State Funding

As a parent of two developmentally disabled sons, I wanted to respond to the editorial "A true need," Dec. 27. I think it's about time that someone highlighted the needs of this important population. The funding for services is inadequate at best and needs to be fixed. These folks could live full, productive lives if the services were there for them. My sons depend on the dedicated service providers who help support them both in school and at work. When the services they receive are cut and they lose the consistency of the coaches they like, it's hard.

Harford Community College students could have to pay $8 more per credit hour next year, nearly 10 percent more, even as the college plans to spend less to operate than it expects to spend this year. HCC officials also plan to spend nearly $12 million in capital building and renovation projections next year to add and upgrade facilities. The college is anticipating spending $45.6 million to operate in the fiscal year beginning July 1, which is about 1.4 percent less than in the current budget year, John Cox, HCC's vice president for finance, operations and government relations, said at Tuesday evening's monthly HCC Board of Trustees meeting.

Backers of a proposed Inner Harbor arena linked to an expanded convention center expect to ask the state to provide funds for preliminary planning and design for the project's $420 million public portion. The Greater Baltimore Committee, the business group leading the effort to expand the Baltimore Convention Center and link it to a new, privately financed 18,500-seat arena — as well as a 500-room hotel — plans to ask Gov. Martin O'Malley to include $2 million to $3 million in next year's capital budget, Donald C. Fry, president and chief executive of the GBC, said Monday.

Howard County Executive Ken Ulman is expected to unveil his budget proposal April 20, despite the uncertainty of state funding. Ulman and county budget administrator Ray Wacks gave few details this week, saying the uncertainty at the state level has created an added challenge in making the county's annual operating budget. "We haven't really made up our minds," Wacks said. "The level of uncertainty is pretty high right now. " If the state's "doomsday budget" goes into effect, Howard could stand to lose about 1 percent of its budget, or as much as $9.6 million in state aid for schools, community colleges and the library system, Wacks said.

Just days after news that Carroll County schools would lose $2 million in state funding for school construction projects, local officials announced yesterday that the system would receive the money. "The quote I have [from state officials] is that `The funding is not in jeopardy,'" Del. Susan W. Krebs, who represents South Carroll, said during a joint meeting of the school board and the county commissioners. "I'm confident we're going to have the $2 million. It's well-deserved." Last week, legislative budget analysts said that a state property tax cut supported by Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. and approved by the Board of Public Works would delay $16 million in school construction projects across the state.

The county will apply for additional state funding to continue preservation efforts in the Little Pipe Creek watershed, a 35,000-acre area on Carroll's western edge.The county commissioners approved yesterday a request by Philip J. Rovang, county planning director, to draft an application seeking funding through the state's Rural Legacy program. County officials have not determined how much Carroll would seek.The $29 million program, part of Gov. Parris N. Glendening's Smart Growth initiative, was created to protect land that might not qualify for other preservation programs.

Carroll Community College officials said yesterday they will not raise tuition next year because the school has received almost $900,000 in additional state money.The General Assembly last week approved a budget for community colleges in Maryland that included an extra $3.9 million for nine schools.Of that amount, Carroll received the largest chunk -- about $890,000, said Fred W. Puddester, deputy secretary of the state Department of Budget and Fiscal Planning.The extra money means the college won't raise its tuition of $48 per credit hour and will not ask the county for more money for fiscal year 1995, said Vice President of Administration Alan M. Schuman.

THE REPUBLICAN caucus of the Maryland General Assembly has proposed cutting state funding for the arts nearly in half for 1997. If enacted, the cuts would devastate local arts groups, forcing them to cancel performances, slash outreach programs, lower artistic standards and double or even triple ticket prices.The total savings from such a wholesale gutting of the arts would amount to about $3 million, or less than one-twentieth of 1 percent of the overall state budget. By such means does the GOP promise to bring economic growth and prosperity to Maryland.

STARNER'S DAM. Melrose. Smallwood. Know where they are in Carroll County? If the county commissioners approve, these places would soon achieve the status of official "rural villages."The county Planning and Zoning Commission has approved listings of 35 such places -- many you've never heard of -- for designation as villages with defined geographic boundaries.With eight established municipalities, Carroll is the leader in the region in incorporated towns. Now the list would grow to nearly blanket the county with villages.

State Sen. Thomas M. Middleton, a southern Maryland Democrat, said last week that he will not agree to spend state money to build a public golf course that has been proposed as part of a private housing development in Leonardtown.Prince George's County developer Mark Vogel has proposed developing 435 acres with 600 to 650 houses, a hotel and the golf course, which will be built on environmentally sensitive land that is otherwise unsuitable for construction. Vogel's initial proposal called for selling the land for the golf course for $3 million to a nonprofit corporation formed by the city of Leonardtown.

