From H. LeRoy Whiteley, Jr., president of Marylanders for Fair Property Taxation:
UNBELIEVABLE!!!!!!!!!!!
We wish we could say this is an April Fools joke but the truth is it is a fool’s joke. We the taxpayers are the fools if we allow the members of the General Assembly to introduce a bill late in the session through a waiver of the rules and then expect us to permit the out-of-control Board of Education spenders to create their own property taxing authority. HEAVEN HELP US IF THIS IS ALLOWED TO HAPPEN!!!!
Delegate Sheila Hixson has introduced HB 1352 Local School Boards — Authority to Impose a Property Tax. She accomplished this late bill introduction by suspension of the rules in a 129 to 7 vote. WE HAVE ALREADY CONTACTED OUR LEGISLATORS ASKING THEM TO EXEMPT OUR COUNTY FROM THIS HORRENDOUS BILL.
We urge you to take immediate steps to CONTACT YOUR SENATORS AND REPRESENTATIVES asking them to exempt your county from this sneaky snake bill and then to do all within their power to squash this precedent setting action from taking place anywhere in our over taxed state.
Giving an appointed or largely appointed school board with no accountability or responsibility to the electorate this authority to impose MORE PROPERTY TAXES ON US is absolutely ludicrous. Don’t let it happen!!
Remember Nothing Happens Unless We Make It Happen!!!!!!
Thank You. Roy Whiteley
And to make matters worse, all our delegates voted to suspend the rules allow this bill to be introduced after the cut off date. I want to know why.
ms ryder,
sound like just another level of manusha.
here a novel idea, why don’t they all, get out of our lives and stop taxing us. we give enough and they can’t spent it resposiblty, and you want to let someone else into our pocket.
I would think you would want the school board to be able to tax. With our newly elected school board we have much more control over who is on the board and how they spend our money. This is the way it is done in large parts of the country and seems to work well. You would have two separate taxing authorities (county government and school board) and voters would be able to see which group is doing what with our tax money. The county government would only have to worry about their functions and let the school board address theirs.
This is done in other states, but the school districts must ask the voters to approve the levy rate.
To answer Ms. Ryder’s question: People who make politics their career (It should not be available as a career) are not the brightest bulbs in the socket. Don’t ever be amazed at some of the things they do. I listened to the sponsor of this legislation, and I thank God she is not running the Calvert Cliffs nuclear facility.
I think Joan raises a great point. Why did our elected officials vote to allow this to move forward? Next, I second the thoughts of Mr. Whiteley, this is ludicrous.
Anyone have a copy of the Bill? Sorry, but I won’t believe it (or at least his interpretation of it) until I read it.
Go to the General Assembly’s web page. You can see the text of any bill introduced in the session.
They do this in other states and it seems to work fine and I don’t have a problem it in theory. If this were going to pass in MD then all school boards in the state should be 100% elected so there is accountability. The county government obviously would have a much smaller budget and would be collecting a much smaller amount of taxes since currently HCPS makes up such a huge portion of the budget.
In Delaware, school boards can levy property taxes, but any increases must pass a referendum within that school district (school districts aren’t by county in DE.)
Yes, an all elected school board with taxing authority that answers directly to the votes. Sounds like a winner to me. Mr. Whitely should not fight this he should embrace it. Actually, Mr. Whiteley should start a petition to get this on the ballot. It would give him exactly what he wants – elected accountability.
You make a good point.
Some people might be concerned that this dual system could be used as a decoy to further expand property taxes.
Watcher
http://mlis.state.md.us/2011rs/bills/hb/hb1352f.pdf
I, too, think this could be a better way IF voters have a say over bond issues and tax increases, BUT that doesn’t appear to be in this bill. This bill is about giving local (mostly unaccountable) school boards the right to set the rate and issues whatever bonds they want, with little oversight. You could argue that if the rates go too high, we can vote out whoever raised them, but remember “Maintenance of Effort” would make it impossible to reduce a bloated budget. The BOE right now spends like there’s no tomorrow, I could only imagine what they would do if they were given the authority to set their own budget.
MOE would be gone as it requires the county council to fund. If this passed the COuncil would not be funding anymore. This is what most of the country who has elected school boards has. Remember when the war cry was most every where else has an elected BOE? Well this is why!
I spent two years living right over the PA line in Fawn Grove in the Southeastern School District where there is an elected school board. Ask any resident of that area what they think about the school board having taxing authority. The school board is allowed to essentially raise taxes in whatever manner they deem fit. In one year our “school taxes” rose 80%. We moved back to Harford Co after those two years. I believe giving the school board taxing authority would be a potentially dangerous situation for the tax payers of this county. Regardless of whether or not our elected officials answer to the voters they can still make decisions that do not mirror our own.
What do you think elected boards do? You people created a monster when you insisted on this. Didn’t anyone look into this?
Gary, in case you missed the memo, Harford County has a hybrid school board, partially elected, partially appointed by the spendthrifts in Annapolis (His Nibs in particular); and even though the unworkable hydra was approved, I’m not certain it has even taken effect yet. So even though there are, or will be, members of the board who are accountable to the people, there are still people on the board who kiss up to the governor — and those people will always be looking to their own interests and futures rather than the county’s and the taxpayers’, much less the students’. A fully elected school board would have to answer to the will of the people the next time their terms come up for a vote. Appointed board members never do.
The process of electing school board members has already started. Mr. Frisch and Mr. Grambo were elected and have already taken seats vacated by the previously appointed members from their districts. These two have already begun to show their interest in fiscal responsibility by the school board.