Maintenance of effort is a state requirement that ensures local jurisdictions match the state’s commitment to education rather than spend money allocated by the state on other departments.

The group of educators said on Tuesday that seven counties – including Anne Arundel and Montgomery – funded at below maintenance of efforts in their Fiscal Year 2012 budgets by a total of $243 million. 

The group said that if the county government does not meet maintenance of effort it suffers a penalty -- losses in the scheduled increase in state funding the following year.

The General Assembly authorized waiver requests from the law in the 1990s, but recently passed legislation that allows the penalties to be waived.

Sean Johnson, managing director for political and legislative affairs at the Maryland State Education Association, said that when the 2002 General Assembly enacted its Excellence in Public Schools Act it steadily increased its funding to localities year after year, but in recent years, he said, that funding “plateaued.”

“So the penalty aspect of this is broken as well. If the state is not in a position to investing more and more and more, it has lost its carrot stick relationship of ensuring that localities are keeping up their end of the bargain,” Johnson said.

“And so what you have then is there is no increase in state aid then there is no penalty,” Johnson said, “and if there is a nominal increase in state aid then you have case where localities are able to do a cost benefit analysis of we can reduce far less than maintenance of effort and just suffer a small penalty.”

The group wants to mandate that local jurisdictions request a waiver should maintenance of effort not be met. They are pushing to allow local governments to raise additional revenues by expanding the income tax add on or overriding local tax caps or providing other spending options to ensure that maintenance of effort is met.

“Last minute legislative changes in the 2011 [General Assembly] session have allowed local governments to dramatically lower their school funding, threatening the delicate state-local funding partnership and the continued high quality of our schools,” said Clara Floyd, president of the Maryland State Education Association.

The group said on Tuesday that legislators have pledged to ultimately craft  legislation toward fixing maintenance of effort requirements.

“The notion that maintenance of efforts only works if state funded increases are large enough to coax the counties into maintaining funding on a voluntary basis that’s weak regardless of how the economy goes,” said John Woolums, director of governmental relations for the Maryland Association of Boards of Education. “And you have county by county differences in how strong their commitment to public education is.

“Even in the best of times when state funding increases were generous there are counties who did their best to not provide more than a penny above maintenance of effort from year to year,” Woolums added. “Had they known at the time it was an option and not a mandate, we worried how that would have gone, and we worry going forward.”

Senate President Thomas V. "Mike" Miller and House Speaker Michael E. Busch warned local governments Friday to maintain school funding.