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By Marc, April 28, 2010 9:32 pm

At a recent meeting of the Stafford County Board of Supervisors, Chairman Mark Dudenhefer (R-Garrisonville) made a stunning statement. He suggested that Republicans could look to make further cuts in the adopted FY’11 by withholding a percentage of county funds (a.k.a. holdback funds).

With the 7 percent holdback, they will have an opportunity to actually affect that budget by impacting that holdback of funds.

He made this statement in reference to Supervisor Susan Stimpson’s (R-Falmouth) statement that she was going to vote against the budget, since she wanted even deeper cuts. He suggested that this was still possible, even after passage, by not appropriating a portion of the holdback funds.

This is in sharp contrast to prior board precedent with regards to the purpose of holdback funds. The intent of holding back a percentage of funds appropriated to the county government and schools has been to avoid the situation where expected revenue is revised downward at the mid-year and it no longer supports the same level of budget expenditures. To me, it certainly makes good fiscal sense to hold back a certain percentage of funds, pending a mid-year review, although I would have required more justification on why 7 percent; however, I am deeply opposed to using this holdback as a way to affect adopted budgets outside of the normal budget process. This smells of politics at its worse.

This also presents significant problems for county government and the school system. They are essentially operating, based on their adopted budgets. If funds are cut surreptitiously, this will create a huge budget nightmare. If Stafford Republicans wanted to address specific budget items, they should have done it within the constraints of the normal budget process. Dude, say it isn’t so?!

If all of that wasn’t bad enough, Stafford Republicans, in approving the FY’11 budget, also voted to withhold the reappropriation of educational federal stimulus funds – pending accounting reports verifying the exact amount of unspent funds in FY’10. The fact is that Stafford Republicans were already provided this information by the school system. You see the information they were already provided doesn’t fit within their preconceived notions. They want to claim that this money was local money and not federal stimulus money, so that they can further cut the school budget by arguing that if they didn’t spend this money last year than they don’t need it this year.

As I previously mentioned, the school system froze expending federal stimulus funds in FY’10, during the FY’11 budget formulation process, to protect against a looming budget cliff that they identified due to significant declines in state and local revenues. The local decline in revenues were not only because of the struggling economy, but was actually exacerbated by Stafford Republicans fiscal irresponsibility.

By withholding these federal stimulus dollars from the school system, Stafford Republicans are potentially jeopardizing continuing a recent step increase given to teachers and other school employees into the next school year. Why you ask? The federal stimulus dollars were included as part of the instructional budget for next year. This instructional budget includes the large majority of employee salaries. If Stafford Republicans were not to reappropriate the $11 million or so of federal stimulus, not only would this raise be in jeopardy, but also significant teacher layoffs would be necessary.

It’s past time that Stafford Republicans stop playing political games with our teachers and children as their pawns! Enough is enough already.

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By Marc, April 23, 2010 10:29 pm

The Republican majority on the Stafford County Board of Supervisors sent a clear message on Tuesday evening to county residents and potential new businesses, “They do not value education and would prefer to play politics with our children’s future.”

They voted to underfund Stafford Schools to the tune of $5.6 million, providing a total of $100,693.774 in local money. The original request by the School Board was $106,371,217. This is approximately a 5.5 percent decrease from what was requested; and, it is approximately 3 percent less than the amount of county funds transferred to the schools in FY’10.

When adding in other revenue (state and federal), the Board of Supervisors adopted a total school operating budget for FY’11 of $237,261,940.  This is also a nearly 5 percent decrease in the total operating school budget compared to FY’10. The total budgeted amount in FY’10 was $248,480,087.

I know, I know, Republicans will tell you that the school system only estimates that they will spend $233,434,297 for FY’10, so they will claim to have provided a overall year-over-year increase for FY’11. This couldn’t be further from the truth.

