nation, meaning that we can issue all the money we need or want, without borrowing it from private sources like the Federal Reserve, or banks, or individuals, or foreign nations like China. By the government’s issuing all American money, lending it to the banking system, collecting interest as a form of revenue, and prohibiting the banking practice of fractional reserve lending as form of paperless counterfeiting, the federal government cannot only eliminate all federal deficits; it can issue and spend money directly into the economy for programs and infrastructure equal to the profit from its lending, without taxation; and it can issue enough money to pay off the national debt by substituting currency (cash) for government bonds without creating inflation nor depriving bond holders of any value of their holdings. A side benefit of paying off the national debt, would be a great stimulus to economic investment, the stimulus created by driving the money now parked in low-interest government bonds into the investment markets.
As a state Maryland is a horse of a different color because, as a state, it is not a sovereign and cannot issue its own currency. However, its structural deficit can be easily fixed. This can be done without increasing taxes or cutting state services, using a program being employed in a state that has a budget surplus of more than $2000 per capita, a low unemployment rate of about 3% and a near nonexistent foreclosure rate. To get ourselves out of this financial mess we must study the financial system and think differently.
Maryland can follow the lead of North Dakota. In the 1920s North Dakota, battered by severe fiscal difficulties, chartered its own bank, The State Bank of North Dakota. Depositing all state tax revenue in it, hiring professional bankers to run the operation, following the reserve lending rule established the Federal Reserve, North Dakota now operates its own bank with the profits going to the state treasury as revenue. Using a reserve ration of 9:1, The bank lends money to the state at very good rates. It also encourages state employees to do their banking with them, issuing mortgages and loans, profits from interest payment going to fund state service.
However, the bank is very conservative in seeking other customers. Working cooperatively with privately owned commercial banks, it is careful not to unfairly compete with them.
If Maryland were to create a similar banking system, having similar results on the same scale as North Dakota, it would soon have a budget surplus of about $10 billion.