Are Complaints Over Shifting Pension Burden Just "Crocodile Tears?"

Fraser this is a complex issue and mr rascovar doesn't understand it. Maryland law was designed to insulate education entities such as school boards from political influence. State law trumps county law. Thus boards of education are quite independent from county governments. Not so bad, but...That independence is greatly increased by another part of state law that applies only to boards od Ed. Their county funding is essentially guaranteed by the state law that requires counties to maintain board of ed funding at least at the level of per student support for the previous year for school boards. This rule serves some good purposes such as not allowing counties to cut their funding whenever the state increases it's funding for education. But in this case it is being used to force counties and everything else they fund to assume financial responsibility for teacher pensions. That will mean shifting costs --actually reducing funding --to community colleges, police, libraries, cutting capital projects and even more layoffs in county governments in more hard pressed jurisdictions --all to pay for teacher pensions. To understand why this was proposed just look at who benefits. This deal was negotiated with teachers union and the boards of Ed. In exchange for an even tighter maintenance of effort.

If the pension is to be shifted it should be shifted gradually to the education boards responsible for negotiating salaries and benefits for educators. That clearly makes sense and motivates some effort to reduce costs. Over time the counties will pick up those costs via the budget request process. But boards of Ed will have to ask for the money. The governors approach will backfire on the teachers union. It will create endless enmity toward teachers and boards of Ed by counties and at least initially by their unions. That does not bode well for the future of the pension or the independence of boards of education. And insulating boards of Ed from the impact of their salary negotiations on pensions will backfire on the state.