Here’s the truth. In formulating the FY’11 budget, the school system projected a severe decline in total expected revenues. This was partly due to FY’10 non-recurring revenue sources (e.g. carryover funds from FY’09 being expended) and declining state and local revenues. The reasons for declining state revenues were mostly due to economic conditions; however, it was Gov. Bob McDonnell (R-VA) and Speaker Bill Howell (R-28^th) who chose to cover the majority of the state budget shortfall by slashing education spending.

Local revenue was declining too, but it wasn’t only because of economic conditions. You see, Stafford Republicans decided to exacerbate the county’s budget shortfall by repealing the business tax. This is the same tax that was estimated to generate $3.7 million in FY’10 and projected to generate $120 million over the next 20 years. In order to pay to repeal this tax, they used a portion of a school surplus that was discovered last year – due to a county accounting error. Add in the lost revenue from this tax in FY’11 and you’re staring down a self-inflicted $11.1 million problem created by Stafford Republicans. These funds could have been used to fully fund our schools.

Stafford Schools were dealing with a projected $25 million plus revenue shortfall for FY’11, due to these fiscal realities, so they took aggressive measures to avoid a potentially catastrophic budget situation. These measures included freezing expenditures of FY’10 federal stimulus funds, closely monitoring discretionary spending and instituting a hiring freeze. That is the reason why FY’10 spending is less than what was actually budgeted. This doesn’t mean that the school system doesn’t need these additional funds. They just needed them more in FY’11 to avoid a looming budget cliff, which would have resulted in significant teacher layoffs.

You see the school system did the responsible thing. This is more than what I can say for the county whose expenditures have regularly exceeded revenues in recent years. Due to this fiscal irresponsibility, the school system has had to bail out the county on numerous occasions. These bailouts have come at the expense of our teachers and children.

Also, can anyone remember the last time the county had a “clean” audit? In recent years, they have been repeatedly cited for significant deficiencies in their internal controls that resulted in reconciliations between the Treasurer’s Office and Finance Department not being performed in a timely and consistent manner throughout the year; and, just last year, they were cited for a material weakness in their internal controls that resulted in the discovery of a school surplus.

Here’s how their auditor defines the various deficiencies:

A control deficiency in an entity’s internal control over compliance exists when the design or operation of a control does not allow management or employees, in the normal course of performing their assigned functions, to prevent or detect noncompliance with a type of compliance requirement of a federal program on a timely basis. A significant deficiency is a control deficiency, or combination of control deficiencies, that adversely affects the entity’s ability to administer a federal program such that there is more than a remote likelihood that noncompliance with a type of compliance requirement of a federal program that is more than inconsequential will not be prevented or detected by the entity’s internal control.

A material weakness is a significant deficiency, or combination of significant deficiencies, that results in more than a remote likelihood that material noncompliance with a type of compliance requirement of a federal program will not be prevented or detected by the entity’s internal control.

If this doesn’t provide a moment of pause for folks, the fact that the Republican majority on the Board of Supervisors decided to take some financial authority away from the School Board by categorically funding the school operating budget this year should. I would think that they would focus on getting their house in order versus micro-managing the School Board.

This same majority on the board claims that by categorically funding the schools that the School Board will be forced to provide step increases for teachers, while denying administrators any raises. This shows how little they understand the school budget and budgets in general. The administrative category doesn’t ONLY contain administrators, but also critical “instructional” support personnel. It contains school nurses, occupational therapists, physical therapists, psychologists, speech therapists, social workers, and many other critical positions.

Let’s also not forget the other line items in the budget. Without bus drivers to get our children to school, how many of us would have to significantly adjust our work schedules to drop our children off? What about custodians who help maintain a clean environment or school security guards who help provide a safe environment for our children to be able to learn? What about technology teachers or computer technicians?

