2007 Maryland Bond Bill Funding
Cut Pork Instead of Asking for More Taxes
Richard Falknor
July 10, 2007

Marylanders are now subject to a din of governmentalist propaganda urging higher taxes. Of course, the problem is spending. A good way of understanding how too many legislators of both parties look at spending is to review the local projects they have just signed off on.

Click here for the list of recently funded local Maryland projects ("2007 Bond Bill Funding") prepared by the Department of Legislative Services. Some may be worthy of taxpayer support; others are obviously highly questionable as candidates for public money, even during a time of budgetary "plenty." 2007 is reportedly not such a time in Maryland.

More details on any given project are available by going to the General Assembly website, entering one of the bill numbers associated with a project, and clicking not only on the fiscal note but on something called the "bond bill fact sheet."

While the really big outlays in the Maryland budget are to be found in Thornton, Medicaid, transportation, and so forth, seriously advancing questionable local projects can be symbolic of the fiscal care a legislator takes.

Too often local media lead voters to see the "effectiveness" of a delegate or a state senator solely as that politician's ability to "bring home the bacon" instead of how well that elected officials carries out badly needed oversight of existing Maryland programs and expenditures.

As you can tell from the bond-bill list, these local projects have warm friends in both parties.

But the contrast in the list of bond projects that hit MTA in the face was the failure of an unusual and thoughtful proposal to give the Knowledge is Power (KIPP) Academy in Baltimore City a $100,000 grant - - - a proposal that received nothing, while the Junior League of Baltimore Thrift Store received $300,000.

Here is KIPP's track record according to the relevant "2007 Bond Bill Fact Sheet":

The mission of KIPP Baltimore is to create and operate public schools in Baltimore City that lead
students from low socioeconomic backgrounds and a diversity of skill levels to attend and succeed
in four-year colleges. KIPP Baltimore currently operates KIPP Ujima Village Academy, the
highest-performing public school serving middle grades in Baltimore. KIPP Ujima is a public
charter school that has been open since 2002. KIPP Ujima had the highest seventh and eighth-grade
scores in Maryland on the math section of the MSA and scores above the state average in reading
and math at grades 6-8. [Underscoring MTA's.]

MTA has this old-fashioned idea that when a school works very well in Baltimore City, it should go to the head of the line.

If you go through the "2007 Bond Bill Funding" list county by county and look at the linked bond bill fact sheets**, you will find expensive arts projects (and a riding park) in affluent communities - - - projects that could reasonably be expected to support themselves through charitable foundations rather than levying taxpayers. You will find "tourism" projects which, if truly financially viable, would be undertaken by the private sector including one that unfeeling budget hawks might call a "steamboat to nowhere" in Worcester County. And you will be reminded of the continuing taxpayer subsidy of union training at the National Labor College in Silver Spring.

Paying taxes is not discretionary. But using taxpayer dollars to pay for these local projects, however worthy of private and charitable support each individual one may be, is wholly discretionary for the General Assembly and the governor. And thus the buck stops on their desks.

**Readers are cautioned that the amount requested for each project on the linked bond bill fact sheets in the text is not necessarily the amount finally approved for the project by the General Assembly. That amount is on the bond-bill file.

Click here for "Maryland's Fiscal Folly," the National Taxpayers Union 2006 analysis of Maryland spending.