Email via Maryland Delegate Matt Morgan- MD 29-A
I wanted to bring this to your attention as the Board of County Commissioners of St. Mary’s have a late legislative request. I am surprised to learn from an email yesterday afternoon that the St. Mary’s Board of County Commissioners will be seeking an additional $30 million dollars in bonding authority.
It was about a month ago that the Board of County Commissioners and the Delegation held a public hearing where all legislative requests were supposed to be submitted to the Delegation for consideration. There was absolutely no hint or mention of this either during the public joint meeting, or during the months of preparation leading up to it.
This annual public meeting between the Board of County Commissioners and Delegation is held to give citizens an opportunity to weigh in on legislative proposals and especially proposals of fiscal importance. Every dollar that is spent by government is a dollar they have collected from someone else via taxation and $30 million is nothing to sneeze at. I believe the public should have had an opportunity to voice their concerns on this topic. I hope the Commissioners add this to their agenda at their next scheduled meeting to allow concerned citizens an opportunity to comment.
For the purpose of transparency, I have loaded the email and the request packet that includes a list of projects justifications to my website. You can find that link here. The Commissioner vote requesting the bonding authority was 4-1 with only Commissioner Hewitt voting against the request. It is important to remember that this request is only the authority to borrow, the actual exercising of bonding is at the Board of County Commissioner’s discretion.
The list of projects is only a justification to receive the authority to borrow from the General Assembly. Whether the projects are actually built after authority is granted, remains the discretion of the Board of County Commissioners.
Warm regards,
Matt Morgan
State Delegate 29A