It’s time to get real about the surging costs of education spending. That’s the message coming from Harford County Executive Bob Cassilly. The Harford County Republican tells Project Baltimore Marylanders will suffer if state leaders in Annapolis don’t adjust the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future.
“The day of reckoning is here,” Cassilly said.
Cassilly believes Maryland is at a crossroads. What happens in the final weeks of this year’s legislative session in Annapolis, he predicts, will have a significant and lasting impact on public schools and taxpayers.
When asked whether the county will have to increase taxes, Cassilly responded: “It’s hard to think how you make it through these historic kind of increases without some big changes in how we operate what we do.”
The historic increases Cassilly is referring to involves new cost projections associated with the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future. If nothing changes, taxpayers in his county will owe tens of millions of more dollars than previously estimated.
“This thing is grossly unaffordable,” Cassilly said. “What we have to do is just cut back on other services that we’re providing people.”
The Blueprint for Maryland’s Future, passed in 2021, pumps billions of additional state and local tax dollars into public education every year. The law, in part, increases teacher salaries, expands pre-K and doubles teacher collaboration time.
In 2022, the Department of Legislation Services released a report projecting Blueprint costs for Maryland’s 24 local jurisdictions in coming years. This year an updated report was released and the funding amounts increased statewide by hundreds of millions of dollars every year.
In 2022, DLS estimated Harford County would owe $302 million in Blueprint funding in 2025. But updated numbers show Harford County now owes $321 million for 2025 – a nearly $19 million increase. And that’s just in one county, in one year.
Over the next five years, the new DLS estimates show Harford County taxpayers owe a total of $1.67 billion in Blueprint funding, $121 million more than previously projected.
“The whole mechanism here that was set up, it just doesn’t make any sense. And so of course, you’re going to cost overruns,” said Cassilly.
In an email, DLS said the prior projections were inaccurate due to a combination of factors.
First, since 2022, local jurisdictions varied how they funded education. Those differences affected projections in subsequent years. Also, in 2022, Maryland passed a law shifting more of the Blueprint funding burden from the state to the counties. Finally, in 2022, according to DLS, the state underestimated the economic impact the pandemic would have on the number of Maryland students living in poverty, which drove up Blueprint projections.
“There’s no better time than now to make sure that we’re investing in a world-class public education system here in Maryland,” said Maryland Senate President Bill Ferguson at a recent press conference in Annapolis.
When asked about the Blueprint’s soaring cost projections, Ferguson said: “If we want to create a society where everybody has the opportunity to truly thrive, we have to invest in our public education system to give children a chance to meet their potential.”
Cassilly said the approach has flaws.
“This one size fits all, let’s just put money bombs out there and scoop up massive amounts of taxpayers’ money and throw it at the problem — it’s just not a viable solution to this,” Cassilly said.
With these new cost projections, Cassilly is calling on lawmakers in Annapolis to adjust the Blueprint to ease the burden on local taxpayers. But time is running out. The final day of this year’s legislative session is April 7.
“You’re impacting taxpayers and impacting families,” Cassilly said. “You’re impacting local governments at just unprecedented levels. It’s time to get real in Annapolis and take a step back and do the right thing.”
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