January 30, 2009 MC 930-09

Testimony in support of MC 930-09Montgomery County Public Schools - Funding Accountability and Transparency Act

Louis Wilen, Olney, Maryland on behalf of the Parents’ Coalition of Montgomery County

Good morning. Thank you for allowing me to testify today.

My name is Louis Wilen and I am testifying on behalf of the Parents’ Coalition of Montgomery County.The Parents’ Coalition is a group of over 300 parents, educators, and other parties who seek toimprove transparency and accountability in Montgomery County Public Schools.

I am also a parent of two current MCPS students and one MCPS graduate, so I’m obviously asupporter of public education.

There are several reasons that we need the Montgomery County Public Schools - FundingAccountability and Transparency Act.

First, transparency and accountability expands support for public education. When taxpayers are ableto see where their money is going, their trust of government increases. They feel that they are part of the decision-making process.

Another reason that we need the MCPS Funding Accountability and Transparency Act is to remedy anunintended consequence of the Maryland Funding Accountability and Transparency Act of 2008. The2008 law improves transparency for most state agencies. However, according to the MarylandAttorney General, the 2008 law exempts MCPS from reporting payments and even preempts thecounty government from imposing transparency and accountability on MCPS, even though MCPSfunding comprises about half of the county’s four billion dollar budget. The proposed MCPS FundingAccountability and Transparency Act rectifies the flaw in the 2008 law.

The third and final reason that we need the MCPS Funding Accountability and Transparency Act is toimprove oversight of our 2.2 billion dollar school system’s spending. Just last week, the Office of Legislative Audits released an audit of MCPS. I won’t repeat the findings of the auditor here, but I doask that you take at least a few minutes to review the 91 page report that is available on the Office of Legislative Audits web site, http://www.ola.state.md.us. The MCPS Funding Accountability andTransparency Act will help to prevent the problems that the audit reveals.

Finally, I want to mention that the cost for putting MCPS spending data online is likely to be much lower than the numbers that have been mentioned by the MCPS Board of Education. In a meeting earlier thismonth, the BOE members and MCPS executives tossed around figures of $50,000 to $200,000 to setup the website and database. I work in the information systems industry, and I regularly helpcommercial customers and government agencies implement web-based, searchable databasesystems. The searchable database application required by the MCPS Funding Accountability andTransparency Act is simple to implement because it requires no complex programming and is a read-only system. It certainly would not cost $200,000 to develop and implement the application, and even$50,000 would be very generous. I estimate that the system could be implemented for under $5,000.Also, because the spending data is already stored in machine readable form in an MCPS database, itshould cost under $1,000 per year to maintain and update the public database on a monthly basis.

Please support the Montgomery County Public Schools - Funding Accountability and TransparencyAct.

Thank you.