Security Plans and the Budget Debate

The Sun noted the following in today's edition. And there are some interesting contrasts here:

Anne Arundel County school board members approved $2.7 million for stiffer school security, despite their own concerns about how the money fits into a sweeping $39 million security plan. It is a plan they have been told about for two years, but still have not seen.

At a meeting Wednesday, the board approved $1.2 million - on top of $1.5 million given last summer - for improvements such as cameras at schools, fencing and expanded security at athletic events.

But school board members said the approval for extra funds put them in an awkward situation of not knowing how their spending this year gels with $39 million of security weaknesses highlighted in a 2005 consultant's report.

"You keep talking about this $39 million security plan ... .we have all asked for it over and over again ... .we have yet to see it," school board member Ned Carey said briskly at the school system's security head, Edward Piper.

Piper declined to be interviewed .

Later, Carey said, "The board deserves to see something if we're going to be asked to spend $39 million on something. We have a responsibility to taxpayers that we show we're using money efficiently...."

...Carey said he understands that some school security information can be kept private, but said the school board should still be given an outline of what the district proposes to do to improve school safety.

"Do they want cameras? Do they want fencing? Is all the security technology going to be integrated? We need to know these things," Carey said. "You can't do security piecemeal. We have to see the larger plan."

There is an interesting disconnect between what the Board members do and do not know about the security plan. The Board has been asked to spend $39 million on a plan that nobody seems to know too much about...even the head of the security system.

What does this have to do with the recent budget debate? Everything. Because the majority of the same school board, as we have noted repeatedly, has signed up to support Kevin Maxwell's proposed $131 million budget increase, as well as his idea for an increase in the income tax, without seeming to know too much of the specifics of how the money is going to be used. Ned Carey noted that the Board owes it to the taxpayers to show that they are using money efficiently. But at no point has anybody on the Board (outside of Vic Bernson and Mike Leahy) suggested that such efficient use of money be show as part of the Maxwell budget plan.

Furthermore, I am deeply troubled that there is no overall plan for the use of these security dollars. It leads one to ask not what the plan is, but if there is a plan at all. Is the plan at the moment really to have this pot of $39 million available to spend on an as need basis. There seems to be a plan out there somewhere in the ether, at the very least the idea of cameras in all of the schools (never mind the Orwellian connotations that entails).

Finally, it makes me question the planning ability of the bureaucracy down on Riva Road. Are the problems with planning in the Security a microcosm of planning problems across the school system? Are there other departments, perhaps directly related to educational programs, that are also run so haphazardly?

Every time we turn around, there is another reason to be concerned about Maxwell's proposed budget increase, and the cry for additional tax revenues. At this point, I wonder if Maxwell and the rest of his bureaucracy actually have a plan they can defend that could even remotely justify such an audacious spending request.