Franchot's at it again
An ordinary politician might be inclined to declare victory on the Baltimore County air conditioning issue. Mr. Franchot's pressure has certainly put the occasionally stifling conditions in some classrooms higher on the county's agenda. His advocacy, along with parents' complaints, no doubt helped prompt Mr. Kamenetz to develop a plan to install central AC in all schools by 2021 — and then to accelerate the plan to achieve the goal by the end of fiscal 2019. All but 10 county schools will have central air by the end of fiscal 2017.
But Mr. Franchot is no ordinary politician. He remains fixated on the idea that the county should immediately install window AC units in all un-air conditioned classrooms — or else.
Or else what? It's not clear, but Mr. Franchot told WYPR-FM reporter John Lee last week that Mr. Kamenetz had a choice to do things the “easy way” or the “hard way,” which he intimated would involve use of the Board of Public Works' power to interfere with the “considerable amount of school construction money that's up for approval.” Today, the Board of Public Works is set to vote on two items authorizing school construction funds, including about $7.7 million for Baltimore County Schools.
It's no surprise to hear Mr. Franchot wield an oversized rhetorical hammer on this issue. In January, he compared the lack of AC in county classrooms to the lead-tainted water crisis in Flint, and in the interview with Mr. Lee he decried Mr. Kamenetz's willingness to “stand in the doorway,” a reference — inadvertent, we're going to hope — to George Wallace's attempt to prevent the integration of the University of Alabama. But can he really do anything about it?
The Interagency Committee on School Construction, known as the IAC, has traditionally not allowed state school construction money to pay for window air conditioners. The rationale was that it was not a sound fiscal practice to issue state debt to pay for things with a useful life of less than 15 years (which is the repayment term of Maryland bonds). Messrs. Franchot and Hogan urged the IAC to change the policy. In early December, it was poised to hold a new vote on the issue but deferred the matter to allow more time to confer with leaders in the General Assembly. This touched off a war of words between Mr. Franchot and Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller, and then a move by Messrs. Franchot and Hogan to amend Maryland regulations to trump the IAC and allow state funds to be spent on window AC. That, in turn, prompted the legislature to include language in the capital budget approved this spring limiting the use of school construction funds to “costs that were eligible under the rules and regulations governing the program that were in effect on January 1, 2016.”
There has been some debate about whether that actually constrains the board's ability to authorize state funds for window AC, given that some of its members had publicly stated the belief that regardless of the IAC's internal policies, nothing in the Maryland code prohibited such use. That doesn't wash. An advisory letter from the attorney general's office concludes that the legislature's clear intent was to prevent state money from buying window AC. Common sense points in that direction as well — if window AC was acceptable “under the rules and regulations” as of Jan. 1, why did Mr. Franchot get so upset about the IAC's refusal to amend its policy, and why did he push that month for a change to the Maryland code of regulations to specifically authorize them? (An attorney for the board wrote last month that the proposed amendment was intended to clarify, not to change, the existing regulations.)
Mr. Franchot could presumably seek to withhold state aid to strong-arm Mr. Kamenetz into spending local funds on window AC. But it wouldn't be quick or easy. Generally speaking, the schools that lack central air also lack the electrical capacity to run window units, so putting them in will be disruptive, time consuming and not that cheap. In light of the county's plan to tackle the issue, that would mean an expenditure of some millions of dollars to keep kids and teachers comfortable a few days a year at most three years before they otherwise would be.
The comptroller has for years been preaching the need for fiscal responsibility, yet this is anything but.