Prince George’s leaders rail against parks and planning commission’s lawsuit

Prince George’s County Council members dug in Thursday, defending their attempt to transfer nearly $40 million from a bi-county parks and planning commission in the face of a lawsuit by the agency filed this week.

On Tuesday, the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission, which oversees parks and recreation in Prince George’s and Montgomery counties, sued the county over its attempt to steer the commission’s funds toward a cohort of nonprofit groups selected by council members, as well as county government services, claiming it violated state law and the county’s charter.

County Executive Aisha Braveboy immediately pushed back on the legal argument offered by the commission, saying at a news conference Wednesday “the matter in question involved clerical and numerical errors within the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission’s budget documents.”

She said the resulting revisions to the budget, which the council passed Tuesday, were “administrative in nature and were being resolved through a cooperative process involving all parties.” On the same day the council passed the revised budget, the commission filed its lawsuit.

“The residents of this county expect their government institutions to work together to solve problems,” Braveboy said. “They expect us to focus on delivering services investing in communities, supporting families and advancing opportunities, and not to engage in unnecessary, disruptive lawsuits.”

The commission did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In ensuing news conferences and media scrums, council members have ratcheted up the attacks, asserting the Park and Planning Commission doesn’t trust the people of Prince George’s to run their own programs and would rather lavish its healthy reserve funds on itself than support average working people.

Flanked by the vice chair and the county attorney Thursday, Prince George’s County Council Chair Krystal Oriadha concluded a news conference by saying the council was blindsided by the lawsuit yet “remains committed with dialogue in collaboration and in partnership.”

“But let me be equally clear that we will vigorously defend the investment we made on behalf of our residents,” Oriadha said.

She added: “We will fight for the principle that taxpayer dollars should be directed towards serving the public, not expanding bureaucracy.”

In an email, the commission’s chief communications officer, Calista Black, responded to Oriadha’s comments by highlighting the agency’s work employing youth and seniors and hosting senior programs. The commission’s Department of Parks and Recreation employs more than 1,100 seniors and more than 2,100 young people between 15 and 29, Black said.

Oriadha was joined by two other council members: Vice Chair Eric Olson (District 3) and Tom Dernoga (District 1), who was first elected to the body in 2002. They spoke after several nonprofit leaders and municipal officials came to the lectern to attack a system that had dispensed hundreds of thousands of dollars to their organizations as overly bureaucratic and unreliable.

That system, known as “project charges,” has long functioned as a way for small nonprofit groups to receive reimbursements for their expenses related to recreational activities and other programming.

Nonprofit groups at the news conference Thursday — which included the Laurel Boys & Girls Club, The Training Source and Latin American Youth Center — stressed the importance of the funding. Those organizations received $230,000 to $670,000 per group over the past several years, according to budget documents.

But they also decried the more bureaucratic aspects of the system, such as having to submit invoices for reimbursement, and for at least one nonprofit director having to draw funds from his personal bank account to pay for programming.

In his remarks, Dernoga recounted the long history of the program, which has come under fire recently from state lawmakers who restricted when in the budget cycle council members could move and allocate money.

“The project charge program has been so poorly administered over the years that the dysfunction seems to be intentional,” Dernoga said. “You’ve heard it from the folks here. This is not this year or last year. This is every year. And the council, frankly, under Oriadha’s leadership, has pushed back on the dysfunction the last few years and frankly gotten punished for it, which is completely unfair.”

Bob Ponichtera, executive director of Liberty’s Promise, a nonprofit supporting young immigrants that has been allocated about $250,000 in project charge funding over the past several years, said, “without this funding, we wouldn’t be here at all.”

“So we really do appreciate the efforts of the County Council to make sure that transparency and accountability and streamlining of efforts take place and move forward,” Ponichtera said.

He went on to cite the example given by the Laurel Boys & Girls Club president, who went into his own bank account for expenses to be reimbursed by the commission.

“It’s shameful that people in the community have to take money out of their own pocket to serve the community. That’s not right,” he said.

Have a tip for our Prince George’s County reporters? Tell us here.