The ongoing legal fight between the Maryland National Capital Parks and Planning Commission and the Prince George’s County Council over more than $39 million in taxpayer dollars has been delayed right as the two agencies were set to meet in court.
Last week, a judge agreed to push back to November hearings set for Monday and Tuesday of this week for a few reasons, including new legal filings made by the commission after the council passed new resolutions addressing the money at the center of this case.
The council passed the resolutions earlier this month to, in the council’s words, “clarify” the process in which the money would be disbursed and spent. Specifically, the council said it’s not redirecting the money so much as it’s reimbursing some nonprofit groups for work that’s being performed — a process that’s been repeated for over two decades now.
Yet in briefs filed by lawyers for the commission, it’s still a “commandeering” of money and it argues the funding is still going toward county operations and programs that are not related to parks or recreation. The resolutions just “re-time” the violations of law, with the commission saying it’s merely an attempt to “cure the legal defects” in the county’s process.
The county also argued it needed more time to get ready to question and challenge the expertise of expert witnesses retained by the commission.
Meanwhile, lawyers for the commission said a list of witnesses it is issuing subpoenas to have been dodging servers. Some of those witnesses include nonprofit leaders who have close relationships with Council Chair Krystal Oriadha and Council member Ed Burroughs, who are the ones most aggressively defending the use of these tax dollars.
“I welcome the conversation and debate around park and planning,” Burroughs told WTOP in June. “It’s a large entity that Prince George’s County taxpayers give hundreds of millions of dollars to every single year, and so we should be debating what is an appropriate use of those funds.”
While millions of dollars have been reimbursed to nonprofits by way of the county council in the past, the commission does have a decadesold Maryland Supreme Court ruling on its side saying it, not the council, controls the revenue stream it receives every year.
“Failure to contest every prior overreach is not a ratification of the present, larger statutory violations,” the court argued in a filing this month.
After the council passed the current year’s budget, a judge put the spending of that specific $39.3 million on hold until the legal dispute could be solved.
For now, the two sides are due back in court again on Nov. 16.
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