Clearly all of these employees play a critical role in educating our children. The fact is that the Republican majority on the board has neither “fully funded” the instruction line in the budget or any other lines for that matter. This is how they define working with the School Board. At least Supervisor Cord Sterling (R-Rock Hill) was being honest when he called for folks to fire the School Board. You see the Republican majority has no interest in working with the School Board; they simply want to get rid of them.

It’s also easy for them to say that teachers should get a step increase, but any step increase has a recurring annual cost. Part of the money for a step increase approved late last year by the School Board is currently being held in abeyance. Is the Board of Supervisors willing to provide the $3.8 million necessary to fund this step increase annually? I think not. It’s just more lip service for politicians more interested in the next election versus educating our children and providing fair compensation to our educators.

For Republicans, it’s easier to point fingers at the School Board then at themselves. The 12^th richest county in the nation should at least be able to provide fair pay to teachers. Currently, teachers in Stafford County make 10 percent below the national average.

I’d also like to remind folks that even if Republicans provided the same amount of funding to our schools as they did last year, this would still be an overall decrease in funding year-over-year. There are many fixed costs that rise annually, which must be funded. Just this year, health care premiums have risen for employees by 8.2 percent. The school system’s share of this increase equates to $1,807,039. What about mandatory increases for the Virginia Retirement System and retiree health insurance to the tune of $2,600,000.

It’s also not like operational and maintenance costs are decreasing. School buses are a good example. As part of Gov. McDonnell’s school budget cuts, he chose to extend the life of school buses from 12 to 15 years. The cost to maintain these buses past 12 years will be significant.

So simply providing the same amount of funding to the school system year-over-year would actually constitute a funding decrease. As I mentioned above, the Republican majority actually provided 3 percent less local funds than they provided last year.

Our schools are simply not a priority for this Republican majority. You need look no further then Stafford’s new 10-point Economic Development Plan where there is no mention of education.

In fairness, this hasn’t been a priority of any board for many years. Over the years, the Board of Supervisors have whittled away their local contribution to our schools. In the 10 years preceding 2006, based on past county budgets, 69 percent of county expenditures went towards our schools. In the recently approved budget, we are now down to around 54 percent.

Based on the latest data from the Virginia Department of Education, Stafford County now ranks 117 out of 132 districts in per pupil spending.  The local per pupil spending in Stafford County was $4,050. This is 36 percent below the state average of $5,504. Based on the amount of local funds provided to the school system this year, local per pupil spending will equate to $3,766.08. This is 46 percent below the aforementioned state average.

For those of you thinking that we are spending too much locally on education, I’ve got some news for you. Based on the projected number of students in FY’10-11 (26,737) and the number of required instructional days each academic year (180), Stafford County is ONLY paying $21 per day (or $3 per hour – based on current 7hr High School day) to educate our children. This hardly seems like a huge local burden.

Let’s put what Stafford County pays into better context. Last year, Stafford contributed $5,246,158 to the Rappahannock Regional Jail. They essentially share the costs to run the jail with the state, Fredericksburg, Spotsylvania and King George, based on the percentage of inmates they have currently in the jail. On average, the daily inmate count is somewhere around 950. Based on what we pay, let’s say for arguments sake that one-quarter of the inmates are from Stafford. That means we are paying approximately $60 per day to house our inmates. So are housing our inmates more important than educating our children? I say we ask Stafford County Supervisor Paul Milde (R-Aquia).  After all, he is on the Rappahannock Regional Jail Authority and is a former inmate himself (sorry, I couldn’t resist).

This sustained underfunding of our schools is having an effect and will have a bigger effect in the years to come. Currently, 53 percent of our schools have failed to meet Annual Yearly Progress; we now have the third highest K-7 pupil/teacher ratio in the state; and 80 percent of our Standards of Learning scores are at or below our neighbors or the state average, according to the Chairman of the School Board’s Finance and Budget Advisory Committee. If you seriously think that things are going to get better, based on these very troubling educational measures, you’ve got another thing coming.

