Money Talks: Decoding the History of Budget Shifts and Recommended vs. Actual Operational Budgets in Montgomery County

Background

A lot has been made of the Montgomery County budget recommended by County Executive Elrich. Including our previous piece on it here discussing the lack of accountability and declining services. There has also been a lot of back and forth between the County Council, County Exec, residents and the different unions representing workers in the county.

The County Council is expected to vote tomorrow on a preliminary budget which based on County Councilmembers comments appears like it will be lower than the full 10% increase recommended by the County Exec.

This piece is going to look at historical data on recommended vs actual budgets as well as the change over time dating back to 2015 as well as historical data on MCPS budgets.

Operating Budget Historical Data

Historical data source is here.

Historical Recommended vs. Approved

The first chart shows the growth of both the recommended budget and approved over the last 10 years.

Change from Recommended to Approved

This next chart shows the change between the County Executive’s Recommended budget vs. the County Council’s approved budget over the past 10 years.

Changes to Recommended and Approved from Previous Year

This chart shows the changes from recommended and approved from the previous year.

Of note, by far the smallest 3 changes to approved budget were in the years 2020 ($19 million), 2021 ($0), and 2022 ($0). Those year’s also benefitted from a lot of federal and state funding due to COVID.

Last year’s (2023) increase was the biggest in the past ten years at $400 million and this year’s recommended change of $515 million is by far the largest recommended change.

MCPS Budgets over Time

Now lets take a look at MCPS budgets over time. You can see the 2024 recommended MCPS budget here.

As you can see in the chart below, while both the MCPS budget and County contribution continue to grow over time, the % of the MCPS budget funded by County Contribution has mostly shrunk over time from 75.6% in 2006 to 63.0% in 2023. 2024 is based on recommended not actual budget so it’s not set yet.

YearEnrollmentMCPS BudgetCounty Contribution% funded by county
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