The Department of Legislative Services, the nonpartisan legislative staff agency, has published its annual analysis of State Aid to Local Governments. The report reviews the proposed funding for all categories of assistance for education, transportation, local health departments, public safety, and other areas.
The DLS report is available for stakeholders assessing the proposed budget plan for FY 25, where most funding is driven by statutory formulas, and in some cases subject to year-by-year variations as underlying data change.
Note: DLS continues to label all support for education, mainly being distributed directly to school systems, under the broad heading of "Aid to Local Governments." The summary that Aid to Local Governments represents $8.4 billion, or over 32% of the State General Fund, seemingly implies vast state-supported resources for county and municipal governments -- but by far the largest portion of this aid, nearly $8.2 billion of the all-funds total of $10.8 billion, is education assistance.
That trend, of education aid representing the largest share of the total and the incremental growth, is illustrated in the table below - where in this year's budget plan, $262m of the total $306m growth in direct aid is for public schools:
Among the formula variations in the proposed budget are formula-driven changes to Disparity Grants, and Program Open Space. Since both of those numbers are down year over year, the line item above for "Counties/Municipalities" is showing an overall meaningful decline.
The DLS report details the components of the Disparity Grant calculations, which trigger a funding decline of over $30 million for FY 25, including a $29 million loss in Prince George's County alone. The variability in the program, largely arising from the volatility in non-wage income reporting year by year, may be a subject of legislative attention this session.
Read the full DLS Report "Overview of State Aid to Local Governments" online.
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