The problem is that the funding problems will be even worse next year; and, the funding cliff that was avoided in FY’11 will be even higher in FY’12. The Board of Supervisors will not be able to rely on federal stimulus funds to supplant what should be a greater contribution to our schools by the county. This is because these funds will expire in FY’11.

What’s worse is that the Republican majority on the Board of Supervisors strongly believes that our schools are overfunded, not underfunded. If Supervisors Paul Milde (R-Aquia) and Susan Stimpson (R-Falmouth) had their way, they would have even slashed more from the school budget this year.

Stafford Republicans need to get their priorities straight and fully fund our schools. They constantly talk about bringing businesses to Stafford. I can assure you that businesses are taking notice of the complete lack of support the county is providing to its schools, when making decisions on whether to relocate.

Also ask yourself, what is the first thing someone asks a real estate agent when deciding on whether to relocate to a specific area? They want to know how strong the school system is there.

It’s time for Stafford Republicans to make education a priority again!

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By Marc, April 13, 2010 7:34 pm

On April 10, 2010, Supervisor Cord Sterling (R-Rock Hill) addressed his fellow tea baggers at a Tea Party rally in Stafford, VA.

Sterling is the worst type of politician: one who will say or do anything to further his political ambitions by distorting the truth. He loves to portray himself as a moderate Republican, but pretty much shattered this self-created myth when he came out of the closet as a tea bagger this past weekend.

Sterling railed against the recently signed health care reform law. In trying to get the crowd pumped up against this, he described how Sen. Chuck Schumer’s (D-NY) daughter was so happy that she didn’t need to work and could now be added to his health care plan. He claimed that this epitomized everything that was wrong with this bill. Only one problem for Sterling, this couldn’t be further from the TRUTH!

Here are Sterling’s exact words:

[Sen. Chuck Schumer’s] daughter had just called him, she was graduating or graduated from college, she said, “Good news dad, I don’t have to get a job now I can be on your health care bill.” He thought that was great, she gets health care I get the bill.

Here’s Sen. Chuck Schumer on March 28, 2010 on Meet the Press:

If you’re up to 26 years old you can stay on your parents’ health coverage. My daughter is graduating from law school. We told her the day after she graduates she’s on her own. She has a job in September, but she was fretting what does she do for the four months? Does she buy health insurance for $1200 a month? Well, she called me up at midnight after the bill passed and said, “Dad, I’m covered.”

I love how Sterling just makes shit up. This has become a disturbing pattern with him.

Sterling then pivoted from health care to judicial activism. Sterling rallied his fellow tea baggers, when he alleged that judges were displaying judicial activism by advocating the need for additional courtrooms within Stafford County, Virginia. Nothing fires up tea baggers more than evil judges.

Here’s what Sterling actually said:

The judges that occupy this building, they want to tell us that we need to spend an additional $30 million to build them a new courthouse…we have six judges, seven courtrooms and they think we need more courtrooms…it is essentially a 7 or 8 percent tax increase that they want to force upon us.

This is a convenient argument for Sterling. Only problem, if you’ve already guessed it, it isn’t completely true. I’m sure that you’re shocked by now.

The need for additional courtroom space has been many years in the making. In fact, Stafford Supervisor Paul Milde (R-Aquia) was on the original committee, I believe back in 2006 or so, that was tasked with the responsibility of coming up with cost-effective designs for new courtrooms. The total cost of their proposal was around $36 or $37 million.

The Board of Supervisors actually decided that this was too costly and voted to defer it until a later date. They decided to eventually revisit this issue and setup a citizens committee that they hoped would develop a more cost-effective proposal. They ended up proposing to refurbish the existing courthouse to the tune of between $23 and $25 million, which would have added two additional courtrooms.

I’ve spoken to several folks associated with Stafford County. They all noted that the current facilities are incredibly crowded and more space is needed. The courts are facing significant caseloads and are becoming overwhelmed, due to the facility constraints.