Maryland state Sen. Richard Colburn is fed up with the University of Maryland Environmental Law Clinic's lawsuit against a local chicken farm. But rather than try to shut the clinic down, Mr. Colburn introduced legislation to transfer $500,000 in funding from the University of Maryland to the University of Baltimore for the purpose of establishing an agricultural law clinic "dedicated to assisting farmers in the state with estates and trusts issues,...

Maryland's attorney general said Friday that the nearly $60 million from the national mortgage settlement that the state controls would be used to help people "victimized by the egregious conduct of the banks," in contrast with some states that intend to use their shares to plug budget holes. Attorney General Douglas F. Gansler also said his office is pursuing criminal investigations related to mortgage and foreclosure fraud, though he didn't say whether cases related to the "robo-signing" that prompted the settlement might be filed.

Maryland succeeded in raising $84 million to invest in promising technology companies across the state via a novel online auction of tax credits, officials announced Thursday. The InvestMaryland plan, a cornerstone of Gov. Martin O'Malley's legislative platform last year, completed a key milestone with the online auction, in which 24 insurance companies bid up the price of tax credits they wanted to receive in the future. In the end, 11 companies won the credits and the state surpassed the minimum of $70 million that it expected to receive.

Companies seeking lucrative state contracts and business deals in Maryland made five- and six-figure contributions in recent months to a Democratic governors group led by Gov. Martin O'Malley, federal records show. Firms making large gifts to the Democratic Governors Association in the last six months of 2011 include bidders for a $2.4 billion state employee health contract, a $56 million deal to rebuild highway rest stops and the license to run Baltimore's slots casino. O'Malley, who has been the association's chairman since December 2010, has said the contributions have nothing to do with his decisions as governor.

Whether Maryland's historically black colleges and universities can compete in producing graduates commensurate in ability with those of other institutions in the state should be the sole factor in determining their funding ("Md. fails to keep its promise to HBCUs," Dec. 28). The necessity to constantly compensate for past discrimination, real or imagined, has ended. To the extent that Maryland's HBCUs feel their state funding hasn't kept pace with that of other state institutions of higher learning, their complaint could be addressed by merging the HBCUs more completely into the overall University System of Maryland.

I am troubled by the assumption of PlanMaryland opponents that they have an inalienable and eternal right to our tax dollars to support their high maintenance and energy consumption lifestyle. The purpose of the PlanMaryland legislation, like smart growth before it, is to withhold state funding for bad choices about how and where to live made by local government. If they persist in turning cornfields into vinyl McMansions, they shouldn't do it on my tax dollars. It's bad enough that any corporate functionary should get a mortgage interest deduction for living in a house with a profligate carbon footprint and commute on roads newly built on some of the best farmland on the planet.

COLLEGE PARK - Maryland's higher-education leaders told a special legislative committee last night that the only way they can moderate the rise in college costs is if lawmakers again start providing reliable increases in state funding. "The way to bring tuition increases under control is to have a balanced investment where the state pays its share and students pay their share," said University System of Maryland Chancellor William E. Kirwan at the hearing on the University of Maryland campus here.

SYKESVILLE gets it all: all the money it has spent planning redevelopment of the 138-acre Warfield Complex the town is acquiring; all the boost of a $25-million-plus state police training facility as anchor for those former Springfield mental hospital grounds. State funding gives the town a running start toward making the annexed property a viable addition to the community. Instead of office buildings, apartment houses, a hotel and high-tech firms once planned for the complex, the property will see nonprofits and public agencies as its first tenants.

If Gov. Martin O'Malley has his way, future generations of Marylanders will be forced to live where current residents are fleeing. His PlanMaryland - and it is truly his, as it was assigned through executive order - will dangle development money at counties abiding by "sustainable" development paths and withhold it from counties pursuing "unsustainable" growth plans. Sustainable is one of those terms, like climate change, whose meanings are so subjective and mutable that they could raise George Orwell from the dead in protest of their abuse of the English language.

The city has received $150,000 in state funding to replace old playground equipment at the Cypress Street field, adjacent to the Robert J. DiPietro Community Center. The funding came from the Maryland Department of Natural Resources Community Parks and Playground program. The Community Parks and Playground program has funded new playgrounds for many of Laurel's parks, including Riverfront Park, Leo E. Wilson Community Park, Emancipation Community Park, Alice B. McCullough Field, Discovery Park, Roland B. Sweitzer Community Park and Snowden Place Park.