General Assembly 2019 – County Secures More Than $1.5 Billion in State Aid
Dear Friends:
Last night, the 2019 session of the Maryland General Assembly came to an end when the clock struck midnight. While the end of session is usually a time for celebration as we made it through the grueling 90 days and, working together, secured needed resources for Prince George’s County, our hearts were heavy as we continued to grieve the passing of Speaker Busch.
As many of you know, Speaker Busch has long been a champion for citizens across the State of Maryland and friend of Prince George’s County. I had the opportunity to work with Speaker Busch on several pieces of legislation that are important to Prince Georgians and he will be missed.
I am very proud of the work that Team Prince George’s accomplished over the last three months. On the opening day of session, I stood with the members of our state delegation, the County Council and the leadership of our school system and we told everyone that we were going to work together to bring home the needed resources for our citizens, and we succeeded in a big way.
In total, we brought home over $1.5 billion in state aid.
Education was our top priority and we had two major victories.
With the passage of the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future, we anticipate receiving $53 million in Kirwan Funding. This will help our school system work to increase teacher pay, as well as the number of Pre-K opportunities for our children as we work towards providing universal Pre-K.
We were also able to secure passage of legislation that will be the first step towards addressing our $8.5 billion backlog for school construction and renovation projects. The bill establishes the Prince George’s County Public-Private Partnership Fund, which makes us the first jurisdiction in the state to have this type of structure in place to build schools. While there is not a commitment of state funding yet, we know that will come over the next two years and when it does, it will allow us to build 18 schools over a 7-year period, and we will do it at a cost savings and faster than it has been done before.
New funding wasn’t our only educational success. We are very excited that our youth sports legislation passed, establishing a Youth Sports Division within Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning. This is the first step in a multi-phase approach that will ensure better access to youth sports for all of our children and streamline the scheduling process for our facilities to ensure that availability is not based on who you know or how well you are able to navigate the current system.
Along with education, we were successful in several other areas as well. As you know, beautification of our county is a high priority and one area that we are dealing with is illegal dumping. Thanks to the work we accomplished this session, we are confident that we will be able to aggressively address this issue.
We were able to pass legislation that targets the illegal dumping of bulky items that plague our communities. The new legislation defines the type of items we are targeting and establishes a new penalty for individuals convicted of violating the new law.
Our efforts to beautify our county won’t end here. In a few weeks, we will be announcing further efforts around illegal dumping and a partnership with the state that will help us remove litter from our roadways and keep our county litter free, so everyone will know that we are Prince George’s Proud.
One other major priority coming into session was to address some of the safety concerns on our roads, and I want to thank Delegate Valderrama for all of her efforts to pass legislation that secured additional speed cameras along Route 210. We all have a responsibility to drive safely and slow down, but for those who don’t heed our warning, it is our hope that these cameras will slow them down and help reduce the number of crashes along 210.
In addition to securing needed resources in our key priority areas, we also secured additional resources in the state budget, including:
- National Capital Strategic Economic Development Program, or NED Funding, in the amount of $7 million per year for the next five years. We will be able to use that money to address vacant homes, possibly looking at creating a land bank to buy back these properties, as well as invest in other economic development related projects.
- The return of $9.3 million in school construction funding that the county had forward-funded the state but hadn’t previously been repaid for.
- Thirty-eight million in state funding to help construct the needed interchange on Arena Drive as we continue to build out downtown Largo.
- Three million dollars per year for the next two years that will allow us to build 12 turf athletic fields at our schools.
- And funding for a feasibility study to build an amphitheater in the county so we no longer have to travel to other jurisdictions for great outdoor concerts and events. We received $250,000 for the study this year and $14.5 million in preauthorization construction funds for next year.
As you can see, it was a very successful session for Prince George’s County, and while it certainly ended on a somber note as we all mourn the loss of a great leader, public servant, mentor and friend in Speaker Busch, we are proud of what we accomplished and we believe it is a sign of things to come as we continue to work together on behalf of our citizens.
Yours in service,
Angela Alsobrooks
Prince George's County Executive
County Executive Alsobrooks provided testimony in support of several bills in Annapolis during the legislative session.
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