I know someone who recently served on a jury who said that the current facilities were a mess. Folks were strongly complaining about the overcrowding and the incredibly high temperature, due to so many people packing themselves into the facility. The Board of Supervisors have clearly identified the need for additional courtrooms; otherwise, they wouldn’t have been trying to find a cost-effective solution all of these years. The reality is the problem has only gotten worse.

The judges have simply identified a need and haven’t dictated a $30 million solution. It is folks like Milde and a citizens committee that have come up with these estimates.

There is no doubt in my mind that a real need exists. Sterling can ignore a county need, which he is really good at doing, or directly address it by coming up with a cost-effective solution. It’s clear to me that he would rather use this for political theater versus directly addressing it. If I were him, I wouldn’t get pulled over in Stafford County for any speeding tickets.

After his judicial activism bit, he wasn’t done with misleading his fellow tea baggers.

He praised himself for ridding the county of its Department of Transportation (DOT). He did rightfully note, in my opinion, that this department was completely unnecessary. I noted this in a prior blog post. However, his claim that he got rid of this department and saved money is a bit of a stretch. Stafford’s DOT employees were simply moved to another department. I’m by no means advocating that they should have fired these employees. What I am saying is that his claim that he is shrinking the size of government is a complete stretch. Plus this was the first time I’ve ever heard him speak out about this issue, so it’s interesting that he is claiming credit for it now.

Sterling wasn’t done with his distortions and attacks. He saved the best for last. He launched into a blistering attack of the school board. He claimed that the school system was asking for a $7.5 million increase in their school budget from last year, of which only $126 thousand would be used for education and the rest would go towards school administration. This is another flat out distortion of the facts by Sterling.

I’ve written quite a bit about our schools, so I won’t reiterate everything I’ve said before here (you can check out posts here, here and here). The short of it is that the school board requested the same level of funding that they received last year, which is actually a decrease when you take into account rising costs and cuts by the state.

I’ve spoken to folks associated with the school board and it appears that Sterling is simply adding up increases to various line items in the school budget without taking into account all of the line items that have been cut. He is simply cherry picking numbers that further his political agenda, which is defunding and crippling our public school system.  This was a popular theme throughout the Tea Party rally.

Sterling’s additional assertions on how money is being spent couldn’t be further from the truth. He simply doesn’t understand the school budget.

If he were so concerned about how money was being spent, you would think that he would sit down with school administrators or school board members to ask questions and work with them? You see that would make too much sense. He would rather scream, yell and distort the facts for his own political gain. His re-election slogan next year should be, “Putting Politics Ahead of Our Children.”

I also especially love Sterling’s call for the school to find efficiencies, which I think they have done an admirable job of thus far. This from the Board of Supervisors who haven’t had a clean audit in years! In the name of saving money, the school board refinanced some debt that saved the school system and county around $3.6 million. Sterling rewarded the school board by robbing them of this savings and using it to fund some of his other priorities. After all, getting re-elected is paramount.

I especially love the tea baggers from the crowd that screamed, “Fire them.” Referring to the school board, which Sterling responded, “I’m all for it, that’s in your hands. It’s in my hands too as a voter. I can’t fire them as a Supervisor.” Naturally, for Sterling, publicly insulting the school board and calling for their firing is a great way to build a strong working relationship.

I have a message for Sterling. The only person getting fired next year is you!

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By Marc, December 11, 2009 6:19 pm

In a follow-up to my post last week, the Stafford County School Board voted 5-2, late this past Tuesday evening, to provide almost ALL school employees a continuing pay rate increase (step increase) effective April 2010. The one group excluded from this increase is newly hired instructional staff, with teaching experience, hired this fiscal year (FY ’10), since they were already hired in at a higher step. This has been a sore subject for many returning teachers, who did not receive a cost-of-living raise or step increase this year; and, as a result, are making less in comparison to these new teachers, based in many cases on a similar amount of teaching experience. Those employees that are already topped out within the scale will receive stipends.

