Prince George’s budget vote draws more criticism of council spending

The Prince George’s County Council voted to adopt a $6 billion budget, approving the spending plan with three members absent after several hours of delay and confusion. The council also approved changes that at least one member said she didn’t have sufficient time to review.

Council members voted 8-0 on Wednesday to adopt the budget around 7:30 p.m., roughly eight and a half hours after the initially scheduled hearing time. Council members Sydney Harrison, Wanika Fisher and Wala Blegay were absent.

The next day, the vote had renewed questions and criticism about the council’s management of the parks and planning commission’s budget, less than two months after state lawmakers restricted how they could use those funds.

Council members approved a measure to pull more than $39 million from the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission to seed a variety of programs, services and nonprofit organizations.

These types of transfers have caught the attention of state lawmakers, who last month restricted the council’s ability to draw down funding from the commission after budget season. The commission oversees parks, planning and recreation in Prince George’s and Montgomery counties. The County Council has the final vote over the commission’s budget.

The commission sends funds to county agencies and organizations through what’s known as “project charges,” which are reimbursements for expenses related to programs that could fit within the commission’s mandate.

On Thursday, Council Chair Krystal Oriadha responded to that criticism.

Oriadha said the commission’s budget was bloated and that the $39 million transfer will boost programs and services that more directly benefit county residents than what the commission offers.

“There’s this notion — and it’s sad, and I think that they’ve done a good job on their side doing — that somehow this is their money,” she said of the commission. “This is the residents’ money.”

She also said the transfer cut into the commission’s spending increases, including a significant pay raise that former planning board chair Darryl Barnes asked for before he resigned amid misconduct allegations. And she alleged that Barnes, a former delegate, had pushed his onetime colleagues to curtail the council’s authority to use commission funding.

“We know who was doing things that were allegedly illegal and fraudulent, and it wasn’t this council, right?” Oriadha said. “We weren’t the ones under investigation. We weren’t the ones, you know, doing things unethical. The former chairman was.”

Barnes declined to comment when reached by phone Thursday.

The Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission’s governing body, made up of the Prince George’s and Montgomery planning boards, has scheduled an emergency meeting in response to the cuts to its budget. The commission is planning to meet in closed session with its attorneys to “obtain legal advice” related to the County Council’s actions, according to a meeting agenda.

Increased investments

The project charges are being doled out to various county and city programs, as well as local nonprofits such as environmental groups and Boys & Girls clubs.

Oriadha said the council worked closely with County Executive Aisha Braveboy and her team on the spending plan. Late additions to the budget included more investment in a childcare scholarship program, rental assistance, support for children on the autism spectrum, senior meal programs and food delivery, small business assistance, road and sidewalk repairs, and more, Oriadha added.

“We’re really excited about the budget we passed,” she said.

To free up money for these priorities, Oriadha said her team examined agency budgets to identify excess or unspent funding, including vacant positions that have sat unfilled for years.

“This budget is an example of increasing services, increasing the investment without cutting into existing programs and without needing to do layoffs across the government,” while also closing a large deficit that was previously projected, she said.

The County Council did not upload the document detailing where the project charges were being allocated until after the budget vote.

Budget beefs

One planning commissioner, Manuel Geraldo, said the cuts would inhibit development and county parks and recreation programs.

He also questioned whether the move violated the new policy passed by the General Assembly last month and the state land-use law that governs how commission funds can be spent.

“The citizens need to know that we have plans to develop certain areas of the county and districts and do other programs, and that we’re going to be unable to do them because of the county council’s action,” Geraldo said during the Prince George’s County Planning Board’s regularly scheduled meeting on Thursday.

Del. Ben Barnes, a Democrat who represents Prince George’s and Anne Arundel counties and chairs the powerful House Appropriations Committee, helped lead the push to curtail the County Council’s authority to pull from the commission’s budget.

The council passes a budget by June of each year, but members had been stripping money from the commission’s budget even after voting to pass it.

Barnes said in an interview Thursday that his goal was to ensure the public had opportunities to weigh in and decide whether “the use of park and planning money is within the mission of park and planning.”

He added, “Protecting park and planning funds is something that I would expect the legislature to continue to have its eye on.”

Delays lead to confusion

On Wednesday, some council staff expressed confusion about the delays.

Council member Jolene Ivey, who was first elected in 2018, said she can’t remember a budget vote coming that late during her time on the council.

The vote was initially pushed from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., then moved back to 4:30 p.m. It was pushed back once more — to 6:30 p.m.

“It was a long and confusing day with not a lot of communication,” Ivey said. “It was definitely a moment that you had to trust the leadership of the council.”

Ivey said she received the main budget document just minutes before the budget vote was set to take place, around 7:30 p.m.

The documents sent to Ivey, which are also publicly available online as of Thursday, contained summary-level information on the budget as well as some adjustments made by the county executive across several departments.

It was unclear as of Thursday whether that summary accounted for all of the changes between the proposed and final budget.

Oriadha said the council delayed its vote several times because of “logistics.” She said the council’s staff includes several new employees who were working through their first budget process and may have underestimated how long it would take to prepare final documents for a vote.

She added that she met “constantly” with council members about the budget and made herself available all day Wednesday to answer lingering questions.

“Some people weren’t present or didn’t come talk to us,” she said. “Everyone has their own level of engagement.”

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