This vote was in response to a resolution passed (read more about it here) by the Stafford County Board of Supervisors last week that used a portion of a recently discovered surplus to provide bonuses for teachers, paraprofessionals, school nurses and sheriff deputies.

…At the end of the day, I’m happy that all school employees received a much deserved continual pay rate increase…This is by far a more equitable outcome than only providing raises (be it bonuses or step increases) to specific categories of school employees, as desired by the Board of Supervisors…The reality is that they would have and should have received raises earlier, if not for the “lost” school money that was recently discovered (i.e. the surplus)…

…The reason why they delayed this continuous pay rate increase until April 2010 is that the $1 million or so funds provided by the Board of Supervisors is only enough funds to provide this increase for a total of 3 months…It will cost approximately $4 million to fund this raise annually over a 12-month period…It is important to note that the fiscal year for the schools run from June to June…

Stafford County School Superintendent David Sawyer stated that the resolution passed by the Stafford County Board of Supervisors was non-biding and allowed the school board some leeway in spending the approximate $1 million they were provided. He presented several options and the school board eventually settled on the aforementioned distribution methodology, which provides a continuing pay rate increase for a much wider swath of school employees versus the narrow categories of school employees whom the Board of Supervisors prescribed bonuses.

According to the FLS, Superintendent Sawyer stated that the School Board’s decision was a

”bold step, in light of the fiscal circumstances.”

…As I stated last week, I think that all school employees (minus the administrators) deserved a continuing pay rate increase (step increase) over a bonus; however, I had grave concern over using the surplus to fund it…As I stated, I feel that if the board stops wasting money on staffing a large transportation department when they have no money or responsibility for transportation and stop wasting money on overpriced, exuberant procurements such as the radio communication system, when a cheaper one would have sufficed, then they would have plenty of funds to support our schools…

…I fear that unintended consequences of the Supervisors actions in spending the surplus funds may be the eventual layoff of school employees, pay cuts, larger class sizes or other unpalatable cuts, especially if state and local revenues continue to decline; Gov.-elect McDonnell (R-VA) follows through on his promise to raid the General Fund to pay for his transportation initiatives at the expense of Education funds; and the board doesn’t do a better job of prioritizing and spending our tax dollars…

…The Dude and Milde are also hell bent on repealing the business tax…How is this fiscally responsible when it is likely that the county will be facing a budget shortfall this fiscal year, due to likely declining revenues locally and statewide…So in a time of falling revenues they actually want to cause an even more dire fiscal situation…Of course they will disingenuously spew outrage over the usage of surplus funds for other purposes, since they want to use it to repeal the business tax…There will be a time and a place to discuss the merits or non-merits of the business tax and whether a return to the merchants capital tax is better or not and now is not the time…If this is so urgent why isn’t Spotsylvania or the City of Fredericksburg raising this issue too…

…It is likely that once this surplus is depleted that the only two options that supervisors will have at their disposal is to either cut core services or raise our property taxes, both of which would be hard to swallow right now…Our core services such as the schools, police and fire and rescue must be protected…

…I’ve also been closely following the discussion on the $7 million of appropriated FY’10 funds that have yet to be transferred to the schools…Several folks have brought this up as a major problem within other discussion forums…This sort of “hold-back” has been standard within the county for some time…The County Administrator regularly holds-back a percentage of money each year from each county department (7% this year)…A mid-year review is conducted in mid-January where budgets are reviewed and expected revenue projections are re-analyzed…Without holding back these funds, it would be very difficult to balance the budget based on revised revenue projections…I’ve been told that folks have expressed concern that if the funds are not transferred immediately to the schools that they will lose matching funds from the federal government…It is my understanding that this is not the case and that the school has met the current funding requirements, based on the funds already transferred…If I’m wrong, which is possible, I would welcome any corrections in the comments…